What is lead generation?

Lead generation is the first step in sales process of the marketing function. In Lead generation process, the customer who comes to us for enquiry by showing interest for our product, should be given enough inputs about our products. Also Lead generation process should ensure collection of every possible data regarding customer with its relevance to our products, because these information will help us in converting that lead into prospect then prospect into sales and customer.

Lead generation describes the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing sales pipeline. Lead generation often uses digital channels, and has been undergoing substantial changes in recent years from the rise of new online and social techniques. In particular, the abundance of information readily available online has led to the rise of the “self-directed buyer” and the emergence of new techniques to develop and qualify potential leads before passing them to sales

Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into those leads we just talked about.

Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can't simply say, "I create content for lead generation." It'd be totally lost on them, and I'd get some really confused looks.

So instead, I say, "I work on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to provide them with enough goodies to get them naturally interested in my company so they eventually warm up to the brand enough to want to hear from us!"

That usually resonates better, and that's exactly what lead generation is: It's a way of warming up potential customers to your business and getting them on the path to eventually buying.

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Agree with all given answers

In marketing, lead generation is the initiation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be created for purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for sales leads.

lead generation is...

Process of collecting names and contact information about qualified prospects which will be contacted by the salespeople for generating orders. It usually involves direct response advertising and telemarketing.

Or

Lead generation is the use of a computer program, a database, the Internet, or a specialized service to obtain or receive information for the purpose of expanding the scope of a business, increasing sales revenues, looking for a job or for new clients or conducting specialized research. Leads can consist of the names and addresses (or e-mail addresses) of individuals, corporations, institutions or agencies. Lists of leads can be gathered or filtered from targeted databases such as telephone and Internet directories.

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Thanks for the invite .............. agreed with the answer to Mr. Tariq

What is Lead Generation

Lead generation describes the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing sales pipeline. Lead generation often uses digital channels, and has been undergoing substantial changes in recent years from the rise of new online and social techniques. In particular, the abundance of information readily available online has led to the rise of the “self-directed buyer” and the emergence of new techniques to develop and qualify potential leads before passing them to sales.

Why is Lead Generation Important

The buying process has changed, and marketers need to find new ways to reach buyers and get heard through the noise. Instead of finding customers with mass advertising and email blasts, marketers must now focus on being found and learn to build continuous relationships with buyers.

thanks,

agreed with anwers

Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into those leads we just talked about.

Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can't simply say, "I create content for lead generation." It'd be totally lost on them, and I'd get some really confused looks.

So instead, I say, "I work on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to provide them with enough goodies to get them naturally interested in my company so they eventually warm up to the brand enough to want to hear from us!"

That usually resonates better, and that's exactly what lead generation is: It's a way of warming up potential customers to your business and getting them on the path to eventually buying.

By showing an organic interest in your business, it's those strangers and prospects that are initiating the relationship with you -- versus you, the business, initiating the relationship with them. This makes it easier and more natural for them to want to buy from you somewhere down the line.

Within the larger inbound marketing methodology, lead generation falls in the second stage. It occurs after you've attracted an audience and are ready to actually convert those visitors into leads for your sales team. As you can see in the diagram below, generating leads is a fundamental point in an individual's journey to becoming a delighted customer of your business.

As you now know, a lead is a person who has indicated interest in your company's product or service. Now, let's talk about the ways in which someone can actually show that interest.

Essentially, a lead is generated through information collection. That information collection could come as the result of a job seeker showing interest in a position by completing an application for the job, a shopper sharing contact information in exchange for a coupon, or a person filling out a form to download an educational piece of content, like an ebook, kit, podcast, tool, trial, or something else. (Here are 23 types of lead generation content to inspire you.)

Below are just a few of the many ways in which you could qualify someone as a lead. Each of these examples also highlights the fact that the amount of information you can collect to qualify someone as a lead, as well as the that person's level of interest in your company, can vary. Let's assess each scenario:

• Job Application: Any individual filling out an application form is willing to share a lot of personal information because he/she wants to be considered for the position. Filling out that application shows their true interest in the job, therefore qualifying the person as a lead for the company's recruiting team.
• Coupon: Unlike the job application, you probably know very little about someone who has stumbled upon one of your online coupons. But if they find the coupon valuable enough, they may be willing to provide their name and email address in exchange for it. Although it's not a lot of information, it's enough for a business to know that someone has interest in their company.
• Content: While the download of a coupon shows an individual has a direct interest in your product or service, content (like an educational ebook or webinar) does not. Therefore, in order to truly understand the nature of the person's interest in your business, you'll probably need to collect more information -- you'll need enough information for a sales rep to actually understand whether the person is interested in your product or service, and whether they're a good fit.

These three general examples highlight how lead generation differs from company to company, and from person to person. You'll need to collect enough information in order to gauge whether someone has a true, valid interest in your product or service, but knowing how much information is enough information will vary depending on your business.

Let's look at Episerver, for example. They use web content reports for lead generation, collecting six pieces of information from prospective leads:

As you can see, Episerver asks for:

• Full Name: Basic information needed for communication with the to-be lead.
• Email: The email address will allow your business to communicate with the to-be   lead through your email marketing campaigns.
• Company: This will give you the ability to research what the business does and how the lead might benefit from your product or service. (Mainly for B2B)
• Role: Understanding an individual's role in the business will help you understand how to communicate with them. Every brand stakeholder will have a different take and perspective on your offering. (Mainly for B2B)
• Country: Location information needed for qualifying the to-be lead and sending it to the correct sales team, if applicable.
• State: Location information needed for qualifying the to-be lead and sending it to the correct sales team, if applicable.

If you'd like to learn more intermediate-level tips on information collection and what you should ask for on your lead-capture forms, read our post about it here. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Now back to the basics ...

Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the whole inbound marketing methodology, let's review the actual components of the lead generation process.

• Landing Page: A landing page is a web page a visitor lands on for a distinct purpose. While a landing page can be used for various reasons, one of its most frequent uses is to capture leads through ...
• Forms: Forms are hosted on landing pages. They consist of a series of fields (like in our example above) that collect information in exchange for an ...
• Offer: An offer is the content or something of value that's being "offered" on the landing page. The offer must have enough value to a visitor to merit providing their personal information in exchange for access to it.
• Call-to-Action: A call-to-action (CTA) is an image, button, or message that calls website visitors to take some sort of action. When it comes to lead generation, this action is (you guessed it!) to fill out the form on the landing page and redeem the offer.

See how everything fits together?

Once you put all these elements together, you can use your various promotional channels to link and drive traffic to the landing page so you can start generating leads. Here are some example pathways for lead generation:

Marketers and salespeople alike want to fill their sales funnel -- and they want to fill it quickly. That's where the temptation to buy leads comes in. Buying leads, as opposed to generating them organically, is much easier and takes far less time and effort -- despite being more expensive. So why shouldn't you just buy leads?

First and foremost, leads you've purchased don't actually know you. Typically, they've "opted in" at some other site when signing up for something -- and didn't actually opt in to receiving anything from your company. The messages you send them are therefore unwanted messages, and sending unwanted messages is intrusive, not inviting. If the prospect has never been to your website, indicated an interest in your resources, products, services, or even industry, then you’re interrupting them ... plain and simple.

If they never opted in to receive messages from you specifically, then there's a high likelihood they could flag your messages as spam. This is quite dangerous for you. Not only does this train their inbox to show only emails they want to see, but it indicates to their email provider which emails to filter out. Once enough people click flag your messages as spam, you go on a "blacklist," which is then shared with other email providers. Once you get on the blacklist, it’s really, really hard to get back off of it. In addition, your email deliverability and IP reputation will likely be harmed.