What is a LEAD? A LEAD is a single person who has taken action to inquire about your products and services. There are more ways to get leads today than ever before, so it’s more important than ever that we create a systematic approach for dealing with leads in an effective manner.
Types of Leads
- Hot Leads – People who are ready to buy right now.
- Warm Leads – People who are interested, but still shopping around.
- Cold Leads – People who have decided not to buy, or gone with someone else.
- Tire Kickers – People who don’t intend to buy, but will waste your time.
- Free Seekers – People who hang around for free info and contribute to your social community.
- Takers – People who take your free content or low-coupons but never come back or return the favor by participating in your social community or by sending referrals.
- Community – Everyone.
As you can see, leads are not all the same. Some are closer to making a decision than others. The key to effective web lead generation is to meet your lead where it’s at, and create systems to nurture the leads that aren’t yet ready to pull out their wallets. This is where social media marketing helps immensely because we can stay in front of our database with ease. But is that enough? No. There needs to be better management of leads to close the deal. This is considered “LEAD NURTURING.”
Lead Nurturing
Lead Nurturing is the process of selling and persuading those who have shown some interest in what you offer. Anyone who has visited your place or contacted your organization is a candidate for lead nurturing. The nurture process involves persuading and demonstrating that you are trustworthy, as well as building rapport.
Your email newsletter program needs to build trust and rapport with your prospects
Web lead generating. First things first. If you want to get leads from your website, you have to get traffic. How do you get traffic to your site? By publishing blog full of keywords, Pay per click campaigns, tweets, participating in social media, banners etc.
These are ways of getting people to your website. What do you do once they get there? The goal is to funnel them through the sales process. In order to do this, you must get past all the psychological blocks that keep a person from doing something, and you must motivate the person to take action.