Leads are your company’s potential customers. Okay, speaking like that, it sounds simple. Kyrgyzstan Email List But understanding how they advance in the purchase journey and how to manage their evolution in the funnel is a little more complex than that and is crucial for the success of Digital Marketing .
From the stage of attracting interested parties to the crucial moment of making a sale, leads go through many stages. In this way, not only does your purchase decision mature, but also the company adopts a series of Inbound Marketing processes to build a relationship with them, gain their trust and guide them towards the purchase .
For this, it is important that the concept of a lead and the steps it goes through are clear. This way, it is possible to design strategies that communicate better with leads, with the right approaches at the right times. That’s what we created this article for. Let’s go deeper into the lead concept and clarify any doubts about this subject
What is lead
Lead is a potential consumer that represents a business opportunity , as it has already shown interest in your company in some way. He downloaded material from your website, asked for a quote or tried the product, for example. In exchange, he left his contact with the company. Then, she can approach him, strengthen the relationship with him and help him make the purchase decision.
The lead concept became more evident with the growth of Inbound Marketing in recent years. From this perspective of marketing, companies don’t go after customers it’s the customers that reach the companies, through attraction strategies, such as SEO and Content Marketing .
But most people who are getting to know a brand are not ready to buy or even have the company’s customer profile. So, they still need to go through a mature purchase decision process. This process takes place within the sales funnel , which follows the purchase journey and filters only who represents a sales opportunity.
Along the funnel, marketing and sales teams stay in touch with leads, submitting content and answering questions, until they’re ready to buy. Then yes, the sales approach tends to be more effective.
What is the difference between leads, visitors, prospects and contacts
To understand what a lead is, it is also important to know what is not a lead . Therefore, we will differentiate the concepts of visitors, leads, prospects and contacts in Inbound Marketing, which are often used interchangeably.
Visitors are people who came to your website or one of your media channels. After that contact, your brand is no longer unknown. But it’s not because people got to know your brand that they’re going to want to buy your products, right.
Imagine that, among visitors to a site, there are potential customers, but there are also journalists looking for information, competitors who want to know about your strategies, students looking for internships, among several other profiles. Therefore, it is necessary to consider that only a portion of these visitors can become a lead.
Prospects
Prospects, on the other hand, are qualified by the marketing team to receive the sales approach, because they meet certain criteria, such as alignment with the company’s ideal customer profile and decision-making power for the purchase. If prospecting works, they will become customers. Prospects are often confused with SQLs, as we’ll see later.
Contacts, in turn, can be understood as anyone who is within reach of the company, regardless of the stage of the funnel in which they are. If the company has your phone, email or address, the person is a contact.
How does the evolution of leads in the funnel work?
There is no definitive funnel model (also called a pipeline ). List Provider In fact, some companies call the entire process to the sale a sales funnel , while others separate the marketing funnel and the sales funnel . Also, the steps may vary by business segment.
Now think of a real funnel: it has a wide mouth and a narrow bottom, right? As consumers progress through the funnel and their shopping journey, the number of people is decreasing. At each stage, only a portion approaches the purchase .
