Generate Qualified Leads: Your Guide to Effective Online Marketing

There’s so much talk in marketing circles about converting leads and moving them through the proverbial funnel to make them into clients or customers. Converting leads presupposes that you have leads in the first place–but do you? Generating, especially qualified leads, is the first step in sales success and a core function of any marketing plan. Knowing how to generate qualified leads for your business makes effective online marketing effective and guarantees a positive ROI for your marketing budget. So how do you generate qualified leads and move them into the conversion process?

What Qualifies as a “Qualified Lead”?

A “lead” is a positively identified potential client or customer–a person or business who has either expressed interest in what you offer or fits the client/customer profile you’ve developed for your business. Within that broad definition, some more specific categories of qualified lead might be useful in further lead targeting and lead identification:

• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)are a type of passive lead. They’ve shown some interest in your product or services through engagement with your marketing but may or may not be ready for a direct sales contact. They are likely to engage more fully once a solid relationship has been formed through further engagement.

• Product Qualified Leads (PQLs)are potential leads who have taken the next step and used your product or service via a sample, free trial, or similar marketing offer. They’re now ready to take the next step and become a paying customer or client by upgrading to your paid services.

• Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)are active leads in that they’ve taken direct actions to indicate that they are interested in becoming a customer or client. These are generally the most time-sensitive type of lead–they need a priority sales call and a fast-track route through your funnel. 

• Service Qualified Leadsdon’t get an acronym or initialism to avoid confusion with sales-qualified leads, but they’re an important type of lead in their own right. Service-qualified leads have already engaged with your product or service to some degree and have subsequently expressed to your service team that they are ready to upgrade to a higher level of service, a long-term contract, or other up-level engagement. Service-qualified leads should be handed over to your sales team as soon as possible. 

These lead types are not absolute definitions–some leads straddle one or more categories and that’s OK. Think of these as guidelines to help you organize your leads by the most appropriate response type, allowing you to respond accordingly and maximize your chances of success with an individual lead.

What is Lead Generation, and How Can Your Business Generate Leads?

Lead generation refers to any process or strategy that attracts potential clients or customers to your business–but the Devil is in the details. Lead generation works proactively by initiating engagement and sparking interest in what your business has to offer. Lead generation is perhaps best thought of as the series of steps you take before the sales call via either inbound lead generation–which attracts the lead’s attention and brings them to you–or outbound lead generation–when you contact a potential lead directly. In a marketing landscape dominated by digital tools and online marketing approaches, any of the following may come into play for lead generation:

• SEO Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
• Visit Tracking
• Email Prospecting/Email Automation
• Sales CRM
• Content Marketing
• Digital Content Management
• Brand Development and Digital Brand Projection

It’s a diverse toolbox, and each technique has to work in harmony with the others to maximize your lead generation, develop and protect your brand, and move customers through your sales pipeline so that engagement translates into ROI. In an ever-changing digital landscape, this requires a bleeding-edge understanding of marketing, engagement, and branding. Wahha Design understands this, and we know how much your business means to you. We’ll take what you’ve built and present it to potential clients or customers in a way that conveys your message and engages them with your brand. We turn awareness into leads and leads into sales, ensuring that you get the return you need on your marketing investment. Contact us today to schedule an initial consultation and let us help you build your success.