Table of Contents
What is a Lead?
What types of Leads exist?
Cold Lead:
MQL – Marketing Qualified Lead
SQL – Sales Qualified Lead
What is the difference between opportunity and lead?
How to capture leads?
Don't miss out! We explain: What a Lead is and what to do with it.
What is a Lead?
A Lead in online marketing is a person who has provided us with their contact information to subscribe to our newsletter, download content or through a web form, thus becoming part of our database.
A Lead is a prospect interested in our services or products but is not necessarily ready to purchase . Therefore, it is important to understand what phase of the purchasing canadian hospitals email list process they are in (discovery, consideration or decision) and accompany them through Lead Nurturing until they become customers.
Leads represent the number of potential business opportunities that we can generate for our company. This is where the importance of having methodologies and tools that allow us to generate leads consistently in volume and quality lies. When a lead becomes a customer or advances in the sales process, it is called a conversion.
Marketing campaigns on platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads or LinkedIn Ads usually aim to generate leads, although in some other cases direct sales are sought.
In addition, innovating in formats, such as holding streaming events, can serve as a tool to capture leads . Through talks, presentations, webinars, debates and demonstrations, you can directly answer the questions that your clients ask you, providing value.
It is important to understand that a lead does not always have the same level of quality, which is why marketing and sales departments make a great effort to qualify leads to determine if they fit the definition of our company's ideal clients. This process is known as Lead Scoring.
A lead usually goes through three phases within our marketing funnel: TOFU, MOFU and BOFU, which represent the top, middle and bottom of the funnel respectively. A cold lead is usually in the TOFU phase, since it has not yet been qualified.
phases a lead goes through
What types of Leads exist?
Cold Lead:
This type of lead represents all those emails that have been provided to us through forms designed to offer information, such as downloading content, subscribing to a newsletter or participating in a raffle.
It is very likely that this lead is interested in our company, but is not necessarily willing to make an immediate purchase. It is not advisable to carry out commercial sales actions to cold leads, as this may result in losing the opportunity. On the contrary, it is advisable to continue impacting them with content that allows them to understand our value proposition, the qualities of the product, etc., and thus bring them closer to the decision phase.
MQL – Marketing Qualified Lead
Marketing Qualified Leads are those leads that have shown interest in our product and have also been qualified as ideal clients for our company. Our goal is to take them to the next phase where they can consider our commercial offer.
SQL – Sales Qualified Lead
Like MQLs, sales qualified leads have shown interest in our company or product, but have also made progress in the purchasing process and are ready to become customers. Normally, this type of lead has been previously qualified by the sales or customer service department.
What is the difference between opportunity and lead?
We consider opportunities to be those contacts that fit the definition we have established of our company's ideal client (or buyer persona) and have also shown a clear interest in acquiring our product or service.
On the other hand, a lead is just a contact, nothing more, since we still do not know its BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Time) and it is necessary to investigate further to determine if it can really become an opportunity (MQL and/or SQL) and client.
Life cycle of a lead
Furthermore, today we take for granted that all the leads your company manages must be linked and managed from a CRM or customer management software, where you can do a better job of managing and maturing opportunities.
How to capture leads?
There are different online marketing techniques to capture leads from your digital assets, such as SEO, SEM, Social Ads or Email marketing, or you can choose to use a methodology that facilitates the integration of different techniques such as Inbound Marketing , which helps capture leads for your B2B business by creating valuable and relevant content that responds to the specific needs and problems of your potential customers.
