Due to rapid digitalization, the race to get an audience actively interested in your brand, product or service has become
increasingly difficult. Digital strategies have had to focus not only on obtaining an interested audience, called “leads”, but
also on actually being people who are really interested in your product or service, the so-called “qualified leads” .
Do you want to reach a better quality audience on social media? Here we explain how you can achieve this thanks to a strategy based on Inbound Marketing.
What is a lead and why is it qualified?
Any user who has provided their personal data to your company will be considered a lead . This user has agreed to give up their information for some reason in order to obtain something you offer, but this does not necessarily guarantee or represent a potential conversion.
Many times people enter a site or a brand’s social networks for a specific topic, generating a lead, but it does not mean that they are interested in your brand or what you offer at all.
In Inbound Marketing, qualified leads are those who are potential new zealand phone number list clients because they have been previously studied and meet the requirements of your buyer persona .
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How to generate leads through social networks?
Qualified leads are based on the characteristics of Get qualified leads your buyer persona , which is the type of customer you want to reach. It is a semi-fictional representation of the person you want to reach based on the product or service you offer.
For the Inbound Marketing strategy, it is key that, before saying what and how to communicate, you identify the needs and characteristics of your ideal client, since this will help you generate an assertive strategy to reach those potential clients and be able to improve your conversion rate .
How to get qualified leads?
In an Inbound Marketing strategy , creating valuable content that targets a specific audience is the way to get leads, complemented by the transactional use of information: People who are most interested in your brand will be able to access more content in exchange for their contact information.
However, even when these people show a legitimate interest in your content, they may still fail to convert into customers.
To solve this, it is important to establish different tools that allow you to obtain more data from these leads, such as the
use of forms, personalized emails with click tracking for the purpose of a notification segmentation, downloadable content, service demos, etc.
All of these efforts will transform that lead into an MQL, or marketing qualified lead. From this point, transforming it into
an SQL (sales qualified lead) is essential to the sales funnel journey, and to achieve this, your marketing and sales teams must be aligned on a solid Smarketing strategy .
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Differentiate your Leads according to the Marketing Funnel
Previously, we mentioned how all leads can be generated in different ways, and in turn, they must be cataloged differently, since they can be found at different stages of the sales funnel.
Is this a new lead or someone who has already received an email from you? Or maybe, is this someone who has already
expressed interest in getting a “demo” and wants the sales team to contact them? It is essential that you manage to identify these differences and here we tell you how:
Lead
This is the person who went from being a prospect to a lead, because they performed some action after which they left
their contact information (at least their email address). On many occasions, they are defined with the surname “cold”
or “hot”. Cold leads are those who have recently left their shopping data information, and for whom an opportunity has
not yet been detected. On the other hand, “hot” leads refer to that person who has already been detected to be
interested in your content, therefore, they are closer to being an opportunity.
MQL: Marketing Qualified Lead
These types of leads are considered nurtured by your marketing strategy, whether through lead nurturing or lead scoring,
such as mailing campaigns or content of specific Get qualified leads value for your users. They are possibly people who
have repeatedly shown interest in your brand, but may not yet be ready or interested in being contacted by the sales team.
SQL: Sales Qualified Lead
These types of leads are already much further along in the purchasing phase, being people who have shown active interest
in acquiring the product or service offered. For example, they may be someone who asks for a demonstration , or who
wants to understand what you offer in order to acquire it, having downloaded and consumed much more material than the rest of the people.
Image by HubSpot for HubSpot.com
You must remember that, in addition to these classifications, you should always pay attention to the information your
leads give you and consider it for the strategy in which you will integrate them. For example, they may have different
needs if your company is B2C, or if it is B2B, they may require more time or influence more people in their own company, among many other situations.
The more information you have about your visitors and prospects, the more targeted your campaigns will be, saving your team time and delivering better content to those who could be your next customers. This increases the possibility of getting “qualified leads” .