When you are planning to crack an exponential growth for your business but your actual progress falls short of your projections, we know you put your everything into analyzing the gaps and fixing them. While we look for reasons in every corner of our processes and procedures, one of the very common but rarely addressed gaps is the lack of valid business leads.
What is a High-Quality Lead?
High-quality leads are those people or entities who take interest in your company's product or services. They help your brand reach the market standard and could be broadly termed as your prospective clients. Having a good lead validates your product/service and its need in the market.
So it's wise to say that the count of valid leads is one of the most crucial parameters for the evaluation of any business. Every customer was once a lead that believed in your brand and product. But, lead generation and conversion are no less of an art considering the huge competition that every business has to face in the market today.
What are the different types of leads?
From the growth perspective, every business should invest in generating high-quality leads and nurture them to prevent them from bouncing off. For that to happen, you need to have a proper strategy to push a lead gracefully from Fresh lead to under-nurture to a won deal. You should know the ways of subtly persuading them to opt for your brand without annoying them.
Before you get to know how B2B or B2C businesses set up high-quality lead generation processes, we need to know the different types of leads. Since different leads need different strategies, we need to understand a leads’ relevance, stage and age.
Marketing qualified leads
These are the individuals who have joined your marketing campaign but are not ready to receive any kind of subscription right now. In other words, they are interested in your products but are yet to be convinced to spend any money on them. Usually, these people fill out forms on the landing page to get the displayed offers and only 44% of MQLs pass the high-quality lead test.
Sales qualified lead
These are the people who contact and take purchase decisions regarding your products and services. They usually join through forms to get the details of your product or service and eventually associate with your business.
Product qualified lead
These individuals have already used your product and want to be part of it as regular customers. They might have previously accepted the trial period service and are now willing to shift to premium services or upgrade their product or service subscription.
Service qualified lead
These are the individuals who are already using your service and are willing to become part of the regular customer list. They recommend your product to others and also upgrade their subscription from time to time.
4 Experts ways to gain leads for your business
All these prospective leads require proposals that can attract them and convert them into leads. With Shopify, the e-bazaar and its magic bag of apps and tools, you can very easily run a successful online business without feeling the need to look here and there. You think of it and Shopify hands it to you. You can try introducing your prospective leads to coupons, online content, live events, trial period subscription, etc. It is more about attracting them and boosting the conversion rate through effective lead nurturing.
You might have been creating content in the hope of getting the right lead, but, without the right strategy, you ain't gonna see much success. Usually, B2C marketers rely on SEO, paid posts, social media management, email management landing page and automated software to streamline the entire process.
Review the homepage messaging
Usually, individuals approach the homepage to find any product or service description or search for what they require. So, it would be best to keep it simple and easy to understand. It should also have headlines, titles, and images to attribute your product or service. This would help promote your product and the brand and also convert more visitors to valid leads for your business.
It is a fact that the home page receives the most of the traffic, so why not use this factor in your favour and put a major chunk of effort into turning these visitors into leads. All you need to do is adjust the homepage messaging and make it look appealing and genuine.
Initiate a conversation around your brand
This is one of the most cost-effective ways to draw your prospective leads towards your brand and product. The most intelligent way of delivering good quality leads is by indulging your visitors to discuss, think, and talk about your brand and its product.
You can also try hosting a talk that would allow the attendees to discuss your brand. This would increase the value of your product, and you also create trust. And, about 52% of markets already rely on this strategy. or, perhaps have a question-answer round and ask the attendee to share their view about your product and how they wish to improve it. This enhances the customer-client relationship and allows you to collect several profitable leads which can subsequently be turned into a business.
It is an amazing marketing strategy but you must always consider factors like how the visitors decide or at what stage of the decision making they are at present. Usually, there are 3 stages: awareness, consideration and decision. Never force subscription notes on newsletters to the buyer or anywhere; give them space to decide. You cannot take the chance of losing a high-quality lead in the desperation of capturing their information.
Use automated software
These days it's all about getting work done with a few clicks and automation has almost become a magic wand for all. Advancement in technology has helped in designing tools that can improve the process of generating and capturing high-quality leads and also automate the marketing strategy. It is not about working hard but working smart.
Shopify has a bunch of applications that can capture visitor information, filter them with your prefixed relevance parameters and abide by a designed workflow for lead nurturing. All without any manual interventions. Moreover, to manifest each lead you need to hold meetings with them, have conversations and discuss the pain points and solutions. For these discussions, you can integrate appointment booking applications like Appointo into your website and let your client book a slot from your calendar.
The application would automatically sync with calendars, send automated notifications and remind the client to attend the meeting thereby facilitating the process.
Automated tools also eliminate the chances of making mistakes and make sure that your focus is on executing the meeting in your favour, to wind the lead, while everything else is taken care of by the applications.
Give value to the existing customers
Giving attention to your new customers is equally important as retaining old ones. But, the question lies - how? How are you supposed to contact all the customers on the huge list? There is nothing to fret about, as there are multiple Shopify based applications that allow you to interact with your existing customers as well as the prospective ones.
Many of these applications are being used by business owners to send requests for feedback or for informing them about the latest campaigns. These applications can also keep the customers updated about the price drop news or when the products are out of stock. All these communications create a sense of brand commitment and loyalty among customers.
All of this for what you ask? Everybody knows that there has never been a better means of generating high-quality leads than through word of mouth. One happy customer can bring in 100 more customers and so, take care of them, communicate through regular campaigns, ask for feedback and don't hesitate to ask for a referral too.
Importance of an automated tool in lead generation
Adopting an automatic scheduling application or an email tool that does not expect your intervention t is one of the proactive ways of dealing with the poor lead count. These tools are designed to meet the requirements of potential customers and help the sales team increase their chances of generating leads. Further, the email tools come with a relevancy check, so there’s a gentle nudge for your leads without actually bothering them. The tools take up all the redundant tasks connected to lead generation and nurturing, so you can focus on areas that need your intellectual and creative support.
Conclusion
You can get several applications on Shopify that can help you deliver high-quality leads but choose the ones that actually suit your requirement. Most of them offer a 7 days trial period, and this can help you make the purchase decision. Focus on receiving the best in-hand experience from the applications so that you can actually amplify the number of high-quality leads for your business.
Exchanging ideas, support-based services, or selling products requires proper planning, and your way of communication must resonate with the likes of the visitors or customers. Properly addressed emails, inbound marketing policies, and timely updates play a crucial aspect in every business. So, it would help if you got your sales team involved in understanding the customers in a much more detailed way. Try to use automated tools that can provide in-depth information about the customers, such as which sites they are more likely to click on, the types of content they have a keen interest in, which pages have a more bounce back rate, etc. Remember, improvements do not show overnight, so you need to keep patience and wait for at least 6 months for the efforts to pay off.
Designer by degree and developer by profession, a front end wizard who likes to keep things neat and clean for the clients
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