A lead is a record in a company's database that the user has voluntarily provided, and from which an informative or commercial interaction can be established. For a lead to be valid, the user must have accepted the data protection policy.
How leads are generated: what are lead magnets
Leads are usually obtained by offering users some additional content that they find interesting enough to provide their information in exchange for accessing it. It involves free content in exchange for email, phone number, etc., and authorization to send communications. These contents are called lead magnets (lead attractors), and they can be diverse: ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, discounts, webinars, or video content among many other things. Lead generation through content is one of the pillars of Inbound Marketing strategies.
Types of lead: qualified leads
Leads can be qualified based on the objective for which they have been captured. The most common types are:
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): These are leads that are in the middle of the conversion funnel. They are not yet ready to make a purchase, but they are at a stage of maturation that can bring them closer to it.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): This refers to leads that are about to make a purchase or conversion.
What is Lead nurturing
Lead nurturing refers to the relationship established with the potential customer throughout their journey through all stages of the funnel or conversion funnel. By offering content of interest to the specific lead, the aim is to convert them into a final customer who completes a purchase process or subscribes to the company's service. Afterwards, once the conversion is made, nurturing can be applied to retain those customers and encourage them to consume the product or service again, or recommend it to other potential customers. For the process to be successful, personalized and contextually appropriate workflows are crucial for each individual. This is where automated marketing is used, which expedites communication delivery by segmenting based on lead type and scoring.
What is lead scoring
Lead scoring is an automated way of qualifying leads to deliver personalized messages to users based on where they are in the conversion funnel. These values can be predictive (based on lead-provided data) or retrospective, assigning a score based on the actions they take on the website (downloading a resource, filling out a form, etc.). This process helps segment the message to each potential customer based on how close or far they are from completing a conversion. There are two types of lead scoring:
Unidimensional lead scoring: Measures the lead's readiness to achieve a specific objective.
Multidimensional lead scoring: The score is not based on a single action or proximity to a specific objective but on multiple complementary factors, such as the lead's proximity to the buyer persona, prior knowledge of the company, interaction with social media, or their position within the conversion funnel.