Talk of leads is something that comes very much from more traditional business settings. A ‘lead’ is a term that specifically comes from sales and marketing and generally describes a contact that a business is going to call or email in order to try and encourage sales.
But today a lot of business is conducted online. As such, leads take on a slightly different form and although the basics are still true, the way you interact with these potential customers will be different.
For example, a cold lead – someone who fits your target demographic but hasn’t had any interaction with you yet – is normally someone whose number business has bought and who they are then going to try and contact by cold calling. If your business is online though, then that could lead is more likely to be someone who has just landed on your website.
When you’re online in other words, you have different methods of acquiring leads in the first place. What’s more, the manner in which you acquire your leads is actually going to impact on the type of lead you have.
For example…
SEO
When you use SEO (search engine optimization) to promote your site, you are trying to get that site to rank for a particular keyphrase. Depending on the keyphrase you choose, you may be able to attract pre-qualified sales to your site.
How does this work? Simple: if your keyphrase refers to buying a product (‘buy hats online’) and that is what you want to sell, then the people coming to your website are demonstrating an interest in buying your wares. This is the definition of a qualified sale and that means you can very likely convert those leads into paying customers with just a little more effort.
PPC
Conversely, if you get someone to your site using PPC on Facebook, then they are going to be cold leads. But not all cold leads are made equal and you can make the argument that these are particularly desirable cold leads in that they’re going to be highly targeted. That’s because you can use the filtering on Facebook to show your ads only to people that precisely match your target audience.
Conversely, AdWords allows you to target specific keyword searches in Google meaning you can bring in qualified sales. Better yet, using remarketing you can target people who have been to your site and actually viewed your products!
