Care and Feeding Instructions for Business Leads

Business leads are where you get sales. These are potential customers who have an interest in the types of products and services that you offer but have not yet discovered how great your company is at meeting their needs. To properly care for your business leads, you will first need to find and capture some, understand what their needs are and build a relationship with them where you supply those needs. The five types of leads are new, working, nurturing, unqualified and qualified, and each will need to be treated differently.

Capturing Leads in the Wild

Finding leads is easier these days than it was in the past. You used to have to buy lists of names and phone numbers for your employees to make cold calls and try to generate sales, but now you can find and capture your leads online through targeted marketing. There are many methods you can use to do this such as cultivating a mailing list through your blog or social media accounts, using search engine analytics and advertising programs, and even through newspaper, television or radio ads. These methods usually generate the first type, new leads. These are the first-time visitors to your business who you want to sign up for newsletters or follow you on social media to capture.

Understanding Their Needs

To best understand what your leads need to convert into customers, it is a good idea to have a well-designed website and with analytical tools. These tools will show you where visitors go when they hit your site, where they come from and what things they are likely to buy. For example, if the analytics for your ad campaign show a high amount of traffic from one ad, but visitors are immediately leaving, then you can make sure that the landing page has the right information and is easy to read so potential customers stay longer. This can help turn working leads, someone with whom you have an active conversation, into lifelong customers.

Avoid Neglect

If you just focus on driving traffic to your company, you are likely to catch more window-shoppers than paying customers. Make sure that you are keeping your information current and relevant, that you are contacting your leads with new sales and products or services and that you are cultivating a welcoming atmosphere with your brand. Neglecting your nurturing leads, those interested in your company but not yet ready to make a purchase, can mean driving them away.

Provide a Proper Home

Proving a proper home for your leads means separating them by types and adding them to a list built for that type. For example, unqualified leads are those who have determined that what you offer is not what they need either now or in the future. These leads will send your newsletters to the junk folder and skip over your ads in the newspaper. The proper home for your leads also depends on what individuals have shown interest in. For example, if you do home renovation focusing on bathrooms and kitchens, then you can sort your leads into those who have shown interest in each category for more targeted sales advertisements.

Build a Relationship

Building working relationships for your qualified leads, those who actively shop with you, and complementary businesses in your area can be an excellent way to care for and generate leads. This can mean asking for referrals or testimonials after a completed project as well as seeing if other companies want to do a bundle promotion. For instance, if your coffee shop is next door to a craft store, you can work together to create a sip and stitch event and offer coupons to those who attend.

Generating and caring for leads can help your company grow into a success. This is easier than ever with the internet and targeted ad campaigns taking much of the guesswork out and eliminating the need for cold calling. You can even find analytical tools to help you turn most types of leads into qualified ones and build your customer base.