Lead generation is essential for the growth for B2B businesses. It allows you to stand out, establish connections with potential customers, and guide them through their buying journey. While lead generation is one of the most important functions of the marketing department, the details can still be somewhat of a mystery. Many marketers experiment with different tactics, observe what strategies work for them, and stick with those tactics. However, the lack of a larger structure can overlook high-quality prospects and miss a lot of revenue.

A distinct lead generation process can ensure direct communication with your target audience. It’ll also allow you to frame your value proposition to attract and retain loyal customers. This guide offers a tangible nine-step process to help you successfully execute a lead generation campaign.

Before we dive in, let's clarify

What is a lead?

A lead is anyone who expresses interest in your company's goods or services but may not be ready to buy yet. This interest is represented as an exchange of information, such as providing a name and email address for a piece of content.

Don’t confuse leads with prospects. There’s a difference. A lead is a potential customer who must be qualified to become a prospect. (This means they’re a good fit for your business and may want to do business with you in the future.)

There are four different types of leads depending on their level of interest:

1. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): These leads have shown interest through marketing efforts like downloading a whitepaper, attending a webinar, or filling out a contact form. They're more likely to become customers than general contacts. Read more about MQLs.
2. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): These leads are vetted by the sales team and considered ready for direct sales engagement. They typically demonstrate a stronger intent to purchase and often match the characteristics of an ideal customer. Read more about SQLs.
3. Product Qualified Lead (PQL): These leads have used a product, often through a free trial or freemium version. They show behaviors indicating readiness to convert to paying customers, such as frequent usage or engaging with premium features.
4. Service Qualified Lead: These leads express interest in a company's service offerings, often through initial consultations or requests for additional information.

What is the lead generation process?

Lead generation is a process of attracting, nurturing, and converting leads (potential customers) into existing customers.
Lead generation can happen organically: someone is interested in your services, visits your website, fills out a form, and becomes an inbound lead. However, for a business to expand in the present environment, it is insufficient to merely hope that others will discover you. Lead generation can usually be categorized into two main types.

Inbound lead generation

Inbound lead generation attracts potential customers by providing valuable content tailored to their needs and interests. Instead of traditional outbound methods like cold calls, it uses tools such as blogs, social media, SEO, and content marketing to draw visitors in, engage them, and build trust.

By addressing the pain points and interests of the target audience, businesses can convert visitors into leads through calls-to-action, landing pages, and lead capture forms. This approach ensures a cost-effective and sustainable way to acquire qualified leads and nurture them into loyal customers.

Outbound lead generation

Outbound lead generation is a proactive strategy where businesses initiate contact with potential customers through direct outreach. This approach involves identifying prospects and contacting them via various channels such as cold calls, emails, direct mail, and advertising. The goal is to capture the interest of these prospects and convert them into leads, ultimately guiding them through the sales funnel.

Outbound lead generation relies on targeted efforts to find and engage potential customers who may not actively seek the product or service. While it can be more intrusive, outbound lead generation can quickly generate leads and drive immediate results, making it a valuable component of a comprehensive marketing strategy.

Now let’s head to the actual guideline:

Lead generation process:

1. Analyze and plan

Defining your goals is the first step to generating leads. List the outcomes you want to achieve and the KPIs you’ll use to measure progress. For example, you can work backwards from sales quotas to determine how many leads are needed per month and set your budget accordingly.

Decide who will be responsible for which tasks. Lead generation involves writing, research, and analysis, so you may assign a few roles, such as:

• Copywriter for email, ad, and social media copy
• VP of marketing to align sales and marketing efforts
• Marketing team members to research competitors, strategies, and audiences
• Analytics team members to pull and deliver accurate sales data

You’ll also need to create an ideal customer profile (ICP). ICPs serve as a map for finding leads that match the typical demographic, firmographic, and technographic characteristics of your best customers, like the industry they operate in, business maturity, and the tools they use for their everyday work.

2. Research

Research is crucial in the lead generation process. You need to understand where your best leads are coming from and how to find more. Pay attention to patterns that might emerge, like recurring pain points or use cases and then figure out how to position your product as a solution.

The more effectively you map your product’s value to prospects’ needs, the more useful and engaging your content will be. Target the right people by building workflows to track incoming leads and setting up dashboards to show which ones progress through the sales cycle.

3. Create your message

Potential leads should feel like your content is speaking directly to them regardless of where they find it. Blog posts, ads, social media, infographics, and eBooks should be catered to customer needs, and landing pages should be optimized with powerful copy and strong CTAs to help increase conversion rates.

Be strategic about what content you deliver at each funnel stage. Earlier stages should focus on building awareness with SEO-optimized blog posts and social media content. As leads get warmer, highlight your value proposition and prompt conversion with highly tailored emails that reference relevant PDFs, case studies, or testimonials.

In direct communication like email or LinkedIn messages, explain how your product or service can solve each lead’s specific problem. This will take time and effort. Allocate up to 15 minutes to research each lead and up to 30 minutes to write a personalized message that will increase response rates. Conclude with a CTA that links to a landing page with the details to answer the lead’s questions.

4. Promote content to pre-target leads

Pre-targeting is a form of online advertising designed to foster brand familiarity within a specific audience and it targets consumers based on their previous behavior. It’s used by brands to warm up leads and prepare them for more in-depth sales pitches. Leads are more likely to click on your ads or respond to an email or call when they’re already familiar with your product or service.

If you don’t already have organic search rankings, consider running Google ads campaigns. Paid ads won’t necessarily target the best leads, but they still provide visibility and traffic to your website from search.

Social media marketing is another effective method to gain traction. Post content and pay for ads on platforms frequented by your ICP. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok are good platforms that can increase brand recognition.

5. Create landing pages

Strategic landing pages provide two main opportunities for lead gen — as a link destination for CTAs on ads and in emails.

Landing pages should be designed to prompt leads into action, whether providing their contact information or scheduling a sales call. But leads won’t take action unless they’re convinced your product or service is worth it, so your landing pages must be compelling. Make sure these pages are mobile-friendly, include custom and persuasive calls to action, use high-intent keywords to communicate effectively with your audiences, and incorporate interactive experiences to catch people’s attention.

Once you’ve developed a few page options, run split tests to recognize what resonates most with your target audience.

6. Send emails and make phone calls

It could take a month, year, or longer to convert some leads into customers, but calls and emails remind them that your product or service exists. During your outreach, encourage leads to try free samples, download a product trial, or make another purchase that aligns with their history.

Some tips for sending emails and making calls:

• Prepare for different email responses. Leads might reply positively, negatively, or not at all. If you don’t get a response, follow up after 24 to 72 hours to ensure your message is received.
• Use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. CRMs and other email marketing software can show you if an email has been opened, how many times it was viewed, and whether the links were clicked or not. Sales reps can use this data to prioritize their call lists.

6. Send emails and make phone calls

It could take a month, year, or longer to convert some leads into customers, but calls and emails remind them that your product or service exists. During your outreach, encourage leads to try free samples, download a product trial, or make another purchase that aligns with their history.

Some tips for sending emails and making calls:

• Prepare for different email responses. Leads might reply positively, negatively, or not at all. If you don’t get a response, follow up after 24 to 72 hours to ensure your message is received.
• Use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. CRMs and other email marketing software can show you if an email has been opened, how many times it was viewed, and whether the links were clicked or not. Sales reps can use this data to prioritize their call lists.
• Set auto responses. If someone downloads a certain amount of content from your website, signs up for a product trial, or makes a purchase, they should get a relevant email follow-up. Thank them or ask for feedback to demonstrate your interest in their opinion.
• Include an “unsubscribe” link. If you’re sending a cold email, remember to include a link to allow readers to unsubscribe. This ensures you comply with spam laws, decreasing the chances of your emails winding up in the junk folder.

7. Score leads and pass along to sales

When a lead is ready to buy, they often need the kind of individual attention that sales team members specialize in. However, sending too many leads to sales too early causes bottlenecks. Not every lead will be interested enough to invest and contacting them too soon can push them away.

Collaborate with sales on a lead scoring process to ensure the right leads are passed off to sales at the right time. Work with the sales team to develop a scoring framework that takes into account a lead’s intent, demographics, past purchases, and more. Marketing intelligence tools can accelerate this process by surfacing leads with the highest engagement and interaction across all your brand channels.

8. Evaluate results and create reports

Tracking KPIs at each stage of the lead generation process is necessary but reporting is especially crucial after you’ve passed leads to the sales team. Following the lead’s journey will help you refine your strategy over time.

Start by creating reports that show the number of emails sent, emails opened, and unsubscribe requests. Try to pinpoint where leads go cold and how to change your messaging to keep their interest longer.

Take time to identify lost leads and think of ways to recapture them with retargeting ads, promotions, and discounts. This analysis can be challenging if you’re tracking leads in a spreadsheet so consider using a robust marketing platform. Look for a system that can alert you to new buyer priorities and reveal other areas of opportunity like new target audiences or other lucrative lead generation channels.

9. Analyze and plan — again

Analyzing and planning should bookend the lead generation process. While this step might seem easy, it shouldn’t be overlooked or rushed. It helps you learn from what happened in the previous cycle and prepare for the next one.

Take stock of your marketing and sales KPIs, strategies that worked or didn’t work, and brainstorm ways to improve.

Conclusion

Any good lead generation process will look different depending on the business and industry, but each has the goal of turning leads into paying customers. Be open to trying new ideas and practices so you can create a lead generation process that best caters to the needs and wants of your customers.