Lead Generation Process

Meetings are convened with marketing, sales, support, and development professionals to define the lead profile and KPIs in lead generation. This will ensure silos don't exist to obstruct information flow and coordination between departments. Additionally, goals will be set and the progress will be measured on a monthly or annual basis.

Discussions between inter-departments of the lead generation team will take place to decide which tool will be used in the lead generation program and how it will be used to capture qualified leads. Using the right tool, a content management system will be designed with fields populated with calendar of events including email campaigns. Marketing automation will be used to handle email marketing, segmentation, and lead scoring.

After preliminary stages of lead valuation, the lead generation process will entail targeting sales leads with content such as video, eBook, webinar, infographics, etc. Inbound marketing will be activated in conjunction with demand generation where multichannel engagements will be used to find valuable leads and whisk them to the top of the sales funnel.

Marketing and sales team will collaborate to define criteria that will help in lead segmentation. Thereafter, a comprehensive buyer persona will be created and the individual customer journey will be mapped. Lead generation experts will collect actionable lead intelligence from landing pages and online forms to enhance lead profiles. The lead intelligence consolidated from business data sites will enable marketers to finetune their prospecting strategy in the subsequent stages of the lead generation process. The lead response to content and CTA is the cornerstone in interpreting their buying intent.

To run targeted email marketing campaigns, leads are segmented using automation technology in the lead generation process. In this way, leads who fulfill the marketer's criteria are distilled and sorted in segmented database. The sorting will be based on roles or titles held by the lead in the targeted industry. The email marketing experts will customize email communications for segmented leads by embedding emails with rich and educative content and powerful CTA.

The criteria for qualifying sales leads are established and tied to a points-based system. Leads who respond positively to the email campaigns are awarded more points indicating marketers to qualify the profile to the next stage in the lead lifecycle. The points will be distributed to leads based on engagement, persona, buyer stage, and buying intent. Leads who fail to meet the criteria are automatically disqualified in the marketing automation workflow.

Leads who qualify in the sales funnel will be provided personalized content to inform and enrich their awareness of the brand which is targeting them. The content mapping will be based on buyer persona and segmentation. By regularly nurturing the interaction with leads, marketers keep them reminded about the brand value. As leads consume and positively respond to the content, they will receive better lead scores.

The marketing automation tools will enable moving marketing qualified leads to the CRM and eventually getting a sales representative assigned to contact the qualifying lead. The sales rep will look for indicators that confirm that the lead is warm and ready to inquire for sales. Whether it is a request for a free trial or reaching scoring thresholds, the MQL will be marked as SQL. Thereafter, the closing process will commence until SQL becomes a buyer.

Performance of the lead generation process is closely monitored to ensure a smooth workflow in lead generation. Analytics will be used to find good leads, enhance lead intelligence, empower marketing automation, plan content marketing, and close leads in a quick TAT. Reports will be created with custom-views for inter-department within a lead generation team.