Lead Generation: what it is, how it is done and why it is so important for companies

Making the best strategic choices for your business has become a must for all companies that want to achieve results. Lead Generation is that set of marketing actions aimed at acquiring and generating interested contacts.

A lead, in fact, is a potential customer interested in the product/service offered by a company, who has got in touch with us by leaving their details. Building a list of contacts is possible through a careful lead generation strategy, which can use both online and offline advertising and acquisition tools.

The offline world still uses word of mouth, cold calling, buying advertising space on TV and radio, and participation in trade fairs and events. Online communication, on the other hand, has assumed impressive dominance and is now one of the most powerful means of lead generation and conversion.

A good marketing strategy focused on lead generation can be the most useful tool for growing a company's turnover, generating more sales and more interested contacts (so-called prospects) in the medium to long term. In fact, a coherent and reasoned path must be structured, made up of different techniques and strategies, in order to transform leads into loyal customers.

What is Lead Generation

Lead Generation, unlike traditional sales systems, is that set of marketing techniques that enable a company to generate potential contacts, attracting people who are genuinely interested.

Acquiring new customers with lead generation means building relationships and gaining the trust of new customers month after month, so that they choose and continue to choose the company's product and/or service.

In the past, to acquire contacts, companies used word-of-mouth from sales consultants attending trade fairs or industry events, or focused all their attention on classic 'cold calls'. Today, tools such as websites, social networks or e-mail marketing have overturned the way of doing lead generation. The buying decision-making process has totally changed.

How to acquire potential customers: the tools

It is not the end that is important, but above all the means. To get the desired results from lead generation campaigns, it is necessary to use the most useful tools. In the digital world, we are talking about SEO, organic positioning activities on search engines; SEM; Content Marketing; Social Media Marketing; Email Marketing.

Through the most performing channels, companies can intercept and consequently convert interested users into potential customers, by setting up a whole series of lead nurturing activities and constant monitoring of results, which can quantify the return of the various lead generation actions.

One of the most widely used tools in the contact acquisition phase is the Squeeze Page, fundamental for a lead generation campaign, where users are provided with valuable content (e.g. eBook, video-tutorial, etc.) in exchange for their personal data, to start building their own profiled database of potential customers.