You Know You Want It – But What is Lead Generation?

If you’re in business, then you need leads. But what exactly is a lead? Well, that can mean different things depending upon your goals and objectives.As a marketer, my goal is to help businesses grow, but to do that, we need to clearly define the goals and objectives for obtaining that growth. Very often this leads to planning strategies and implementing campaigns for lead generation. Lead generation therefore needs to be defined: are you trying to get your brand name out into the marketplace, are you looking to increase engagement, or are you looking to get information? Before you launch your next campaign, I’ve outlined below various types of leads to help you to better define the term based on your goals and objectives:

Brand Exposure

A lead can be that moment where a potential customer comes into contact with your brand. We often don’t consider a page view, click, impression, or a page visit to be a lead as they may not equal instant sales, but they are a type of lead as they are indicators that let you know that you’ve reached people who are looking for what you’re selling. Depending on the platform, you may be able to track these individuals or engage them again. The important thing here is you’ve left an impression on them, and they now know you exist, potentially contacting you in the future – this is a lead.

Relationship Engagement

A follow or share on social media, a discussion in a LinkedIn group, or a new contact/connection on LinkedIn are all types of business development and engagement with you and a potential lead to form a relationship. Even though this may not result in an instant sale, there is now a relationship and conversation happening that wasn’t there before- this is a lead.

Information Exchange

Tracking individuals’ actions and identity via a content marketing tool or offering a free download in exchange for their information via an online form are perhaps two of the most direct ways of generating a lead. Although this approach has all the trappings of a “real lead” because you have lead information, until you determine if the “lead” is legitimate and actually make contact with the individual, this too might not instantly result in a sale.

Although there may not be immediate and direct revenue associated with these different types of leads, don’t write them off, as there is value in placing your brand in the customer’s mind so that when they are ready to purchase, you’ve made that impression they can refer back to.

What do you define as a lead? Does a lead have to result in instant revenue? Do you set objections and goals for your lead generation campaigns? If not, why not? I look forward to discussing your terms for lead generation.

Advertisement

What Should I Be Getting From My Marketing Expert?

 No matter what realm – financial, legal, health or business – we rely on experts to provide us with answers that we otherwise couldn’t come up with on our own.

Marketing is the one thing all business owners know they must invest in to be more successful. In fact, this is why most CEOs hire internal expertise through their marketing staff, externally via a marketing agency, or do a combination of both to ensure they are getting the knowledge, insights, guidance and solutions to help them achieve their marketing and sales goals.

Whether your expert is internal or external or a hybrid, you’ll want to make sure your “experts” are taking care of your marketing to ensure you meet your objectives and goals. I have outlined below a few tasks you’ll want to make sure your experts provide you with:

• They have created a strategic marketing plan based on your business goals and reaching specific objectives you have outlined for your business (this may include increasing revenues from a target audience, introducing a new service or product, increasing sales by a certain percentage, etc.)
• The strategy clearly identifies your audience, your brand, messaging, your revenue streams, approaches for implementation, and measurement approaches
• They have created a detailed marketing plan, with determined messaging, what area your marketing team is going to focus on, what objectives they are hoping to achieve, what marketing mix they are going to use, the number of campaigns, and what the projected ROI will be for each
• They have created a detailed tactical plan to execute and implement the marketing strategy including clearly identifying individuals, roles, timelines, outcomes, ROI
• They have outlined documents for each campaign to identify who will monitor results, tweak as necessary, and ensure that your company gets the best results from their marketing efforts
• They have included you as part of the process (if appropriate) prior to, during and upon completion of every campaign. This could be a quick meeting with your team, a call, or an email.

As a CEO or CMO, your team needs to be able to not only think creatively but analytically. They must be able to not only be creative, but to be able to gain results from that creativity.

This is your business, so make sure you really have the right team at the table to help you achieve your business results and growth. Your relationship with your marketing advisor(s) should leave you always feeling secure in their expertise so that you can focus on running your business. Trust that they only have your best interest in mind and that your success is their success.