All smart marketing funnels start with effective lead generation. What do I mean by ‘effective?' Well, the first thing you want to do is make sure your outreach is targeted. And, second, you want to be taking your time in introducing them to your offer – don't rush into it. You’re not trying to force your product or service down their throats right away, but, instead you are collecting their contact information (and maybe some other helpful data) so that you can slowly build a relationship and then sell to them.
The Three Types of Leads
These first group of people, described above, are your cold leads – the people who have shown no interest in your business and who never asked you to contact them but who, nonetheless, fit into your target demographic.
The next type of lead is the warm lead. This is someone who has shown an interest in your business and who is now potentially ready to receive marketing messages from you. Maybe they subscribed to your mailing list, or maybe they liked you on Facebook. But they must, in some way, have a connection to you and have demonstrated an interest in hearing from you.
Finally, you have your ‘qualified lead.’ This is someone who has shown an interest in buying from you. They might have requested a quote or maybe they clicked to get more information about a product. In terms of your marketing funnel, the qualified lead is the person who is now ready to cross the ‘free line’ and become a paying customer.
This is a crucial concept to understand when constructing a marketing funnel because it shows you how you’re going to reach out to new leads and then developing them, through a process of gradual relationship building, into paying customers. You start with your cold lead and you end with someone who loves your brand and is committed to buying.
Managing and Scoring Your Leads
So, since we have different types of leads, each at different levels of the sales process, it's a good idea to include some way of managing and and scoring each lead who enters your funnel. The first step, of course, is to collect an email address from each new subscriber and add them to an autoresponder (or automated email sequence). An autoresponder will help you oragainze and track those leads so that you know who is at each point in your funnel.
The best autoresponders have another great feature too, which is the ability to ‘score’ your leads. This means that they can tell you who is the most engaged at any time automatically, with no need for you to calculate that yourself. They will do this by calculating the amount of emails they open, which pages of your site they look at etc.
You’ll then be able to identify who is ready to buy from you and who just needs that extra nudge from a sales-oriented email!
Discover The Best Funnel Formula For Your Business
From one lead type to the next, it's all about having a funnel in place that works best for your prospects and your business. And creating the perfect funnel formula is an important part of marketing in type of online business. Want to discover a complete formula formula for yourself? Check out our case study video on how to automate your marketing funnel to get more leads and make more sales like clockwork.
