Understand what a lead is may interest both neophytes in the field and marketing experts. Indeed, even a specialist needs a little booster shot, from time to time, in order to remember the basics of his activity.
In this article, we will be particularly interested in this important concept, its definition and its usefulness in web marketing.
Lead definition
If you follow us and read our articles, you have surely observed that we often use the term lead. Indeed, it is a particularly important web marketing concept that is at the center of many campaigns.
To put it simply, the lead corresponds to a specific action of a prospect as envisaged at the start of the campaign. Responding to a specific objective, the lead represents the manifestation of the interest of the Internet user for your brand in many ways .
In certain circumstances, the lead may be the downloading of a document (a white paper or a buying guide, for example), subscribing to your newsletter or even filling out a form to be called back.
The purpose of the lead being, in many cases, the sale of a product or service.
Why are we talking about leads?
The lead is particularly important for measuring the results of certain campaigns and setting up a conversion funnel .
Indeed, it should be known that an Internet user goes through several phases before carrying out the desired action.
At first, he doesn’t know you. Must therefore attract him to you. Then, you have to encourage him to visit your site in order to turn him into a prospect. Then, you have to accompany him until the purchase of your product or service. And, ultimately, you have to build loyalty.
The conversion tunnel therefore represents the entire path of your target from the start of the relationship to the final conversion.
Namely: it is possible (and recommended) to set up a conversion tunnel for each campaign and each objective. The lead is therefore at the beginning of the tunnel , when the Internet user is interested in you and transforms from visitor to prospect (or commercial contact according to some).
You have understood it: the lead is a metric that allows you to precisely evaluate the results of certain actions of your campaigns.. By looking at this data, you can know if your advertising messages have been successful or not.
The differences between a BtoC lead and a BtoB lead
In theory, there is no real difference between a BtoC lead and a BtoB lead. Indeed, the goal in both cases is to turn a visitor into a prospect (or business contact) and ultimately into a customer.
However, in practice, we note that the expectations of BtoC customers are not the same as those of BtoB customers.
Thus, we observe that the BtoB lead relies more on information while the BtoC lead plays on emotion.
Indeed, a BtoB customer needs to be reassured and to be trusted. Especially if the partnership results in a long-term service and a particularly important contract. As a BtoB advertiser, it will therefore be important to base its expertise and know-how on factual data and documents of high informative quality adapted to the needs of decision-makers (white paper or webinar).
In BtoC , the lead will be impacted by emotion and personal satisfaction. Without forgetting that a prospect will also be strongly influenced by the opinions of other consumers. To work on the BtoC lead, we will opt for buying guides or promo codes.
A practical example of the difference between a BtoC lead and a BtoC lead:
Advertisers do not use the same arguments to sell a car to a professional or to an individual. For a professional vehicle, we will rather talk about the practical side of the machine while the ecological, safety and design side will be arguments of choice for a BtoC public.
Tips for optimizing your leads
First of all, you need to create marketing personas for your targets. Indeed, to generate leads, it is necessary to meet the needs and desires of the latter. And that requires knowing them well and being as interested in their habits as in their socio-demographic characteristics and their purchasing behavior.
In addition, a real lead nurtering strategy must be put in place in order to educate the prospect about your offer, make him want to be interested in you and make him progress within the conversion funnel. For this, you can use many tools including:
- Natural referencing (SEO);
- Paid referencing (SEA);
- Membership ; _
- Social networks ;
- Emailing .
In any case, your lead nurtering strategy cannot be done without quality content that meets the needs of your targets.. This content (also called lead magnet) can be published on your blog or on sites serving as business partners. At the same time, it will be necessary to set up a landing-page capable of welcoming each visitor and supporting them in order to promote conversion.
Finally, as with all marketing campaigns, it will be advisable to practice A/B Testing to identify what works and what doesn’t at the lead level. By focusing on the right KPIs (key performance indicator), you will be able to identify the most profitable actions and those that deserve to be reworked (or even eliminated).
Want to know more about lead? The Casaneo teams are at your disposal to help you define your lead nurtering strategy and create high value-added promotional content that meets the needs of your targets. As an affiliate platform, we are your best partner if you are interested in this performance marketing solution.
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