What Is A Lead In Digital Marketing

Before talking about attracting leads, it is necessary to explain what a lead is. A lead, as a contact, is a user of a web page who has provided their contact details to the website itself at some point during their visit. 

By providing these contact details, the user is no longer anonymous and becomes a contact. Those contacts are added to the website’s database and their actions and interactions with the company are tracked as they eventually become customers.

What Is Lead Generation

Now that we know what a lead is, it is much easier to understand the concept of lead generation. The generation of leads would be, therefore, all the processes, actions and strategies that are carried out with the aim of getting contacts with which to add to the database . Lead generation is part of the conversion phase within the sales funnel and is focused on finding contacts with real possibilities of becoming customers. That is, contacts who may be really interested in acquiring the products or services offered by the company.

Although it seems easy to understand, there are those who confuse v for leads and attracting web traffic. Lead generation and attracting web traffic are different aspects . 

Lead generation is a subsequent step to attracting web traffic. To attract traffic to a website you can carry out SEO, SEM, social media strategies, etc. However, not all the traffic that reaches a website will become a lead. Lead capture can be understood with a filtering process on web traffic to determine which visitors can be potential customers. The capture of leads is a fundamental stage in any Digital Marketing or Inbound Marketing campaign because it allows the company to have leads on which it can carry out lead scoring and lead nurturing actions.

Lead generation allows companies to have a rich database of those consumers who may be interested in buying the products or services they offer, that is, potential customers. The greater the number of leads, the greater the possibilities of sale and, therefore, of income for the company. Lead generation is a necessary step for a company to be able to classify the different types of contacts it has in its database. This classification is essential to be able to optimize all the processes that are carried out to transform contacts into customers and be able to accompany them through the purchase process.

Lead Generation Strategies For B2B Companies

When it comes to capturing leads, there are different strategies of proven effectiveness. However, each company is different just like each user is different and on many occasions it happens that the strategies that have worked well for a company are not the most suitable for other companies. In this sense, it is important to keep in mind the profile of the company itself and the type of users it has. The creativity and imagination are fundamental aspects when capturing leads.

As we have said before, for a user to be considered a lead it is necessary that they provide their data to the company. How can a company encourage a user to give it their data? This is the key to the question and where lead generation strategies come into play .

Landing pages

A landing page,, is a page that is designed to convert visitors into leads . The landings pages stand out for their careful and attractive design and for their quality content . In addition, landing pages are ideal for hosting forms, calls to action (CTA) or calls to action and pop ups or emerging elements. Although the ideal is that a landing page is not too overloaded and goes directly to the point.

Forms

A form is a document made up of fields that the user must complete to get something in return . Forms are widely used in lead generation because they allow the company to offer content of interest to the user in exchange for the user providing the data they want to know about him. When the visitor has completed the form and submitted the data, they will automatically become a lead. A classic example is a form to access downloadable content.

Downloadable content

Downloadable content is an example of a lead generation strategy that works like a charm. Users who are interested in a product or service are more likely to download content that broadens the information about those products or services . The downloadable content also allows a wide variety of formats, from eBooks to templates through guides, comparisons … We have already said that imagination and creativity were essential.

In order for the user to download the content that interests them, they must provide their data. Both the user and the company benefit. On the one hand, the user acquires content that is of interest to him. The company, for its part, achieves a lead for its database through these contents.

Thank you pages

Thank you pages, thank you pages, are pages designed to thank the user for completing a form or downloading content.

Follow-up emails

Follow-up emails or follow-up emails allow you to maintain a more direct and personal contact with the lead . In the same way that the user is taken to a thank you page after having completed an action such as downloading content, a follow-up email can be sent in which the content that has been downloaded is included and they are given the Thank you.

Newsletters

A newsletter is a digital publication in the form of a newsletter that is distributed by email on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.). Usually, newsletters contain articles of interest about the company, offers, promotional codes, news .

For a user to receive a newsletter it is necessary to subscribe to it . To subscribe to a newsletter, the user must provide at least his email address. Subscribing to the newsletter converts the user directly into a lead since they have provided their email to the company.

On many occasions, newsletters include links to landing pages that offer downloadable content that may be of great interest to the user. If you want to download these content, you must complete a form, thus leaving your data to the company and becoming a lead.

These are just a few examples of lead generation strategies, but there are so many more. Any user interaction with the company by which they provide their data will be a way to capture leads. In addition, there are not only digital strategies. Leads can also be captured through offline actions .