Marketing Leads: What Are They and How To Get Them

A marketing lead is a user or person who has shown interest in the services or products your company provides. A good lead can go on to become a prospect, and then they can convert, meaning they do something you want them to do…such as buying one of your products or registering for a subscription.

Generating leads isn’t always simple, though. Most sales leads won’t know anything about your business until you perform good outreach, get referred to you by a past client, or work with someone on your sales team.

How can you improve your chances of getting leads, and what can you do to help turn those leads into sales? Here is some helpful information to keep in mind.

Definition of Marketing Leads

Marketing leads are individuals or organizations that have had interactions with your company and who are within your marketing reach. Leads are those who may become a future customer, such as those who come to your website, download content, or join your mailing list.

3 Common Lead Generation Challenges

There are all kinds of lead generation challenges businesses can face. The plan to seek out new leads is the first. You have to figure out how you’re going to market yourself, as that marketing effort will have an impact on the kinds of leads you get. In addition to the challenge of setting up a good marketing campaign, you also have to consider the costs.

A second issue you may come across is reaching the right audience. Your company needs to get the right attention from paid ads, B2B, and B2C marketing. Lead generation isn’t just about blasting out a generalized marketing campaign; you have to think carefully about what will reach your target audience.

Finally, a third significant lead generation challenge is getting poor-quality leads. These are weak leads, such as those who aren’t interested in buying your product or who fall outside your target audience, but still require your time…and they can be costly as a result. Focusing on tightly targeting your key audience and improving your content can help you get the right leads reaching out to your brand.

What are marketing leads?

Leads, at the most base level, are people who could be interested in making a purchase from your business in the future and who have provided you with some information about themselves. Leads come in a number of forms, such as warm or cold leads, and they can be ranked to help you understand which are most likely to buy and which are more likely to walk away.

8 Types of Marketing Leads

To go even more deeply into the types of leads you can capture, take a look at these eight :

Cold Leads

A cold lead is one that has yet to show any interest in your brand’s products or services.

Warm Leads

Warm leads have already shown an interest in your business’s services or products. A warm lead is easier to convert because they are interested in what you have to offer (at least to some degree). However, they still require you to nurture them and give them more information and guidance. For example, these leads tend to be subscribed to email lists or follow your business on social media.

Hot Leads

Hot leads are leads that are very interested in your company’s offerings. They may have sent in an inquiry about your product through your website or participated in a demo. These leads are excellent for your sales team to follow up on, since they’re much more likely to convert than either cold or warm leads.

Information-qualified Leads (IQL)

Information-qualified leads are leads that are still learning more about your product and that are doing research on how you might be able to help them. They may not yet have shown interest in what you have to offer, but they will have shared at least some information about their problem.

Marketing-qualified Leads (MQL)

A marketing-qualified lead, or MQL, has interacted with your marketing content or advertisements in the past. They require further nurturing, however, and won’t be ready for a sales pitch quite yet.

Product-qualified Leads (PQL)

Product-qualified leads are leads who have a history of using your services or products and who have shown interest in becoming a paying customer of your company in the past.

Sales-ready Leads (SRL)

Sales-ready leads are ready to make a purchase. They are more likely to convert compared to cold leads, as they have already been flagged as a hot lead for the sales team to approach.

Sales-qualified Leads (SQL)

Sales-qualified leads already showed an interest in your services or products. On top of that, they’re just about ready to take a leap and buy what you have to offer. This is when the sales team needs to step in. Common behaviors of this kind of lead include direct interactions with the sales team or watching a demo.

What is the buyer’s journey?

Think about how you buy products. Do you look at it and impulse buy? You might, but in most cases, a product or service purchase only happens after you have multiple interactions with a brand, time to think over what you need, and time to consider the cost.

The buyer’s journey is the entire process a potential customer goes through when becoming interested in and eventually purchasing a solution.

You can imagine the buyer’s journey as the opposite side of the sales funnel. They go through three distinct stages: awareness of your products or services, consideration of the product or service, and a decision on whether or not that product or service is right for their needs. On the other hand, the customer’s journey (commonly confused with the buyer’s journey) includes all interactions that occur after the sale is made.

6 Benefits of Effective Lead Generation

Effective lead generation is the key to gathering qualified leads and making the most of your marketing efforts. Lead generation can help you with:

Improved Sales and Revenue

With a strong lead generation strategy, it’s easier to get warm or hot leads that are more likely to convert. Additionally, since you’ll have more leads who are actually interested in your products or services, your customer relationships will improve (and you’ll be more likely to get leads from referrals).

Enhanced Market Expansion Opportunities

With effective lead generation, you’ll have an expanded reach. Lead generation can be local, or you can cast a wide net to connect with potential customers all around the world.

Better Customer Engagement

Lead generation helps improve customer engagement by targeting those who are potentially interested in making a purchase. Once you know who could be interested, it’s up to your business to nurture those leads, guiding them through the buyer’s journey until they’re ready to make a purchase.

Optimized Lead Quality

With lead generation, you build credibility and trust in your brand. You also make yourself more visible, letting you connect with those who might be interested in the services or products you currently sell. When you have a good lead-gen strategy, you’re more likely to have inbound leads that are warm or hot, making it easier to make the sale.

Enhanced Brand Awareness

Online, your lead-gen campaign can help you get noticed. Promoting branded content and thought leadership help improve the chances of potential customers recognizing your brand, ensuring your name pops up first when they think about who to make a purchase from in the future.

Maximized Marketing ROI and Cost-Effectiveness

With a good lead strategy, it’s easier to optimize your sales efforts and quickly convert leads to active buyers of your products or services. Saving time on sales means you can convert more leads, improving your overall return on investment (ROI). Even better than the increased revenue potential is the fact that lead-generation strategies are more cost-effective than traditional strategies. For example, using lead generation tools can help you save time and money, automating the lead gen and management process to improve your conversion rate and the speed of your sales pipeline.

5 Strategies to Get Marketing Leads

Now that you understand the importance of setting up a great lead generation strategy, you should also note that not all strategies are made equal. The following five are popular because they can help you get the high-quality leads you want but work differently depending on your goals.

Content Marketing Lead Generation

One of the most effective lead generation options is pushing out good content to your audience. Valuable content attracts organic leads.

Common kinds of content you could use to attract leads include short informational videos, long-form blogs, and email newsletters.

Social Media Marketing Lead Generation

You should also remember to leverage your business’s social media platforms to engage with potential customers. When you do, you need to have social media posts or content that is designed to convert.

For example, you may make a post on Facebook that asks your audience a question. Those who respond in the comments may signal that they’re warm or hot leads, giving you an opportunity to reach out directly.

As another example, you could try a platform like TikTok. You could post a short informational video, and then you could follow up with leads who liked or commented on your content.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Lead Generation

SEO helps attract qualified leads through organic search. Good website optimization techniques help you land high in Google’s search results, making it easier for the leads you want to find you.

Some good SEO practices for your website include creating different landing pages for different segments of a target audience. Use related keywords and publish helpful content on the page to improve SEO further.

Paid Advertising Lead Generation

Paid ads are another option for lead generation, but you do need to ensure you’re pitching to the right audience. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads can be a good option, as can paid social media ads, but they can be costly.

With PPC ads, you’re likely to get leads from those who are interested in keywords you’ve used, but with social media ads, the goal is more about awareness.

B2B Lead Generation

The business-to-business (B2B) space is slightly different from the business-to-consumer (B2C) space, particularly in how you get new leads. It is not uncommon to have referrals send you leads, for example, based on your past work with them.

You can also generate leads in other ways, though. For example, you might decide to pitch your products or services cold on LinkedIn, or you could work with sales development representatives (SDRs) to source and score B2B leads before you reach out.

How to Convert Leads Into Customers

Lead nurturing plays a key role in lead conversion, and it’s something your business will need to take seriously if you want to get as many conversions as possible.

Lead nurturing is a process. It requires you to build relationships with customers and then track them throughout the buyer’s journey. Essentially, you’re cultivating a lead that isn’t ready to buy something now but may want to in the future. Some common ways to nurture leads include through email marketing, live chat, retargeting across multiple channels, and so on.

Not all leads get the same amount of attention, though. Lead scoring ranks leads based on the likelihood of buying a product or service from your company. This process should come into play to help you identify which leads will most likely convert and which, if any, are dead ends. Lead scoring looks at attributes such as the number of times a potential lead has interacted with your website and any information they’ve submitted to you.

Get More Leads and Conversions With Podium’s AI Employee

Converting leads into customers helps you meet your business’s goals, but responding too slowly to them can cost you. Podium’s AI Employee boosts lead conversion by 45%, engaging with leads within minutes at any time, day or night.

Beat your competition to the best leads. Try Podium’s AI Employee today.