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If you work in or alongside a marketing team, you’ll often hear about lead generation. Even though you are smiling and nodding away, you may not be aware of what a lead is or how to generate them. So here at Social+, we want to break it down for you.

A lead is someone who indicates their interest in your company’s products or services. This could be through opt in email marketing, private messaging, adding items to their baskets and so on.

This is the beginning of a journey where a lead in converted into a customer.

There are different categories that your leads may sit in.

Marketing qualified leads – contacts who have engaged with your marketing team, someone who spins a wheel for a free discount code or interacts with you on your socials.

Sales qualified leads – contacts who are actively interested in paying for a product or service, someone who emails to ask for a size guide or registers to be notified when an item is in stock.

Product qualified leads – contacts who have previously used your product or service and have expressed interest in paying for this again, someone who received a sample or used a free 7-day trial of your service.

Service qualified leads – contacts who have indicated to your team that they are interested in becoming a paying customer, someone who actively contacts your team about upgrading their service or buying more products.

So, what is lead generation?

Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting contacts into those who have indicated genuine interest in your products and/or services.

The best way to generate leads is by offering a solution to a problem and linking all your content together.

A great tool to use is LinkedIn sales navigator. This allows you to search for people within certain sectors and regions. You can then connect with these people and slowly build relationships with them.

Compared to Facebook, 277% more leads are generated on LinkedIn.

You can begin by liking and commenting on their posts, messaging about their recent work, and offering your service in a subtle approach.

You can write blogs and create social media posts about a solution to their problem. Then offering a free service that will entice the contact, converting them into a product qualified lead.

If you can achieve email opt-ins from your leads, you can then begin email marketing campaigns to stay in touch with your contacts. Remind your leads that you have a solution to their problem.

Using a CRM system is an excellent way to run and monitor campaigns. By reviewing reports you can see what works for your company and what doesn’t. This will help your business become more successful in future campaigns.

So, what companies require lead generation?

Any business that is looking to upsell to their current customer-base or businesses that are looking for new customers. Essentially, all businesses.

Your business may be conducting lead generation on a daily basis without realising. Actively engaging with your customers on social media is a great way to start.

Here at Social+, we offer lead generation as one of our services and we always take a holistic approach. We link our content together and use marketing tools accordingly.

If this is something that you or your company would be interested in, or if you would like to learn a little bit more about what lead generation actually is; give us a call on 0191 466 1050 or email us on hello@social-plus.media.

Social+ are happy to support you and your business. In lead generation, social media management or website design and maintenance, give us a call and leave the rest to us!