First lets’ look at the difference between leads and qualified leads.
Leads are people (or businesses) who contact your business and express an interest in your products and services.
Qualified leads are people who have a want or need to buy your products and services and have the ability to pay for them.
Why Is There A Difference Between Leads And Qualified Leads?
- Some leads don’t want or need what you sell. They are vague and think you might be able to help but you don’t sell what they want.
. - Some leads can’t afford to buy from you.
. - Some leads can afford to buy but don’t want to buy a product at your part of the value for money line. Some will want to buy a lower price, lower quality product, others will want a higher quality, higher price product. Think cars and how some people buy a second hand Kia, some buy a new Ford Focus and others a new Lamborghini.
It takes time and costs money to talk to leads and you should aim to qualify in or out at a very early stage of your marketing and selling process.
Some businesses will do it in their marketing and strategic positioning.
Others like to get the enquiry and then qualify.
The Two Main Types Of Lead Generation Method
The two types of tactics for lead generation are:
- Search marketing – your customers are looking and your responsibility is to be found and to create a response. These people think they want to buy.
- Outreach marketing – your customers aren’t actively looking but are aware they might have a need or might want want you sell. With the right approach, these people can be persuaded to buy.
How To Get More Qualified Leads
- Find new target audiences that will give you more leads – this might include extending the geographical areas you target or focusing on new types of customer who can use your products and services.
. - Make sure that your business is found when customers look for your products and services. On the Internet, that means search engine marketing.
. - Increase your usage of your lead generation techniques that work well. E.g if you can get two customers for every 100 direct mail letters you send out, send out more.
. - Test possible improvements to your existing lead generation techniques. Can a different headline, offer, price increase response? Strengthen your marketing message.
. - Get your target audience to see your advertisements and offers more often. Frequency increases brand awareness and trust. There’s also the issue of being there at the right rather than the wrong time.
. - Use extra lead generation techniques. Some customers won’t respond to certain methods but are susceptible to others. For example, I hate telemarketing but I will take a professional interest in direct mail..
- Encourage customers and other people to give referrals to your business.
. - Follow up on leads that you think are dead. Many people postpone buying decisions or have other priorities that mean they have to delay their intentions.
In the future, we will be looking at the many different methods you can promote your business to attract customer leads.
The purpose of this article is to help you to think beyond adding a few extra tactics.
Whilst it’s important that you don’t rely on one source for generating the vast majority of your leads, you need to make sure that you work smart.
Different People Respond To Different Things At Different Times
Use your experience as a buyer to think about examples of when you’ve seen a marketing message a number of time and then decided to make contact? Why was that?
Life changes.
Your customers might not have had a problem last week, they do now but it’s not at the top of their priorities. Next week, if it gets worse, they may be desperate to buy.
Lead generation needs persistence.
>>> Being Good At Marketing Isn’t A “Nice-If” But A “Must Have”
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