Lead Generation

What is Lead Generation?

A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company’s product or service in some way, shape, or form.

Leads typically hear from a business or organization after opening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription) … instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.

Let’s say you take an online survey to learn more about how to take care of your car. A day or so later, you receive an email from the auto company that created the survey about how they could help you take care of your car.

This process would be far less intrusive than if they’d just called you out of the blue with no knowledge of whether you even care about car maintenance, right? This is what it’s like to be a lead.

And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them personalize that opening communication to address your existing problems — and not waste time calling leads who aren’t at all interested in auto services.

Leads are part of the broader lifecycle that consumers follow when they transition from visitor to customer. Not all leads are created equal (nor are they qualified the same). There are different types of leads based on how they are qualified and what lifecycle stage they’re in.

Lead Generation today

In today’s competitive online space, getting high-quality leads is not easy. As a business, if you are struggling to get targeted leads, it could be because of the following reasons:

• You don’t have a website
• Your business just launched
• Your website is not optimized for search
• Your website is not optimized for conversion
• You lack a targeted digital strategy

Most savvy business people resort to lead generation agencies to get assistance to boost their ROI. They often overlook the need to invest time and effort to understand the lead generation processes adopted by such companies and how they differentiate a good lead from a bad one.

Most lead generation companies follow the strategy of targeting a large pool of customers via mass emails, flyers, cold calls, or advertising. Such companies will have preset templates and lead generation strategies based on their clients’ industry. The process requires little or no effort and can bring in leads that are most likely to be of low quality.

Types of Leads

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

Marketing qualified leads are contacts who’ve engaged with your marketing team’s efforts but aren’t ready to receive a sales call. An example of an MQL is a contact who fills out a landing page form for an offer (like in HubSpots lead generation process scenario below).

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

Sales qualified leads are contacts who’ve taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming a paying customer. An example of SQL is a contact who fills out a form to ask a question about your product or service.

Product Qualified Lead (PQL)

Product qualified leads are contacts who’ve used your product and taken actions that indicate interest in becoming a paying customer. PQLs typically exist for companies who offer a product trial or a free or limited version of their product (like HubSpot!) with options to upgrade, which is where your sales team comes in. An example of a PQL is a customer who uses your free version but engages or asks about features that are only available upon payment.

Service Qualified Lead

Service qualified leads are contacts or customers who’ve indicated to your service team that they’re interested in becoming a paying customer. An example of a service-qualified lead is a customer who tells their customer service representative that they’d like to upgrade their product subscription; at this time, the customer service representative would up-level this customer to the appropriate sales team or representative.

What makes EGO a standout lead generation agency?

At EGO Creative Marketing, our approach to lead generation is unique and engaging. We treat each of our clients the way they deserve, and priority is given to their business goals or aspirations. We kick off with an in-depth consultation, where our experts will take their time to understand your product, service, and business processes.

We will ask you not just about your competitors but also about what makes your business stand out and how you forecast yourself in the next five years. Not having set business goals or foresight is typical and this is where EGO can help you plan your digital roadmap.

The following additional qualities of our lead generation services give us the edge over our competitors:

• Our lead generation strategy features a personalized human approach.
• We not only provide quality leads but take it a step further by assisting in building fruitful & long-lasting relationships with your potential customers.
• We channel the lead to multiple review gates to ensure that only targeted leads are passed on to your business.
• We update the buyer persona based on market trend changes to keep our efforts laser-targeted.
• We retarget communications to cold leads by forecasting seasonal & market changes.

With EGO Creative Marketing, you get a team of experts who aim to turn your cold data into active prospects. Our experts rely on customized marketing strategies that feature sincere and genuine communication and not scripts.