What Is Lead Generation + Its Benefits

When you start running a business there will be various lingo that you will begin hearing often that you will quickly start learning, remembering and using to improve your business.

One of those common words that you will hear is ‘lead’. You’ll hear this word in phrases like, ‘how many leads did you get this month?’ , ‘we need to start getting more qualified leads’ or ‘explode your leads and sales’ and ‘convert users into leads’. 

So what is lead generation after all and how can you get more and more leads for your business?

In this blog, we’ll examine what a lead is, how lead generation works and why your business needs to start implementing lead generation strategies ASAP!

What Is Lead Generation?

What is lead generation

Before we can start defining what lead generation is, let’s first start looking at what a lead is, what it means for your business and the quality of leads you can get.

  • What is a lead?

In a sales context, a lead refers to a potential buyer showing interest in your service offering in a variety of different ways, such as calling you, filling out a contact form, emailing you etc.

When you receive a lead it means that the prospective customer has tried to contact you or given you personal information to contact them. 

This could be their name, cellphone number, email address and even demographic information like their age, gender, location and preferences.

Receiving many leads doesn’t automatically mean you will receive many sales or conversions (another business jargon word meaning a goal being completed for your business). 

  • Quality of Leads

Not all leads are created equal, unfortunately. You can receive great quality leads, meaning that you have targeted the right channels and reached your ultimate target customer that will likely convert due to their interests and demographic. 

You can also cast your net out wide, hoping to catch a much larger number of leads but you’ll then be catching a large number of irrelevant leads that will never convert.

These are leads that may have misunderstood your offering for something else, fall in the wrong economic bracket ie. your services are too expensive or not custom enough, or they’re just spam leads that you can receive from contact form bots. 

high quality leads

Your aim as a business shouldn’t be to receive an endless amount of leads and only convert a few. This will waste your time by having to follow up with each lead.

Your aim should be to receive qualified, warm leads that are ready to buy something similar to your offering and your only job is to convince them why they should choose your company. This is where lead generation comes in.

  • What is lead generation?

Lead generation is the process of attracting potential buyers to your site, educating them about your offering, capturing their information ie. turning them into a lead and then nurturing them (providing incentives and rewards).

This is all with the goal of increasing their interest (warming them up to your business) and converting them into a loyal customer. 

Put simply, prospects turn into leads, are nurtured to turn into customers who can be nurtured to become loyal, repeat customers.

You can nurture leads through personalised emails, free quality content, rewards (sales or coupons), blog posts and more.

Ultimately lead generation is about increasing your ideal customer’s interest in your business and guiding them through a path that ends with them wanting to buy from you.

  • Lead generation channels

lead generation channels

You can gather leads through multiple different channels and strategies depending on where your target market is and what works best for your business.

The various lead generation channels include: 

  • Email marketing
  • Blogging
  • Social media marketing
  • eBooks, content marketing
  • Webinars, live events
  • Free trials, samples, coupons, competitions
  • Website landing pages

The Process Of Lead Generation

lead generation process
  1. Finding you

A website visitor will find you through your various marketing channels. This could be through curated social media posts, paid ads on Google or social media platforms or even through your blog and an SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy.

Just look at what we’ve mentioned above to get a better picture of successful lead generation channels.

  1. Completing a CTA

Once a visitor has landed on your website it has the task of keeping visitors interested, leading them on a journey through your site with the aim of hopefully completing an action of some sort and capturing a lead.

Your website will do this through carefully placed calls to action or CTA’s. A CTA is an image, heading or button that will encourage users to complete an action. Something like, ‘learn more’, ‘contact us now’, ‘ sign up’, and ‘download now’.  

Depending on your strategy your call to action will lead the visitor to a landing page or will open up a form for the visitor to fill out.

*Top Tip* A quick and easy way to ensure that you’re only collecting qualified leads is to make sure that certain fields in your contact form have to be filled out in order for them to submit it.

You’d be surprised that not everyone will fill out every field in your contact form if it’s not required, in this case, you might receive a name but no contact details.

Depending on your business you may want to make the name, contact information, email address and other fields (their location, preferences, age etc.) as required. 

  1. Becoming a lead

Internet users nowadays don’t just want to give out their personal information for free. They are warier of getting scammed or of receiving spam. Therefore, when visitors give out their information they usually expect something in exchange for that information.

They will also give out information to companies that they trust and enjoy the content of. Users will give their information to sign up for a good quality newsletter or sign up for a free trial, free coupon, eBook and so on, you get the picture.

All this without having to lift a finger! Now the hard part is done and you have received a new, qualified lead that is interested in your business and happy to have received something of value from you.

Now, it’s all about closing the lead which can be done by contacting them directly or through email marketing which is a whole different automated process that will hopefully turn this warm lead into a sale! 

The Benefits

what is lead generation

  • Target desired customers
  • Build brand loyalty
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Create a pipeline of qualified leads
  • Personalise your messaging to each lead
  • Saves time (more automated, less leads to filter through, and a quicker response time)
  • Saves money (more refined targeting, less wasted marketing budget)
  • Can be outsourced and automated

Lead generation can be highly successful when put in the right hands.

At The Weblab, we are experts in building lead generation strategies and sales funnels that target the right channels and target market for your business.

Get better quality leads by scheduling a free strategy call with us today to find out more about what lead generation is and how it can benefit your business!