The digital marketing team and the entire marketing department works day in and out to convert more and more qualified leads. Hold on, let’s first understand the term ‘lead’. So, basically, lead equals money. Every potential customer or qualified customer that is almost about to be converted into a customer is what we address as a lead. In other words, a lead is a person who shows interest in the product or service of the organization in any way.

Thus, the process of convincing and converting the potential prospects into real customers thereby bridging the gap in the sales funnel is known as lead generation. Moving on, when the lead is convinced and finally generated, then it needs to be nurtured and converted, and hence, the process of converting the qualified leads into actual buyers is referred to as lead conversion. 

Leads are the pavement for the marketers to analyze their success and the number of leads generated and converted depicts how well they’ve performed so far. 

Types of lead

It is pretty clear that leads are actually the complete cycle following a flowchart showing the transition of an individual from a mere visitor to a complete customer. Also, there are several types of lead categories depending on the stage of the sales funnel. Major lead types are as follows:

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

Those leads who’ve shown some sort of engagement with the marketing channels by going for call-to-action and filling the offer form but currently are not ready to make sales happen is what we address as marketing qualified leads in general.

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

This is another category of lead wherein the concerned person enquires or asks some questions related to the product of the company and is readily about to become a paying customer. Therefore, a ready to become sales converted lead is what we see as sales qualified lead.

Product Qualified Lead (PQL)

This category of lead is the one when the potential customer has already used the products of the company and is showing some interest in becoming a paid customer. Generally, such customers go for a product trial and are happy with that and thus, look for some offer to get the product.

Service Qualified Lead 

Just like the case in product qualified lead, we address for the product, in this category, we consider service. The potential customer has already availed of the trial of service the company offers and is ready to pay for the service now and become a paying customer for the service.

Steps in Lead Generation Process

Below is the general outline of the lead generation and conversion process:

• Advertising through social marketing channels.

• Create call-to-action (CTA) for the visitors.

• Landing Page depicting the offer and the promising deal.

• Keep promoting through good content, regular surveys, and social monitoring.

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