For all companies, lead generation is an important issue. There are various tools and services to generate them through the web. To set fair lead acquisition goals, you need to target your ideal customer, called a marketing lead. In this article, we will talk about marketing leads, acquisition, and retention.
Integrating the marketing lead into an acquisition and retention strategy
To conclude on the marketing lead
What is a marketing lead?
A marketing lead is a contact who has an interest in your product or service. Generally, when a person gives you information about their identity, they are considered a lead. This information can be used in campaigns. A lead can be at different stages and, to identify it, it is given a different name at each degree of maturity. There are MQLs, HMQLs, and SQLs. Don’t panic! I’ll explain what each designation means.
What is an MQL
A Marketing Qualified Lead is a lead who is interested in your content and perhaps in your company. They have already provided data about themselves and you have identified that they have a particular interest in your product or service. How do you know whether they are interested in your company? Thanks to tools specifically dedicated to tracking your users.
An HMQL, what is the difference from an MQL?
An HMQL is a highly qualified lead. Hmm, but what is the added value of this designation? Well, when you have identified MQLs, there may also be HMQLs. In other words, leads who are highly interested in your service or product. HMQLs are at a more advanced stage of consideration than MQLs. You can identify them through content that you consider important for your conversion funnel.
To help you understand what I want to explain, let’s take an example: you are a company that publishes marketing automation software. On your website, you offer your readers different resources such as white papers or webinars. Because of the importance of certain documents, we want to assign more importance to leads who download a white paper such as “implementing a marketing automation strategy” rather than a lead who downloads a white paper on “what is marketing automation?”.
This depends on each company and its conversion funnel. It is up to you to define which documents are the most important in order to refine your strategy as effectively as possible.
What does SQL mean?
A Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) means that a lead is mature enough to be handed over to the sales team. This type of lead is even more qualified than an HMQL since it is ready to enter the sales process with your salespeople. For example, when a user requests a demo for your product/service, your sales team takes over. It then becomes an SQL. You must master all aspects of your sales funnel in order to determine which call to action are SQLs
Integrating the marketing lead into an acquisition and retention strategy
Implementing an inbound marketing strategy
Bringing a marketing lead into a marketing strategy means using inbound marketing. It brings together all the processes aimed at bringing visitors interested in your expertise and your solutions to your website. As they say, give before you receive. You offer something in exchange for a completed form and consent to communicate.
The sales journey / marketing funnel
The sales journey, similar to the marketing funnel, is all the stages followed by a lead to become a customer. Following this funnel allows you to adopt good management of your customer journey. The marketing funnel is generally broken down into four stages but often differs depending on the type of company and the marketing strategy you want to implement.
For my part, it breaks down like this:
- Awareness (lead generation)
- Consideration phase (lead generation
- Decision phase (lead conversion)
- Repurchase phase ( lead retention)
Awareness
The first stage is awareness. It is from this moment that your leads begin to look for information on a subject. They will look for information on your website; searches can be done through articles or even lead magnets that you have set up.
The consideration phase
This stage allows the prospect to identify that they have a problem. They must now find a solution. They will therefore continue to look for elements within what you offer that will enable them to find answers. During this stage, your goal is to prove to your users that you are the solution to their problem. They move from prospect to lead.
The decision phase
The decision phase is the moment when your lead will complete their purchase. They will choose one of the solutions to their problem. You must now make the most of your sales force and your salespeople in order to close the deal. It is up to you to determine how you want to implement this stage. They move from lead to customer.
The retention phase
For the final stage, the retention phase is the most important. Your customer trusts you and the solutions you have provided to them. You must now turn them into an ambassador, that is to say, a person who will promote your goods. Two objectives: the first is to retain your customer to ensure a constant source of revenue. The second is to make word of mouth work.
Lead nurturing and lead scoring strategy
Indeed, inbound marketing aims to attract a large number of leads to your website and social media, more or less qualified. Your sales team cannot qualify all these leads. That would take a lot of time for results below your expectations.
Your sales force will focus on the most qualified leads in order to convert them. The marketing team, for its part, will focus on the less qualified leads with the aim of moving them forward in the buying journey. In other words, it handles generating MQLs/HMQLs and your sales team handles SQLs. To do this, two features: lead nurturing and lead scoring.?
Lead nurturing
Lead nurturing consists of offering interesting content to your users so that they can move forward in their buying journey.
Messages must be made available at the right time, to the right person, and on the right communication channel. You are going to send the most suitable and relevant content according to their position in your sales funnel
Is your marketing lead looking for information on a particular keyword? Send them a newsletter with a subject line featuring a list of articles dealing with that topic. Are they looking to compare two solutions in order to choose one? Send them customer case studies to reassure them in their choice. You understand the approach. That is what lead nurturing is all about.
Lead scoring
This technique consists of assigning points to your prospects according to their behavior and their actions toward your company.
If you would like to know how to use the advanced scoring feature with Webmecanik Automation, feel free to refer to this article, which explains it in more detail. ?
Whether the score is positive or negative, using lead scoring will allow you to determine whether a lead is an MQL or an SQL. It is up to you to determine which actions can give points to your prospects or not. To give you an example, a lead who subscribes to your newsletter gains 5 points while unsubscribing makes them lose 5 points. Once your prospects reach a certain threshold, they trigger marketing actions (automated) targeting them in order to then initiate a sale.
- The prospect subscribes to your website’s newsletter, they gain 5 points → they enter a nurturing campaign
- The lead has opened at least 1 email from your campaign, they gain 10 points: 15 points → The lead changes campaign with more targeted emails
- The lead requests a demo, they gain 20 points → The sales team contacts them for an appointment
You will then need to determine the score from which you want to contact your leads. You can use lead management techniques.
The synergy between lead nurturing and lead scoring
To adopt an optimal inbound strategy, I advise you to implement the two methods seen above.
Lead scoring makes it possible to determine where your prospect is in the funnel, and nurturing campaigns make it possible to send the right content at the right time on the right channels. This combined approach increases your chances of conversion while maximizing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
The role of marketing automation for the marketing lead
If you want to perform well in the areas mentioned above and optimize your inbound marketing strategy, implementing marketing automation is not an option but an essential element for establishing it. All of the above techniques are very effective when they are used properly. On the other hand, managing all these tasks manually is impossible.
Marketing automation is all the techniques used to eliminate the most time-consuming and repetitive tasks so that you can focus on the most essential tasks. For example, the software takes care of sending your communications, and your marketing team only has to create the content. ?
The tool will also make it easier for you to coordinate work between the marketing team and the sales team. Thanks to the software, both teams can easily track the progress of their MQLs and SQLs. This greatly optimizes smarketing communication.
A marketing automation campaign is divided into three elements: actions, decisions, and conditions. The action is an element that will be executed on your contact. For example, the fact that your lead reads an email is an action.
A decision comes after an action. For example, if your prospect reads the email, then they get 5 points.
Finally, conditions are based on information from the contact or a company; if my contact meets the condition, they continue the workflow. For example, has the contact been inactive for more than one month? If the answer is no, then they can continue the scenario.
Webmecanik Automation for nurturing campaigns
1Life is a brand of the French Visiativ group with multiple products and services for the digital transformation of SMEs and mid-sized companies. They chose to integrate our Webmecanik Automation software in order to automate their marketing actions. Their goal was to mature their cold leads into hot leads.
Retention campaigns
Here is an example of a <workflow that you can set up to retain your contacts. In this one, you want to retain your customers who have just bought one of your products.
You are a store that sells kitchen utensils. Your goal is to retain people who bought a saucepan in your store. You now want to offer them a set of frying pans belonging to the same range as the saucepan they bought. To do this, you are going to send an email to everyone in your segment offering them the chance to complete their range with the frying pans via a CTA.
If the person clicks on the CTA but does not buy, a follow-up is sent two days later indicating that the person clicked on the CTA but did not buy the frying pan. You can then offer them a 10% discount if they buy a frying pan within 24 hours of the email.
If they click on the CTA again without buying, then they receive a new email with a new CTA to inform them that this is their last chance to take advantage of the offer.It should also be noted that every time a person buys, they leave the campaign since the objective has been achieved.
N.B.: Upselling is the act of offering your customer base products or services that are superior to those already purchased, for example, a higher-quality phone.
Cross-selling, on the other hand, is the act of offering your customers products that complement the products or services they have already bought. For example, you can offer your customer to buy a computer mouse if they bought a computer.
Acquisition campaigns
Very important for B2B companies, remember to synchronize your CRM with your marketing automation tool. ?
An acquisition campaign is very similar to a retention campaign. Only the final objective changes.
Let’s imagine that you sell multimedia devices. Thanks to marketing automation, you will be able to track your users’ behavior on your website. If, for example, a marketing lead views more than 5 pages about televisions, it is highly likely that they are interested in buying a new television. Your objective is to help them move to the purchase stage.
You are therefore going to make them enter a campaign that includes as a segment all the people who have viewed more than 5 pages about televisions. The first action is to send them an email offering televisions based on the ones they clicked on, with a CTA.
If the person opened the email but did not buy, you can send them another email 3 days later with a discount on the television and a CTA. If they click on the CTA again without buying, then they receive a new email with a new CTA to inform them that this is their last chance to take advantage of the offer. If they do not respond, then they leave the campaign.
You can also subtract points from the person if they leave the campaign. Indeed, if they ignore your emails, it is probably because they are still thinking and do not want to consume your product and service now. You will therefore need to contact this person later.
It is up to you to find the best retention and acquisition campaigns according to your strategy and your objectives.?
To conclude on the marketing lead
I hope that my definition and all my concepts have helped you see more clearly regarding this concept. If you need help maximizing your chances of success, Webmecanik offers expert training in addition to its marketing automation software. On your own or with a recognized trainer, you will have all the keys to make your strategy a success, acquire and retain your leads… So, are you ready? Go for it!
