Lead Generation: A Beginner's Guide to Generating Business Leads the Inbound Way

We've all been through it. You know: the moment you're about to dig into the best darn pile of spaghetti and meatballs you've ever seen.

就像您在意大利面上扭转叉子一样，旋转着令人垂涎的肉丸，然后再咬一口咸味……手机响了。“我可以和Lindsay Kow-low-Witch谈吗？”在另一端询问电话推销员。“这是有关您的烤箱偏好的重要信息。”

This frustrating interruption is exactly why we're here to discuss inbound lead generation.What is inbound lead generation?这是一种解决方案，可以使您的业务或组织免于成为那个令人讨厌，破坏性的呼叫者，他们正在为世界各地的意大利面爱好者毁了意大利面条之夜。

Let's start withdefining a lead, and then we'll cover what online lead generation is, why you need lead generation, how you qualify someone as a lead, how to label lead types -- such assales qualified leads, how you generate leads, and why inbound lead generation ismuchmore effective than simply buying leads.

What is a lead?

A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company's product or service in some way, shape, or form.

Leads typically hear from a business or organizationafteropening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription) … instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.

Let's say you take an online survey to learn more about how to take care of your car. A day or so later, you receive an email from the auto company that created the survey about how they could help you take care of your car. This process would be far less intrusive than if they'd just called you out of the blue with no knowledge of whether you even关心关于汽车维护，对吗？这就是成为领导的感觉。

And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them personalize that opening communication to address your existing problems — andnot浪费时间致电潜在客户，他们对汽车服务不感兴趣。

Leads are part of the broader lifecycle that consumers follow when theytransition from visitor to customer。Not all leads are created equal (nor are theyqualified the same）。根据铅的合格方式以及他们所在的生命周期阶段，有不同类型的线索。

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

Marketing qualified leadsare contacts who've engaged with your marketing team's efforts but aren't ready to receive a sales call. An example of an MQL is a contact who fills out a landing page form for an offer (like inour lead generation process scenario below）。

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

Sales qualified leadsare contacts who've taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming a paying customer. An example of an SQL is a contact who fills out a form to ask a question about your product or service.

Product Qualified Lead (PQL)

Product qualified leadsare contacts who've used your product and taken actions that indicate interest in becoming a paying customer. PQLs typically exist for companies who offer a product trial or afree or limited version of their product（（like HubSpot!) with options to upgrade, which is where your sales team comes in. An example of a PQL is a customer who uses your free version but engages or asks about features that are only available upon payment.

服务Qualified Lead

服务qualified leadsare contacts or customers who've indicated to your service team that they're interested in becoming a paying customer. An example of an service qualified lead is a customer who tells their customer service representative that they'd like to upgrade their product subscription; at this time, the customer service representative would up-level this customer to the appropriate sales team or representative.

These lead generators are just a few examples of lead generation strategies you can use to attract potential customers and guide them towards your offers. (We talk about后来有更多策略。)

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.

因此，我说：“我努力寻找独特的方法来吸引人们从事我的业务。我想为他们提供足够的好东西，使他们对我的公司自然感兴趣，因此他们最终会热身到这个品牌，以便从raybet电子竞技我们！”

That usually resonates better, and that's exactly what lead generation is:这是将潜在客户升级到您的业务的一种方式并让他们走上最终购买的道路。

你为什么需要潜在客户？

当一个陌生人通过展示一个与您建立关系有机的interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is much more natural.

Lead generation falls within the second stage of the入站营销方法。It occursafter您已经吸引了听众，并准备将这些访客转换为您的销售团队的潜在客户（即sales-qualified leads）。

As you can see in the diagram below, generating leads is a fundamental point in an individual's journey to becoming a delighted customer.

Lead Generation Process

Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the入站营销方法，让我们浏览潜在客户生成过程的步骤。

1. First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.
2. That visitor then clicks on your呼吁采取行动（（CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action.
3. That CTA takes your visitor to alanding page，这是一个旨在捕获铅信息以换取报价的网页。
   
   Note: Anoffer是在登录页面上“提供”的内容或有价值的内容，例如电子书，课程或模板。该要约必须对访客有足够的感知价值，以便他们提供个人信息以换取访问它。）
4. 进入着陆页后，您的访客填写表格以换取要约。（（Formsare typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site.)瞧！您有一个新的领导。也就是说，只要您关注带领-capture form best practices。

See how everything fits together?

To sum it up:游客点击一个CTAthat takes them to alanding pagewhere they fill out aformto get anoffer, at which point they become a带领。

By the way, you should check out ourfree lead generation tool。它可以帮助您直接在网站上创建潜在客户捕获表格。另外，设置真的很容易。

Lead Generation Marketing

将所有这些元素放在一起后，您可以使用各种促销渠道来吸引到目标网页以开始产生潜在客户。

但是你应该使用哪些渠道来推广你的landing page? Let’s talk about the front-end of lead generation — lead gen marketing.

If you’re a visual learner, this chart shows the flow from promotional marketing channels to a generated lead.

There are even more channels you can use to get visitors to become leads. Let’s go into depth on these and talk about a few others.

内容

内容is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to provide visitors with useful, free information. You can include CTAs anywhere in your content — inline, bottom-of-post, in the hero, or even on the side panel. The more delighted a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.

Featured Resource

• HubSpot电子书模板

Email

Email is a great place to reach the people who already know your brand and product or service. It’s much easier to ask them to take an action since they’ve previously subscribed to your list. Emails tend to be a bit cluttered, so use CTAs that have compelling copy and an eye-catching design to grab your subscriber’s attention.

Featured Resource

• The Beginner's Guide to Email Marketing

广告和重新定位

The sole purpose of an ad is to get people to take an action. Otherwise, why spend the money? If you want people to convert, be sure that your landing page and offer match exactly what is promised in the ad, and that the action you want users to take is crystal clear.

博客

The great thing about using your blog posts to promote an offer is that you can tailor the entire piece to the end goal. So, if your offer is an instructional video on setting up Google Search Console, then you can write a blog post about how to select your marketing metrics … which would make your CTA highly relevant and easy to click.

Featured Resource

• 6 Free Blog Post Templates

社交媒体

Social media platforms make it easy to guide your followers to take action, from the swipe up option on Instagram stories to Facebook bio links to bitly URLs on Twitter. You can also promote your offerings on your social posts and include a call-to-action in your caption. Learn more about这篇文章中的社交媒体运动。

产品试验

You can break down a lot of barriers to a sale by offering trials of your product or service. Once a prospect is using your product, you can entice them with additional offers or resources to encourage them to buy. Another good practice is to include your branding in your free versions so you can capture other potential customers, too.

Referral Marketing

Referral, or word-of-mouth, marketing is useful for lead generation in a different way. That is, itgets your brand in front of more people, which, in turn, increases your chances of generating more leads.

Whatever channel you use to generate leads, you’ll want to guide users to your landing page. As long as you’ve built a转换的着陆页, the rest will handle itself.

为什么不只是buy带领s?

营销人员和销售人员都希望填补他们的销售渠道 - 他们想填补它迅速地。Enter: The temptation to buy leads.

与有机产生的产品相比，购买潜在客户要容易得多，尽管昂贵的时间更高，但花费的时间和精力要少得多。但是，无论如何，您可能还是要为广告付费……所以，为什么不购买潜在客户呢？

First and foremost, any leads you've purchased don'tactually知道你。通常，他们在注册某件事时在其他网站上“选择”yourraybet电子竞技公司。

因此，您发送的消息是不需要的消息，发送不需要的消息是侵入性的。（还记得当我试图吃我的意大利面时我接到的那个破坏性的电话吗？这就是人们收到没有要求听到的人们的电子邮件和其他消息时的感觉。）

如果潜在客户从未去过您的网站，并表示对您的产品或服务有兴趣，那么您正在打扰它们……简单而简单。

If they never opted in to receive messages specifically from you, then there's a high chance they could flag your messages as spam, which is quite dangerous for you. Not only does this train to filter out emails from you, but it also indicates to their email provider which emails to filter out.

Once enough people 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电子邮件交付性and IP reputation will likely be harmed.

It's always, always,alwaysbetter to generate leads organically rather than buy them.Read this blog postto learn how to grow an opt-in email list instead of buying one.

How to Qualify a Lead

正如我们在第一部分中介绍的那样，铅是一个对您公司的产品或服务感兴趣的人。raybet电子竞技现在，让我们谈谈某人可以真正表现出这种兴趣的方式。

本质上，通过信息收集生成销售线索。该信息收集可能是由于求职者通过完成申请表现出对职位的兴趣的结果educational piece of content。

衡量潜在客户的兴趣水平

下面是几个你的许多方面could qualify someone as a lead. Each of these examples shows that the amount of collected information used to qualify a lead, as well as their level of interest, can vary.

Let's assess each scenario:

• 申请工作：An individual that fills out an application form is willing to share a lot of personal information because he/she wants to be considered for a position. Filling out that application shows their true interest in the job, therefore qualifying the person as a lead for the company'srecruitingteam — not marketing or sales teams.
• Coupon:Unlike the job application, you probably know very little about someone who has stumbled upon one of your online coupons. But if theyfind the coupon valuable enough，他们可能愿意提供他们的姓名和电子邮件地址以换取它。虽然不是很多关于信息，企业足以知道有人对公司有兴趣。raybet电子竞技
• 内容: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, to truly understand the nature of the person's interest in your business, you'll probably need to collect more information to determine 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 to gauge whether someone has a true, valid interest in your product or service —how muchinformation is足够的informationwill vary depending on your business.

Let's look atEpiserver， 例如。他们使用Web内容报告进行潜在客户生成，从潜在的潜在客户那里收集六个信息。

Episerver提供了一个很好的例子，可以介绍铅gen形式的要求：

• Full Name:The most fundamental information needed to personalize your communication with each lead.
• 电子邮件：这是一种唯一的标识符，是您将如何联系潜在客户。
• raybet电子竞技公司：这将使您能够研究领先的行业和公司以及潜在客户如何从您的产品或服务中受益raybet电子竞技（主要用于B2B）。
• 角色：Understanding an individual's role will help you understand how to communicate with them. Every brand stakeholder will have a different take and perspective on your offering（主要用于B2B）。
• Country:Location information can help you segment your contact by region and time zone, and help you qualify the lead depending on your service.
• State:The more detailed information you can obtain without sacrificing conversions, the better. Knowing your leads state can help you further qualify them.

If you'd like to learn more intermediate-level tips on information collection and what you should ask for on your lead gen forms,在这里阅读我们的帖子。

Lead Scoring

线索评分是定量限定潜在客户的一种方式。使用此技术，为潜在客户分配了一个数值（或分数），以确定它们从“有兴趣”到“准备出售”的规模属于何处。这些行动的标准完全取决于您，但是在您的营销和销售部门必须统一，以便每个人都在相同的规模上工作。

潜在客户的分数可以基于他们采取的行动，提供的信息，与您的品牌的参与程度或其他标准your sales team determines。例如，如果某人经常在社交媒体上与您互动，或者他们的人口统计信息与您的目标受众群体相匹配，那么您可能会得分更高。

Borrowing from the examples above, you might give a lead a higher score if they used one of your coupons — an action that would signify this person is interested in your product.

The higher a lead’s score, the closer they are to becoming a sales-qualified lead (SQL), which is only a step away from becoming a customer. The score and criteria is something you may need to tweak along the way until you find the formula that works, but once you do, you’ll transform your lead generation into customer generation.

潜在客户生成策略

在线潜在客户一代涵盖了广泛的策略，活动和策略，具体取决于您希望捕获潜在客户的平台。一旦您在网站上有访问者，我们就谈论了铅捕获的最佳实践……但是，您如何首先将它们带到那里呢？

让我们研究一些流行平台的潜在客户生成策略。

Facebook潜在客户一代

Facebookhas been a method for lead generation since its inception. Originally, companies could use outbound links in their posts and information in their bios to attract strangers to their websites. However, whenFacebookAds was launched in 2007, and its algorithm began to favor accounts that used paid advertising, there was a major shift in how businesses used the platform to capture leads.Facebook创造d Lead Adsfor this purpose. Facebook also hasa feature that lets you put a simple call-to-action buttonat the top of your Facebook Page, helping you send Facebook followers directly to your website.

获取一些有关Facebook的潜在客户生成技巧。

Featured Resource

• 50 Facebook Ad Examples We Actually Clicked

Twitter Lead Generation

Twitter hasTwitter Lead Gen Cards，这使您可以直接在推文中生成潜在客户，而无需离开网站。用户的姓名，电子邮件地址和Twitter用户名自动将其插入卡中，而他们要做的就是单击“提交”以成为潜在客户。（（Hint for HubSpot users:You can connect Twitter Lead Gen Cards to your HubSpot Forms.Learn how to do that here）。

Learn some lead generation tips for Twitter.

Featured Resource

• How to Use Twitter for Business (+ Follower Tracking Template)

LinkedIn潜在客户产生

LinkedIn has been increasing its stake in the advertising space since its early days. When it comes to lead generation, LinkedIn created Lead Gen Forms, which auto-populate with a users profile data when they click a CTA, making it easy to capture information.

Get tips from our experience using LinkedIn ads.

PPC Lead Generation

当我们说按点击付费（PPC）时，我们指的是搜索引擎结果页面（SERP）上的广告。Google得到3.5 billion searches a day, making it prime real estate for any ad campaign, especially lead gen. The effectiveness of your PPC campaign relies heavily on a seamless user flow, as well as your budget, target keywords, and a few other factors.

Learn more about how to setup successful PPC ads.

B2B Lead Generation

B2B是一种特定的业务模型，需要一种特定的潜在客户生成方法。HubSpot发现,SEO是顶级资源用于捕获business leads, followed closely by email marketing and social media. Not to mention, effectiveness varies by channel.

Learn the B2B lead generation techniques for every channel.

Tips for Lead Generation Campaigns

In any given lead generation campaign, there can be a lot of moving parts. It can be difficult to tell which parts of your campaign are working and which need some fine-tuning. What exactly goes into a best-in-class lead generation engine? Here are a few tips when building lead gen campaigns.

Use the right lead generation tools.

As you saw in our data, the most successful marketing teams use a formal system to organize and store their leads. That's where lead generation tools and带领generation softwarecome into play.

您对访问您的网站的人们了解多少？您知道他们的名字或他们的电子邮件地址吗？他们访问了哪个页面，如何在周围导航以及填写铅转换表格之前和之后做什么？

If you don't know the answers to these questions, chances are you're having a hard time connecting with the people who are visiting your site. These are questions you should be able to answer — and you can with the right lead generation tools.

There are a few different tools and templates out there that'll help you create different lead gen assets to use on your site:

• CTA模板: 50+ free, customizable call-to-action (CTA) templates in PowerPoint that you can use to create clickable CTA buttons to use on your blog, landing pages, and elsewhere on your site.
• 潜在客户生成软件工具雷竞技苹果下载官方版:HubSpot的此免费工具包括带领captureand contact insights features, which will scrape any pre-existing forms you have on your website and add those contacts to your existing contact database. It also lets you create pop-ups, hello bars, or slide-ins —called "lead flows"- 这将帮助您立即将网站访问者变成潜在客户。

Example of aslide-in lead flow。

• 游客Tracking:hotjar拥有一个热图工具 - 一种虚拟工具，可以为用户如何导航您的网站创建颜色编码的表示形式，可帮助您了解用户在网站上的需求，关心和执行的操作。它记录了访问者，并告诉您他们在网站上花费最多的时间。您可以使用它来收集有关潜在客户生成表格，反馈表和调查等的信息。
• 形式剪裁工具：A form scraping tool that collects submissions on your website's existing forms helps you automatically consolidate all your leads into your contact database, regardless of which form visitors submitted on your website. HubSpot customers can创造and embed forms using HubSpot，自动填充您的CMS。非HubSpot客户可以使用Contact 7，JetPack或Google表单等表单创建工具，然后使用HubSpot的免费收集表格功能to automatically capture form submissions and input them to a contact database.

Create amazing offers for all different stages of the buying cycle.

Not all of your site visitors are ready to talk to your sales team or see a demo of your product. Someone at the beginning of买家的旅程might be interested in an informational piece like an ebook or a guide, whereas someone who's more familiar with your company and near the bottom of the journey might be more interested in a free trial or demo.

Make sure you're creating offers for each phase and offering CTAs for these offers throughout your site.

Yes, it takes time to create valuable content that teaches and nurtures your leads down the funnel, but if you don't offer anything for visitors who aren't ready to buy, then they may never come back to your website. From checklists to templates to free tools,here are 23 ideas for lead generation contentto get you started.

如果您想将个性化进一步发展 - 这将有助于提高您的转化率 -try using smart CTAs。Smart CTAs detect where a person is in the buyer’s journey, whether they're a new visitor, a lead, or a customer, and display CTAs accordingly. Personalized CTAs convert a whopping42% more visitorsthan basic calls-to-action.

保持消息传递一致并兑现您的诺言。

The highest-converting lead gen campaigns are the ones that deliver on what they promise and create a seamless transition from ad copy and design to the deliverable itself. Make sure that you’re presenting a consistent message throughout the processand为参与铅捕获的每个人提供价值。

The aspects of your lead gen campaign should mirror everything else on your website, on your blog, and within the product that you will eventually try to sell. If not, you’ll have a difficult time getting your lead to the next lifecycle stage. Your campaign should be about more than just obtaining an email address — it should be about developing a new customer.

Link your CTA to a dedicated landing page.

This may seem obvious to you, but you'd be surprised how many marketersdon't创造dedicated landing pages为了他们的报价。CTA的目的是将访问者送到登陆页面，在那里他们可以收到特定的报价。

Don't use CTAs to drive people to your homepage, for instance. Even if your CTA is about your brand or product (and perhaps not an offer like a download), you should still be sending them to a targeted landing page that's relevant to what they are looking for and includes an opt-in form. If you have the opportunity to use a CTA, send them to a page that will convert them into a lead.

If you want to learn more about how to build and promote high-converting landing pages, then下载有关优化登陆页面的电子书。

让您的销售团队参与其中。

Remember when we talked about lead scoring? Well, it isn’t exactly doable without your sales team’s input. How will you know what qualifies a lead for sales without knowing if your defined SQLs are successfully sold? Your marketing and sales teams need to be aligned on the definitions and the process of moving a lead from MQL to SQL to opportunity before you even begin to capture leads.

Also, be open to evolving your relationship with sales and how you guide leads along your funnel. Your definitions will likely need to be refined over time; just make sure to keep everyone involved up-to-date.

Use social media strategically.

While marketers typically think of social media as best for top-of-the-funnel marketing, it can still be a helpfuland潜在客户产生的低成本来源，如上所述的铅基因策略中共享。关键是从战略上利用社交媒体进行潜在客户生成。

Start by adding links directly to the landing pages of high-performing offers within your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media posts. Tell visitors that you're sending them to a landing page. That way, you're setting expectations. Here's an example from one of our Facebook posts:

You can alsodo a lead generation analysis of your blogto figure out which posts generate the most leads, and then make a point of regularly linking social media posts to them.

Another way to generate leads from social media is to run a contest. Contests are fun and engaging for your followers,andthey can also teach you a ton about your audience. It's a win-win.Read our step-by-step guide for growing your email list using social media contests, which covers everything from choosing a platform, to picking a winner, all the way to analyzing your results.

Remain flexible and constantly iterate.

您的潜在客户生成策略必须与您所针对的人一样动态。Trends change, behaviors shift, opinions morph … so should your lead gen marketing. Use A/B split testing to see what CTAs perform best, which landing pages convert better, and which copy captures your target audience. Experiment with layout changes, design, UX, content, and advertising channels until you find what works.

潜在客户产生趋势和基准

So ... you're getting web traffic and generating leads. But how are you doing compared to other companies in your industry? How many leads should you really be generating?

如果您不查看行业数据，很难弄清楚您的潜在客户生成策略是否有效。这就是为什么我们与Qualtrics合作调查了来自北美和欧洲所有不同行业的900多名营销人员，以创建一份需求生成报告，并提供有关网站访问者，潜在客户，机会，客户和收入的数据。

Did you know that 74% of companies that weren’t exceeding revenue goals didn't know their visitor, lead, MQL, or sales opportunities numbers? How about that over 70% of companies not achieving their revenue goals generate fewer than 100 leads per month, and only 5% generate more than 2,500 leads per month? These are just a few examples of what you’ll find in the report.

For in-depth reports,download our Demand Generation Benchmarks Report。Below are some useful highlights.

Cost per Lead, by Industry

媒体和出版行业报告说，每笔铅的成本最低为11至25美元。雷竞技苹果下载官方版软件，信息技术和服务，营销机构和金融服务公司都报告，每笔线索的平均成本最高，为51美元至100美元。

通过年收入每月产生的潜在客户

意料之中的是,公司拥有更多的收入,thraybet电子竞技e more leads they generate. The differences are most drastic at the highest and lowest end of the spectrum: 82% of companies with $250,000 or less in annual revenue report generating less than 100 leads per month, whereas only 8% of companies generating $1 billion in annual revenue report less than 100 leads per month.

Leads per Month

We found that 58% of companies generated 500 leads per month or fewer, and 71% generated 1,000 or fewer. However, as we saw previously, the companies having the most success are also the ones generating the most leads.

Here's how the data broke down by company size:

Lead Generation Software

We found that the most successful teams use a formal system to organize and store leads: 46% use Google Docs, 41% use marketing automation software, and 37% use CRM software. (Hint for HubSpot customers:Google Drive integrates with bothHubSpot Marketing HubandHubspot CRM。)

Grow Better with Lead Generation

There you have it, folks. Now that you know more about how to generate leads for your business, we recommend you尝试HubSpot的免费潜在客户生成工具。Use it to add simple conversion assets to your site (or scrape your existing forms) to help you learn more about your site visitors and what content prompts them to convert.

最基本的我们已经在这篇博客是just the beginning. Keep creating great offers, CTAs, landing pages, and forms — and promote them in multi-channel environments. Be in close touch with your sales team to make sure you're handing off high-quality leads on a regular basis. Last but not least, never stop testing. The more you tweak and test every step of your inbound lead generation process, the more you'll improve lead quality and increase revenue.