What Is Lead Generation In Digital Marketing?

As a business owner, lead generation must be at the forefront of all the digital marketing campaigns you implement. For that reason, you need to understand what lead generation refers to in terms of digital marketing.

The digital age has changed the way businesses operate. Gone are the days when marketing meant launching a flyer campaign or taking out a newspaper advertisement.

Now, you can focus on your target audience and research their behaviors using various analytics software. You can choose exactly which market segment you want to target and how to do that. 

Then you will be able to execute marketing campaigns with extreme precision. This enables you to reverse engineer your marketing campaigns, with the starting point being the customer. 

Businesses must stay up-to-date and continually develop their digital marketing strategies. Search engine and social media marketing are now synonymous with lead generation. 

Both marketing strategies play a crucial role in getting businesses noticed and set the stage for many marketing campaigns, such as content marketing in a digital marketing strategy, and others that you see online today.

It can also help to learn more about the five C's of the marketing mix.

Who Is A Lead?

A lead is any person who shows interest in your products or services in some way or form.

Leads often hear from a company after they initiate communication by submitting their contact information for a trial, special offer of some kind, or a subscription. This is a big improvement over the days when people would get a random, cold-call type of email from a company who had purchased their contact information.

Let’s say you take part in an online survey to learn more about digital advertising. A day or two later, you receive an email from the advertising company that created the survey about how they can help you create effective digital advertising campaigns. This process is less intrusive than if the company just called you out of nowhere with no knowledge of whether you’re even interested in digital marketing, right? That’s what it’s like to be a lead.  

And from a business point-of-view, the information the digital advertising company gathers about you from your survey responses helps them customize that opening communication to address your existing pain points. That way, they don’t waste time calling leads who aren’t interested in digital advertising services.

Leads are part of the broad life cycle that consumers follow as they transition from visitors to buyers. Not all leads are equal, nor are they categorized the same. There are many types of leads, depending on which stage of the buyer journey they are in right now.

Lead generation can help you attract four types of leads, including:

• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): Marketing qualified leads come from digital marketing efforts, such as offering web visitors a downloadable guide. Often, these leads aren’t ready to interact and connect with your sales team because they’re in the early stages of the buying funnel. 

• Sales qualified leads (SQLs): SQLs are those leads that show an immediate interest in what you’re offering by submitting a contact form or a quote request. These leads often want to connect with your sales team; they’re in the later stages of the buying funnel.

• Product qualified leads (PQLs): These leads also show an interest in your products or services by signing up for free trials. These leads often take action after testing or trying your products. They may contact your sales team to learn more about your product or service and to ask questions.

• Service qualified leads: These leads have an active interest in what you’re offering because they already use and pay for your products or services. Service qualified leads often connect with your sales team to learn more about upgrades, for instance, by choosing a different plan or higher level of service.

Knowing what leads are and what categories they fall into will help with lead scoring.

What’s Lead Generation In Digital Marketing?

Lead generation involves attracting online visitors and converting potential customers into guests who show an interest in your business’s products or services. Examples of lead generators include blog posts, live events, online content, and job applications.

The lead generators mentioned above are just a handful of examples of lead generation strategies. You can leverage these and other generators to attract prospective customers and guide them toward your products or services. 

Lead generation in digital marketing focuses on identifying, attracting, and converting online users into potential clients, but it also leverages digital strategies and channels. 

Examples of lead generation in digital marketing include offering free product trials through your website, running paid ads on Instagram, and launching email marketing campaigns.

Lead generation lies in the second stage of inbound marketing strategy. Lead generation happens after you’ve attracted web visitors, and you’re ready to convert those online visitors into leads for your business.

What Are The Benefits Of Lead Generation In Digital Marketing?

Lead generation is essential for B2B and B2C companies for many reasons, including:

• Supporting healthy business growth: Without leads, your business won’t expand. Although you may get referrals, these don’t usually generate enough revenue to scale your business the way you want. You need to attract and convert leads to prospects, and lead generation helps you achieve that.

• Attracting qualified leads: Lead generation in digital marketing provides solutions for finding qualified leads as opposed to just any lead. Although you may spend your time cold-emailing prospective leads, that strategy rarely yields results. Instead, it often results in unhappy consumers with a bad image of your business.

• Providing a natural transition from visitor to customer: With lead generation, your company can offer a seamless client journey. Consumers can move at their own pace from an online visitor to a customer by completing a contact form or downloading an online guide.

If done properly, lead generation can result in significant benefits for your business.

Final Thoughts

Considering that over half of your marketing budget should go towards lead generation, the most successful strategy is to have a solid plan and make sure that it’s working.

Instead of using lead generation as a one-time marketing tactic, approach it as a core part of your business to create customer-centric experiences from the start.

Keeping up with all the latest digital marketing trends in lead generation can be daunting, but it’ll help in growing your business.