Improve Lead Generation: How To Understand Your Prospects Needs

marketing funnel As a marketing or sales professional the first thing you want to do when you make a new connection is to pull them into your marketing “funnel”. Tell them about your product or service, how great it is and how it would help them. BUT DON’T DO IT!

With the use of email, social media and mobile devices – we’re all experiencing information overload. How many emails do you get and not even open because its not relevant? Or direct messages from your social connections that are clearly a sales push, so you just delete it. DON’T BECOME ONE OF THEM!

Instead take the time to understand the process your leads take before they buy, and plan your lead generation and conversion offers accordingly.

Marketing Takeaway: To be successful at lead generation – plan your offers to meet your prospects’ needs, not your own.

Top Funnel Lead
This is a lead who has a problem/need that you could possibly provide a solution for – but they’re not ready to buy yet.

A prospect that converts at this point is researching solutions to their problem – they are not company or brand specific, and are usually looking for educational type resources and information.

Typically an educational type self-help guide, ebook, whitepaper, video, webinar that is non brand or company specific is a good lead generation tactic at this stage.

Middle Funnel Lead
These leads are a little warmer. They know they need to buy a product, or engage the services of a professional company – they just haven’t decided who or what.

These leads are looking for trust, authority and credibility they want to learn more about your company, product or service. Awards, certifications, case studies, testimonials and quotes from happy clients, pictures of your team and product – are all important to these leads.

They will typically download a presentation or ebook, or watch a webinar or video that is more company or brand specific, and that educates them on your company, product or service. These offers should include past successes, stats and testimonies.

Bottom Funnel Lead
These leads are your hot leads that you want to get on the phone, your goal here is to pull them into your sales process. These are the leads your sales department want!

They will convert on – calls to action that relate to talking to a consultant, free trials and taking advantage of a limited time offers, specials and discounts.

Whilst its important to include bottom of the funnel offers on your website, blog, social sites and emails – they shouldn’t be direct messages until you’ve spent time building a relationship and they’ve converted on top funnel or mid funnel offers.

Marketing Takeaway: Take the time to build a relationship with your leads, establish trust and credibility before expecting them to buy.

Do you have any questions? Or do you have some additional tips to share? We’d love to hear from you so please share your comments, feedback and questions in the comments section below.