We’ve all been there. You finally sit down for dinner at the end of a long day. You’re about to take a bite when the telephone rings. It’s a telemarketer asking about your oven preferences.
This frustrating interruption doesn’t need to happen. Inbound lead generation offers a solution.
Let's start with defining a lead. Then, we'll cover why you need lead generation and how to qualify someone as a lead. Soon, you’ll know exactly why inbound lead generation is much more effective than simply buying leads.
什么is a lead?
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 organizationafteropening 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 evencareabout 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不是waste time calling leads who aren't at all interested in auto services.
Leads are part of the broader lifecycle that consumers follow when theytransition 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.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
Marketing qualified leadsare 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.
销售合格的潜在客户（SQL）
Sales-qualified leads are contacts who've taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming paying customers. An example of an SQL is a contact who fills out a form to ask a question about your product or service.
Product Qualified Lead (PQL)
Product qualified leadsare 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 afree or limited version of their product带有升级的选项，这是您的销售团队进来的地方。
PQL的一个示例是使用您的免费版本但询问仅付款时可用的功能的客户。
Service Qualified Lead
Service-qualified leadsare contacts or customers who've indicated to your service team that they're interested in becoming paying customers. 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.
什么is lead generation?
Lead generation is the process of attracting prospects to your business and increasing their interest through nurturing, all with the end goal of converting them into a customer. Some ways to generate leads are through job applications, blog posts, coupons, live events, and online content.
These lead generators are just a few examples of lead generation strategies you can use to attract potential customers and guide them towards your offers. (We talk aboutmore strategies later。)
Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can't simply say, "I create content for lead generation." It'd be totally lost on them, and I'd get some really confused looks.
So instead, I say, "I work on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to provide them with enough goodies to get them naturally interested in my company so they eventually warm up to the brand enough to want to hear from us!"
That usually resonates better, and that's exactly what lead generation is:It's a way of warming up potential customers to your businessand getting them on the path to eventually making a purchase.
Why do you need lead generation?
当一个陌生人通过展示一个与您建立关系有机的对您的业务的兴趣，从陌生人到客户的过渡更加自然。
潜在客户产生在第二阶段入站营销方法。它发生afteryou've attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (namelysales-qualified leads).
As you can see in the diagram below, generating leads is a fundamental point in an individual's journey to becoming a delighted customer.
Lead Generation Process
现在我们了解了潜在客户的产生如何适应入站营销方法, let's walk through the steps of the lead generation process.
- First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.
- 然后，访客点击您call-to-action(CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action.
- That CTA takes your visitor to alanding page, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer. An offer is content or something of value that's being "offered" on the landing page. This can be anebook, a course, or a template.
- Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer.
See how everything fits together?
To sum it up:Visitorclicks aCTAthat takes them to alanding pagewhere they fill out aformto get anoffer, at which point they become alead。
By the way, you should check out ourfree lead generation tool。It helps you create lead capture forms directly on your website. Plus, it's really easy to set up.
Lead Generation Marketing
将所有这些元素放在一起后，您可以使用各种促销渠道来吸引到目标网页以开始产生潜在客户。
But what channels should you use to promote your landing page? Let’s talk about the front end of lead generation — lead gen marketing.
If you’re a visual learner, this chart shows the flow from promotional marketing channels to a generated lead.
There are even more channels you can use to get visitors to become leads. Let’s go into depth on these and talk about a few others.
Content
Content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to provide visitors with useful, free information. You can include CTAs anywhere in your content — inline, bottom-of-post, in the hero, or even on the side panel.
The more delighted a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.
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Email is a great place接触到已经了解您的品牌和产品或服务的人。要求他们采取行动要容易得多，因为他们以前已订阅了您的列表。
Emails tend to be a bit cluttered, so use CTAs that have a compelling copy and an eye-catching design to grab your subscriber’s attention.
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Ads and Retargeting
The sole purpose of an ad is to get people to take an action. Otherwise, why spend the money?
If you want people to convert, be sure that your landing page and offer match exactly what is promised in the ad, and that the action you want users to take is crystal clear.
Blog
The great thing about using your blog posts to promote an offer is that you can tailor the entire piece to the end goal.
So, if your offer is an instructional video on setting up Google Search Console, then you can write a blog post about how to select your marketing metrics … which would make your CTA highly relevant and easy to click.
For a quick video overview of the HubSpot Blog's expert lead generation tips, check out our video guide.
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Social Media
Social media platforms make it easy to guide your followers to take action, from the swipe up option on Instagram stories to Facebook bio links to bitly URLs on Twitter.
You can also promote your offerings on your social posts and include a call-to-action in your caption. Learn more aboutsocial media campaigns in this post。
Product Trials
You can break down a lot of barriers to a sale by offering trials of your product or service. Once a prospect is using your product, you can entice them with additional offers or resources to encourage them to buy.
Another best practice is to include your branding in your free versions so you can capture other potential customers, too.
Referral Marketing
Referral, or word-of-mouth, marketing is useful for lead generation in a different way. That is, itgets your brand in front of more people, which, in turn, increases your chances of generating more leads.
什么ever channel you use to generate leads, you’ll want to guide users to your landing page. As long as you’ve built alanding page that converts, the rest will handle itself.
Why not justbuyleads?
Marketers and salespeople alike want to fill their sales funnel — and they want to fill itquickly。Enter: The temptation to buy leads.
First and foremost, any leads you've purchased don'tactuallyknow you. Typically, they've "opted in" at some other site when signing up for something, and didn't actually opt-in to receiving anything fromyourcompany.
The messages you send them are therefore unwanted messages, and sending unwanted messages is intrusive. (Remember that disruptive call I got when I was trying to eat my spaghetti? That's how people feel when they receive emails and other messages from people they didn't ask to hear from.)
If the prospect has never been to your website and indicated an interest in your products or services, then you’re interrupting them—plain and simple.
If they never opted in to receive messages specifically from you, then there's a high chance they could flag your messages as spam.
一旦足够的人将您的消息标记为垃圾邮件，您就会使用“黑名单”，然后与其他电子邮件提供商共享。一旦进入黑名单，就很难摆脱它，这真的很难。此外，您的email deliverabilityand IP reputation will likely be harmed.
It's always, always,alwaysbetter to generate leads organically rather than buy them.Read this blog postto learn how to grow an opt-in email list instead of buying one.
How to Qualify a Lead
As we covered in the first section, a lead is a person who has indicated an interest in your company's product or service. Now, let's talk about the ways in which someone can actually show that interest.
从本质上讲,通过正生成一个销售机会ormation collection. That information collection could come in many ways.
也许一个求职者显示职位的兴趣by completing an application. Or a shopper shares contact information in exchange for a coupon. Maybe a person fills out a form to download an教育内容。
Gauging a Lead’s Level of Interest
Below are just a few of the many ways in which you could qualify someone as a lead. Each of these examples shows that the amount of collected information used to qualify a lead, as well as their level of interest, can vary.
Let's assess each scenario:
- Job Application:An individual that fills out an application form is willing to share a lot of personal information because he/she wants to be considered for a position. Filling out that application shows their true interest in the job, therefore qualifying the person as a lead for the company'srecruitingteam — not marketing or sales teams.
- Coupon:Unlike the job application, you probably know very little about someone who has stumbled upon one of your online coupons. But if they find the coupon valuable enough, they may be willing to provide their name and email address in exchange for it. Although it's not alotof information, it's enough for a business to know that someone has interest in their company.
- Content:While the download of a coupon shows an individual has a direct interest in your product or service, content (like an educational ebook or webinar) does not. Therefore, to truly understand the nature of the person's interest in your business, you'll probably need to collect more information to determine whether the person is interested in your product or service and whether they're a good fit.
These three general examples highlight how lead generation differs from company to company, and from person to person.
You'll need to collect enough information to gauge whether someone has a true, valid interest in your product or service —how muchinformation isenoughinformationwill vary depending on your business.
Let's look atHubSpot’s Demo form, for example.
This is one example example of what to ask for in a lead gen form:
- Full Name:The most fundamental information needed to personalize your communication with each lead.
- Email:This serves as a unique identifier and is how you will contact your lead.
- Company and URL:这将使您能够研究领先的行业和公司以及潜在客户如何从您的产品或服务中受益bob全站app(mainly for B2B).
- Company Size:The more detailed information you can obtain without sacrificing conversions, the better. Knowing your leads’ number of employees can help you further qualify them.
If you'd like to learn more intermediate-level tips on information collection and what you should ask for on your lead gen forms,read our post about it here。
Lead Scoring
线索评分是定量限定潜在客户的一种方式。使用此技术，为潜在客户分配了一个数值（或分数），以确定它们从“有兴趣”到“准备出售”的规模属于何处。
The criteria for these actions is completely up to you, but it must be uniform across your marketing and sales departments so that everyone is working on the same scale.
领先的分数可以基于行动他们达克en, information they’ve provided, their level of engagement with your brand, or other criteria that your sales team determines. For instance, you may score someone higher if they regularly engage with you on social media or if their demographic information matches your target audience.
Borrowing from the examples above, you might give a lead a higher score if they used one of your coupons — an action that would signify this person is interested in your product.
The higher a lead’s score, the closer they are to becoming a sales-qualified lead (SQL), which is only a step away from becoming a customer. Scoring criteria should be tweaked along the way until you find the formula that works. Once you do, you’ll transform your lead generation into customer generation.
潜在客户生成策略
Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics, campaigns, and strategies depending on the platform on which you wish to capture leads. We talked about lead capture best practices once you have a visitor on your site … but how can you get them there in the first place?
Let’s dive into lead-generation strategies for a few popular platforms.
Facebook Lead Generation
Facebook has been a method for lead generation since its inception.
Originally, companies could use outbound links in their posts and information in their bios to attract strangers to their websites. However, whenFacebook Ads was launched in 2007, and its algorithm began to favor accounts that used paid advertising, there was a major shift in how businesses used the platform to capture leads.
Facebook created Lead Adsfor this purpose. Facebook also hasa feature that lets you put a simple call-to-action button在您的Facebook页面顶部，帮助您直接将Facebook关注者发送到您的网站。
Get some lead generation tips for Facebook.
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推特Lead Generation
推特has推特Lead Gen Cards, which let you generate leads directly within a tweet without having to leave the site. A user's name, email address, and Twitter username are automatically pulled into the card, and all they have to do is click "Submit" to become a lead.
(HINT for Hubspot用户：You can connect Twitter Lead Gen Cards to your HubSpot Forms.Learn how to do that here).
Learn some lead generation tips for Twitter.
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LinkedIn Lead Generation
自早期以来，LinkedIn一直在增加其在广告领域的股份。当涉及潜在客户生成时，LinkedIn创建了潜在客户形式，当他们单击CTA时，它们会自动填充用户的个人资料数据。
Get tips from our experience using LinkedIn ads.
PPC Lead Generation
When we say pay-per-click (PPC), we’re referring to ads on search engine result pages (SERPs). Google gets3.5 billion searches a day, making it prime real estate for any ad campaign, especially lead gen.
The effectiveness of your PPC campaign relies heavily on a seamless user flow, as well as your budget, target keywords, and a few other factors.
Learn more about how to set up successful PPC ads.
B2B潜在客户产生
B2B is a particular business model that requires a particular approach to lead generation.SmartInsightsfound that referrals are the top source for capturing business leads. Not to mention, effectiveness varies by channel.
Learn the B2B lead generation techniques for every channel.
潜在客户生成活动的提示
In any given lead generation campaign, there can be a lot of moving parts. It can be difficult to tell which parts of your campaign are working and which need some fine-tuning.
什么exactly goes into a best-in-class lead generation engine? Here are a few tips when building lead gen campaigns.
Follow your data.
If you’re looking to build a lead generation engine, start with the bevy of data already at your fingertips. Begin by archiving which posts consistently rank well, bring in traffic, and have a clear connection to your product.
一旦知道表现良好，您就可以确定在何处放置CTA。
“对于这些帖子，问问自己缺少的中间作品在某人正在阅读的内容与您可以提供的内容之间是什么。”AJ Beltis, a senior marketing manager focused on media conversion at HubSpot. "Perhaps it's an actionable template, a more in-depth guide, or even a demo if the content is intended for those further along in the buying cycle.
请记住，您的CTA不应从帖子中的主题触及。
"Keep it straightforward and logical and the leads will come flowing in," Beltis says.
Use the right lead generation tools.
As you saw in our data, the most successful marketing teams use a formal system to organize and store their leads. That's where lead generation tools andlead generation softwarecome into play.
How much do you know about the people visiting your website? Do you know their names or their email addresses? How about which pages they visited, how they're navigating around, and what they do before and after filling out a lead conversion form?
If you don't know the answers to these questions, chances are you're having a hard time connecting with the people who are visiting your site. These are questions you should be able to answer — and you can with the rightlead-generation tools。
There are a few different tools and templates out there that'll help you create different lead gen assets to use on your site:
- CTA Templates: 50+ free, customizable call-to-action (CTA) templates in PowerPoint that you can use to create clickable CTA buttons to use on your blog, landing pages, and elsewhere on your site.
- Lead Generation Software Tools:This free tool from HubSpot includeslead captureand contact insights features, which will scrape any pre-existing forms you have on your website and add those contacts to your existing contact database. It also lets you create pop-ups, hello bars, or slide-ins —称为“铅流”— that'll help you turn website visitors into leads immediately.
Image Source - Visitor Tracking:Hotjarhas a heatmap tool that creates a color-coded representation of how a user navigates your site. This information helps you understand what users do on your site.
- Form-Scraping Tool:A form-scraping tool collects submissions on your website's existing forms and helps you automatically consolidate all your leads into your contact database. HubSpot customers cancreate and embed forms，自动填充您的CRM。非HubSpot客户可以使用Contact 7或Google表单等表单创建工具，然后使用HubSpot's free collected forms featureto automatically input submissions to a contact database.
Create amazing offers for all different stages of the buying cycle.
Not all of your site visitors are ready to talk to your sales team.
Someone at the beginning ofthe buyer's journey可能对像电子书或指南这样的信息文章感兴趣，而对您的公司更熟悉的人以及旅途底部的人可能对免费试用或演示更感兴趣。bob全站app
Make sure you're creating offers for each phase and offering CTAs for these offers throughout your site.
Yes, it takes time to create valuable content that teaches and nurtures your leads down the funnel, but if you don't offer anything for visitors who aren't ready to buy, then they may never come back to your website. From checklists to templates to free tools,here are 23 ideas for lead-generation contentto get you started.
如果您想将个性化进一步发展 - 这将有助于提高您的转化率 -try using smart CTAs。Smart CTAs detect where a person is in the buyer’s journey, whether they're a new visitor, a lead, or a customer, and display CTAs accordingly.
Keep your messaging consistent and deliver on your promise.
转换最高的领先流派运动是传达他们承诺的人。
Make sure that you’re presenting a consistent message throughout the process and providing value to everyone who engages with your lead capture.
The aspects of your campaign should mirror everything else on your website, on your blog, and within the product that you’ll eventually try to sell. If not, you’ll have a difficult time getting your lead to the next lifecycle stage.
Your campaign should be about more than just obtaining an email address. You should seek to develop a new customer.
Link your CTA to a dedicated landing page.
This may seem obvious to you, but you'd be surprised how many marketers不creatededicated landing pages为他们提供。cta是为了给游客to a landing page where they can receive a specific offer.
例如，不要使用CTA将人们驱使到您的主页。即使您的CTA与您的品牌或产品有关（也许不是像下载之类的报价），您仍然应该将它们发送到与他们想要的目标相关的目标着陆页。
If you have the opportunity to use a CTA, send them to a page that will convert them into a lead.
If you want to learn more about how to build and promote high-converting landing pages, thendownload our ebook on optimizing landing pages for conversions。
Get your sales team involved.
Remember when we talked about lead scoring? Well, it isn’t doable without your sales team’s input.
Your marketing and sales teams need to be aligned on the definitions and the process of moving a lead from MQL to SQL to opportunity.
愿意不断与销售的关系以及如何指导渠道引导线索。随着时间的推移，您的定义可能需要完善。只需确保使每个人都参与最新。
Use social media strategically.
而营销人员通常认为社交媒体best for top-of-the-funnel marketing, it can still be a helpfulandlow-cost source for lead generation as shared in the lead gen strategies above.
Start by adding links directly to the landing pages of high-performing offers within your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media posts.
Tell visitors that you're sending them to a landing page. That way, you're setting expectations. Here's an example from one of our Twitter posts:
You can alsodo a lead generation analysis of your blogto figure out which posts generate the most leads, and then make a point of regularly linking social media posts to them.
Another way to generate leads from social media is to run a contest. Contests are fun and engaging for your followers,andthey can also teach you a ton about your audience. It's a win-win.
Leverage your partnerships.
When it comes to lead generation, co-marketing can be powerful. If your team works with partner companies, put your heads together and create some mutually beneficial offers.
HubSpot的市场经理Jasmine Fleming说：“在HubSpot的内容上，我们与具有类似目标受众和品牌价值观的合作伙伴公司开展广告系列，以创建和推广封闭式内容，例如电子书，报告和模板。”
弗莱明（Fleming）说，HubSpot和我们的合作伙伴都通过提议bob综合博彩下载产生潜在客户。她说：“我们可以彼此分享这些线索。”“与仅由一家公司创建的内容作品相比，共同营销优惠有可能产生更多的潜在客户。”bob全站app
Remain flexible and constantly iterate.
Your lead generation strategy needs to be as dynamic as the people you’re targeting.Trends change变形、行为转变,和意见。所以上海ould your lead gen marketing.
Use A/B split testing to see what CTAs perform best, which landing pages convert better, and which copy captures your target audience.
Experiment with layout changes, design, UX, content, and advertising channels until you find what works.
Lead Generation Trends & Benchmarks
So ... you're getting web traffic and generating leads. But how are you doing compared to other companies in your industry?
继续阅读以发现2023年其他营销人员在潜在客户中的工作，以及要考虑的重要统计数据。
Lead generation is the top marketing priority.
The HubSpot营销状态报告2021found that marketers reported that their top marketing priority was generating more leads. Converting these leads to customers is another top priority, according toSmartInsights。
Most B2B leads come from referrals.
B2B营销人员说65%of their leads come from referrals, 38% from email, and 33% come from Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
If you’re interested in getting in on this trend, it’s worth considering revamping yourreferral strategyand helping existing customers bring you new leads.
Content marketing helps drive leads.
Marketers also report that content marketing has helped themsuccessfully generate demand and leadsover the past 12 months. To get in on this trend, read这篇有用的博客文章on creating content for different stages of the buyer's journey.
Grow Better with Lead Generation
There you have it, folks. Now that you know more about how to generate leads for your business, we recommend you尝试HubSpot的免费潜在客户生成工具。Use it to add simple conversion assets to your site (or scrape your existing forms) to help you learn more about your site visitors and what content prompts them to convert.
The basics we've gone over in this blog post are just the beginning. Keep creating great offers, CTAs, landing pages, and forms — and promote them in multi-channel environments. Be in close touch with your sales team to make sure you're handing off high-quality leads on a regular basis.
Last but not least, never stop testing. The more you tweak and test every step of your inbound lead generation process, the more you'll improve lead quality and increase revenue.
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