Lead Generation and Appointment Setting

Lead Generation: A Beginner's Guide to Generating Business Leads

Let's start with defining a lead, and then we'll cover what online lead generation is, why you need lead generation, how you qualify someone as a lead, how to label lead types -- such as sales qualified leads, how you generate leads, and why inbound lead generation is much more effective than simply buying leads.

Focus on building credibility

Lead generation companies must always begin the sales process by having a productive, meaningful conversation with prospective buyers. Don't be in too much of a hurry to sell your products, the customer needs to invest time and money dealing with you, they won't go ahead unless you build the requisite trust. You must naturally start with an effort to build credibility to make them believe you are an industry peer willing to help them solve their problems.

What is a lead?

Let's say you take an online survey to learn more about how to take care of your car. A day or so later, you receive an email from the auto company that created the survey about how they could help you take care of your car. This process would be far less intrusive than if they'd just called you out of the blue with no knowledge of whether you even care about car maintenance, right? This is what it's like to be a lead. And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them personalize that opening communication to address your existing problems and not waste time calling leads who aren't at all interested in auto services.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

Marketing qualified leads are contacts who've engaged with your marketing team's efforts but aren't ready to receive a sales call. An example of an MQL is a contact who fills out a landing page form for an offer (like in our lead generation process scenario below).

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

Sales qualified leads are contacts who've taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming a paying customer. An example of an SQL is a contact who fills out a form to ask a question about your product or service.

Product Qualified Lead (PQL)

Product qualified leads are contacts who've used your product and taken actions that indicate interest in becoming a paying customer. PQLs typically exist for companies who offer a product trial or a free or limited version of their product (like HubSpot!) with options to upgrade, which is where your sales team comes in. An example of a PQL is a customer who uses your free version but engages or asks about features that are only available upon payment.

Service Qualified Lead

Service qualified leads are contacts or customers who've indicated to your service team that they're interested in becoming a paying customer. An example of an service qualified lead is a customer who tells their customer service representative that they'd like to upgrade their product subscription; at this time, the customer service representative would up-level this customer to the appropriate sales team or representative

Why do you need lead generation?

When a stranger initiates a relationship with you by showing an organic interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is much more natural. Lead generation falls within the second stage of the inbound marketing methodology. It occurs after you've attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (namely sales-qualified leads). As you can see in the diagram below, generating leads is a fundamental point in an individual's journey to becoming a delighted customer.

Lead Generation Process

Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the inbound marketing methodology, let's walk through the steps of the lead generation process.

• 1. First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.
  
  
• 2. That visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action
  
  
• 3. That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer.
  
  
• 4. Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer. (Forms are typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site.) Voila! You have a new lead. That is, as long as you're following lead capture form best practices.