What are leads and why are they so important to your marketing?

 Here at the office, we regularly talk about leads.

“How many leads came in through the website this month?”

“Did you follow up on that lead from last week?”

“I have a great lead for you here. You should definitely call.”

Now I can imagine that it is strange for an outsider to follow these kinds of conversations. If it can be followed at all.

Because what is it about now? What exactly is such a lead and what can you do with it?

What is a lead management system?

A quick googling yields several definitions:

A lead management system is a software where you can manage ypu all leads at one place. Lead is a request for more information about a product or service. The sender of the lead (a company or person) can be seen as a potential customer because of this interest. Leads can, for example, come in via an information form on your own website. Marketingtermen.nl

A lead is a trail to a potential customer. Some of these tracks lead to a dead end, some end in a sale. Such a track can, for example, consist of entered contact details, a callback appointment or a subscription to a newsletter. MDC Media

Business leads are potential new customers for a company and are also known as prospects or sales leads. Wikipedia

Marketing and sales departments in particular talk about leads, business leads or sales leads. When we talk about leads, we talk about an opportunity.

Somehow, this lead has shown interest in your business. For example, they have visited the website, downloaded an ebook or requested information.

They may be interested in your product or services, but you have yet to find that out.

Lead or not lead?

Because there are so many different definitions, I will show what we mean by leads on the basis of three examples:

✅ Every reader of the blog What criteria must a good website meet will see a pop-up in which they can request a free website scan. Every signup is a lead.

❌ A while back we offered a free ebook with 100+ sample email newsletters. An online marketing agency from our region has downloaded the ebook. On the website we see that they provide email marketing for their customers and are therefore competitors. This is not a lead.

✅ Someone comes to our website via a tweet and reads the blog 7 reasons you need a new website . A day later we see in our mailbox that this is a flower bulb grower. And his website could visibly use a refresh. This is a lead.

One lead is not the other

Let's face it. We're just talking about people here. People who exhibit a certain behavior and to whom you can then draw conclusions carefully.

The bulb grower in the example below seems to be looking for a new website. We see this in his reading behavior on our website.

The online marketing agency is not a lead in our view, because we assume that they keep an eye on the competition. It is a competitor with similar products. They want to see how we do it.

And finally the reader who is interested in a website scan.

Depending on the outcome of the scan, we can conclude that the reader is critical of his website. Are there areas for improvement? Then that is an entrance for us to continue the conversation.

Different types of leads

I already mentioned it. One lead is not the other. That is why we distinguish between leads. Each type of lead has a different approach and a different plan of action.

Cold lead

A cold lead is someone you haven't met or spoken to before. You are still a stranger to him or her. That is why it is not wise to immediately come up with your services and products. You have to build that up slowly.

Warme lead

A warm lead is already familiar with you and your services. This may have been a cold lead. Someone you introduced to the company and who still shows interest.

Marketing Qualified Lead

A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a potential new customer who has shown a concrete interest in your organization or product. For example, this MQL has downloaded a white paper or ebook.

We call this lead marketing qualified, because we continue to follow up this person from marketing. By regularly feeding the lead with new information, it eventually becomes a Sales Qualified Lead.

Sales Qualified Lead

A Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is convinced that you have a solution to his problem. This lead is about to make a decision. Now is the time to make the sale. You therefore give the lead sufficient reasons to choose you and not the competitor.

With us, a lead sales person is qualified if he has taken a number of actions on the website. With each action, the MQL gets closer to the SQL phase. With marketing automation you can keep up with this shift in software.