I’m pretty sure that you, as a businessman or a businesswoman, have a lot of goals for your company, from launching a new product line, increasing your revenues and profit, opening a franchise in another country and so on. But, let’s be realistic, you can’t accomplish any of those unless you keep attracting more and more customers by your side every day.

However, don’t worry, you have all the tools you need at hand to do that, just one click away! So sit down,  grab a cup of coffee and take a minute to read this and become an expert on converting visitors into customers. 

Let’s talk about Leads

Nowadays Digital Marketing plays a fundamental role in your enterprise, as now most of your customers use social media, search engines, and apps to gather information and stay connected with you. But have you seized all its potential to implement attraction strategies?

Believe me; it can offer much more opportunities to gain new customers than you imagined.

Have you ever heard about leads and how you can gather them through the web (your website, your facebook page or group, your messenger bot)? Here we will tell you all you need to know to increase your customer database and, therefore, raise your customer’s portfolio through MQL (marketing qualified leads) and SQL (sales qualified leads).

Before we start talking about more complicated terms, let’s review first what a lead is, shall we?

In digital marketing, a lead refers to a person who delivers his or her contact information  (email, name, age, etc.) to a specific company and moreover, has agreed with the company’s privacy policy. All the information gathered from different people is usually saved in the database of the business. 

So what does this mean for your company? By doing this, you will get to know more about specific people that might be willing to buy your products or services and, therefore, you will be able to reach them with a sharper and more focused strategy.

Remember; a gained lead is still way too far from being considered as a potential customer and therefore to concreting a purchase. These cold leads are only the first step to gain new clients. 

 

What does MQL mean?

Once you have gained some leads and enriched your database, you need to differentiate between cold leads and MQL. A cold lead is also what we call a lead, so as I explained before it’s a person who gives some data to the enterprise but is still at the beginning of the purchase process. On the other hand, MQL (which stands for Marketing Qualified Lead), refers to the people that have shown any interest in buying your product or service by consuming content about the company regularly. 

….and SQL?

SQL or sales qualified leads, are all those people who form part of the MQL but are even closer to concrete a purchase as they are also more engaged with the brand. It’s people who also have consumed more exclusive content of the brand or even has agreed to try demos, trials, phone calls, and another type of content they are offered. Moreover, as they have consumed more about the company, this also means that the company has collected more information about those potential clients.

The data you gather for the SQL  is pure gold for your company as you can use it to create more accurate and even personalized strategies to convert clients! Just think about it… I bet it’s easier to sell a rose perfume to your aunt, (who you know would like as she uses floral smells) than to an unknown person that is just passing by.

The Sales Funnel

So how do you turn your visitors into clients? Let’s review everything easier and graphically with the sales funnel.

The first part of the process is to generate brand awareness through content marketing, social media, paid advertisements, SEO/SEM and public relations (online strategies). To have a better outcome, it’s essential to combine both online and offline efforts to reach more people. Talking about the online side, in this part is where we generate the cold leads to start building or increasing our customer’s database.

The second part is all about grasping cold leads’ interest through unique landing pages, e-books, free tools offerings, subscriptions to your newsletter, case studies and retargeting (reach people with personalized messages once they have shown interest in buying something).

The people who have shown the interest are then called MQL or prospects to buy or consume your product.

Next, in the third section, you have to focus on the people that are ready to buy from you right away (SQL), as they have consumed more of your content and visit more your site. You have to seize the opportunity to concrete the purchase through sales pages, promotions, free trials, demos and email marketing.

Finally, once you followed all the process of attraction…Congratulations! You’ve got yourself a new client!

Remember that to convert a cold lead into a client is demanding and requires nurturing to achieve the best. Keep up the hard work, to gain more and more clients!

Quality over Quantity? Yes, please!

“More is always better”. Well, this is not true in all cases, and when you are trying to gain leads, it’s certainly a common mistake to make. If you don’t believe me, just check the image below and let the numbers speak for themselves.

Source: B2B Marketing Zone

Of course, the kind of leads you should try to gain depends on your business goals. If your goal is to increase your brand awareness then to gather more leads is better, but if you are looking to raise your sales, then less is undoubtedly better.

Now, how can widgets help you to achieve all of this?

Widgets can be handy to gain leads when used correctly. But let’s relax a little and first let’s see what a widget is.

Widgets are small, customizable applications that perform a unique function and can be installed in a specific page so they can, later on, distribute content (such as text, images, videos or audio) for the users to enjoy, share and interact with it.

What kind of widgets you should use to gather leads?

• Pop-up forms offering something for free in exchange for the contact data are the most common ones. 
• You can offer free e-books, invitations to webinars, news, exclusive content; you name it. All of these in exchange for the person’s data (BTW do not forget to ask for Consent).

Here are some ideas of what to offer to gain leads, but remember you can provide many unique things depending on which industry you are in and on your business. The limit is your imagination!

• 1st Demo: https://www.appocalypsis.com/templates/1130-circle-popup-with-form-and-background-image
• 2nd Demo: https://www.appocalypsis.com/templates/1132-dropdown-e-mail-half-page-popup-background-image-support
• 3rd Demo: https://www.appocalypsis.com/templates/4555-3d-form-do-not-try-on-mobile

Useful tips you should consider

• After gaining leads with the help of widgets, you can create landing pages to deliver helpful content for the potential client.
• When you receive a few leads, and on a weekly basis, it’s better to send personalized emails to every potential customer, but be sure to create a template so it would be easier for you to send them quickly. This would help to push that potential client through the sales funnel.
• If you start converting a large number of leads and on a daily basis, it’s better to send an automated email to everyone. The email must contain valuable content for the customers to catch and retain their attention.

• Your first mail after receiving the lead should include a grateful message for subscribing: a simple “Thank you for your interest in our company” is enough. Additionally, you can add more value to the mail with a CTA to get a gift, an invitation for your next event, a blob subscription or any giveaway you want.
• The periodicity in which you sent emails to your leads depends on your particular business or industry. Get to know your target to know type on content they consume the most, and on which basis, so you don’t become a spammer for them.
• The type of content you send to each lead also depends on which part of the sales funnel it is. The further they are in the purchase process, the most exclusive and specialized the material should be.

So… what are you waiting to start your generating MQL and SQL and grow your business?