What is a Lead in Digital Marketing

Written by Bridgette Weller Brown
on 09 Feb 2021

Have you ever identified a contact as a potential customer?

When we’re talking about marketing funnels, a lead is someone who sits right at the top of the funnel (and isn’t yet qualified).

They might’ve gotten there by downloading a piece of content from your website (an E-Book, a whitepaper etc.) in exchange for their contact details.

Let’s begin with the basics.

(READ: Why NAILING a SUCCESSFUL E-Commerce Campaign is CRUCIAL in 2021)

What is a lead?

According to our friends at Hubspot, a lead is a person who indicates interest in a company’s product and/or service.

A potential customer can become a lead when they hear from you or your business (Instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their information).

Man with megaphone

What are lead generators?

Lead generators are strategies you can use to attract potential customers and guide them towards what your business has to offer.

This means providing enough valuable information to get potential customers naturally interested in what your business has to offer.

‘It’s a way of warming up potential customers to your business and getting them on the path to eventually making a purchase,’ according to Hubspot.

Hubspot also notes that ‘Once you put all of these things together, you can use social media channels to drive traffic to your landing page to start generating leads.’

(READ: 3 Ways to Get More Action From Your Current Leads)

Where Should You Promote Your Landing Page?

Let’s talk about the face of lead generation.

Ads and Retargeting

The sole purpose of an ad is to get people to take action.
Ads and retargeting ads can be the main drivers of traffic to your landing page. These ads can be created on many platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, TikTok, Pinterest; you name it.

Which platform you use for your ads is determined by where your target audience is. If you ran a cleaning business, for example, you could create a search campaign targeting people searching for cleaners in your local area.

You could then retarget visitors via Facebook who didn’t convert the first time.

Put simply, strategically marketing on these platforms is one of the best ways to get your landing page in front of your potential customers.

(READ: The Marketing Genius of Sea-Monkeys)

Content

Content is a great way to guide users to a landing page.

By creating value-driven, free content that provides visitors with an enriching and engaging experience, you’re bound to get the ‘click’.

The more delighted a potential customer is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.

Content can be in the form of a video, such as a testimonial or an informational video on a certain topic, a blog post etc. Get creative with your content ideas and stand out from the crowd.

(READ: Everything Wrong With The Social Dilemma)

Email

Email is a great place to reach the people who already know your brand and product or service. It can be easier to ask them to take action since they’ve previously subscribed to your list.

Blog

The great thing about using your blog posts to promote an offer is to tailor the entire piece to the end goal. So, if your request is selling shoes online, then you can write a blog post about the top shoe trends for summer, which would make your CTA highly relevant and easy to click.

(READ: Our 2021 Digital Marketing Predicted Trends)

Social Media

Social media platforms make it easy to guide your followers to take action, from the swipe up option on Instagram stories to links in the bio, to posting a direct link to Facebook and LinkedIn.

So there we have it; What is a lead in digital marketing, explained!

Let us know what you think in the comments down below.

(READ: What NOT To WEAR: 7 Tips for Choosing the Right Clothes for Your Marketing Video)

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