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Fundamentals of leads
What is a Lead?
As Digital Marketers we use the word so much. Get Leads, Convert Leads, This Lead, That Lead, and so on. However, what is a "lead" in the real sense?
That's what we are going to learn today.
There are a lot of people out there in the real world who would want to buy your products and services. You are here with a product or service that you want to sell. How are you going to reach out to your potential customers?
A lead is called a lead because it leads to a sale.
A lead is a connecting link between you (your business) and your prospect who is out there in the real world.
A lead usually consists of the following 3 things:
· Name
· Email ID
· Phone Number
Sometimes the leads do not contain the names. Sometimes it is either the email ID or the phone number.
The Email ID or the phone number helps you reach out to your potential prospect and have a conversation with them so that you can tell them about your products and services.
If you want to have a sales call, you need leads.
If you want to invite people to a webinar, you need leads.
If you want to invite people to an event, you need leads.
What are not leads?
When we are talking about what are leads, it also helps to talk about what are not leads.
A lot of people focus a lot on building their social media following. But they are not your leads.
All these are not leads:
· Facebook Fans
· Instagram Followers
· Twitter Followers
· YouTube Subscribers
You are having a connection in someone else's platform and that is not going to be helping if you want to sell something to them. Many times, you will not be able to get 100% reach (or even 30%) because they are the users of the platform and not your users. Hence you will not be able to reach out to them on demand.
Do we need lead generation for B2C?
If your business doesn't need lead generation, then there is no point in trying to learn how to generate leads, right?
So when does a business not need lead generation?
A business doesn't need lead generation when it is selling low priced consumer goods that are simple in nature.
When consumers need not go through a tough decision-making process to buy something, and when they do not need a lot of time to decide, generating leads is pointless.
Here are some examples of low priced consumer goods:
· Candy
· Soap
· Cookies
· Body spray
These FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) products are simple, low priced, and attract a lot of repeat buyers.
Companies that sell FMCG products do not need lead generation.
Imagine how difficult it would be if you had to generate leads for someone who is interested in a bar of soap, have a salesperson call them and convince them to buy the soap and close the deal.
It is not practical because the amount of profit that you make from the sale of the soap is not enough to pay for the sales person's time and you would end up making losses with the sales process.
It is also not required because the decision-making process for buying soap is simple. Only when a product or service is complex and has a lot of questions to be answered about it, a salesperson needs to be involved.
Many FMCG products are simple products and decision making is usually impulsive. In such cases, brands will engage in marketing activities to raise brand awareness about the brand and get a strong market positioning within the market that they are operating in.
For example, Gillette is a good brand for men's razor blades and they have a strong market position as the leader when it comes to razor blades. They do not generate any leads for the sales of their products. They just advertise and build brand awareness.
(What would you do if you had salespeople that do not take a salary or a commission from you? Would you employ them to sell your low priced, simple B2C products? Probably yes. But in the real world, you cannot hire people at no cost. But you can close yourself digitally and use marketing automation to sell without any human effort. That's something we will look at in future lessons).
Can you think of all the products and services that do not require lead generation?
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