Among the different facets of marketing, lead management is an ideal solution to improve your conversion rate. It is based on “leads,” i.e., potential customers, thanks to 3 main fields of action. With lead management, we accumulate leads, classify them, and then we try to maintain good relationships with the most prolific ones. In the end, there are 3 advantages to this practice: better customer experience, higher productivity, and more sales. More details are available below.
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Summary
- The definition of lead management
- Lead management and its 3 main benefits
- The 3 steps of a good lead management strategy
The definition of lead management
Lead management consists of tracking, identifying, and following up on the situation of potential prospects and customers. These so-called “leads” are part of the funnel marketing management strategies. Here, the objective is clear: convert prospects and build customer loyalty as much as possible. This management mode is a good solution for renewing commercial processes. In other words, it aims to end classic spreadsheets.
So, to get these new prospects, it is necessary to use good practices in this field. To do this, brands personalize their communication according to the lead’s position in the conversion funnel. We will detail them further in this article.
Let’s take the case of a B2B2C e-commerce platform. Here, a high-quality lead will be a user who has visited the web domain several times. He then becomes a priority marketing target in the eyes of brands, which will guide him along the purchase funnel.
Lead management aims to attract users before converting them into loyal customers.
Lead management and its 3 main benefits
Why use lead management? We list below 3 arguments in favor of this practice: customer experience, productivity, and sales acceleration.
Improving the customer experience
Given the growing competition in the market, the customer experience is becoming a major differentiating factor for brands. Indeed, pushing prospects to show an interest in your offer requires a lead management policy. In addition, brands can then:
- Make the buying experience simpler and more emotionally focused, as proposed by experiential marketing
- Maintain an editorial calendar provided to generate identification with the product/service: articles, podcasts, videos, and so on.
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In the case of services, do not hesitate to create enriching content without revealing all your secrets. Engaging customers/users helps brands optimize their conversion rate.
Better productivity of the sales teams
Secondly, good lead management is not only effective for the sales of a brand. It also improves the relationship between the different departments of a structure. Indeed, efficiently managing leads implies the centralization of prospects and customer data. Thanks to this, the marketing and sales teams benefit from a clear and joint vision of adopting commercial strategies. The entire staff works with the same goal, and the efforts pay off within the lead marketing funnel. Therefore, lead management is a good way to guarantee the achievement of a company’s annual objectives.
By centralizing customer data, lead management helps to set common and clearer objectives.
Acceleration of the sales process
Finally, what could be better than lead management to accelerate your sales processes? Indeed, we have already mentioned the clear vision it offers, but there is more. In addition to centralizing lead data, it also improves the quality of this data. Brands then propose better answers to latent needs. So, it encourages cross-selling, that is, additional products/services. Find the definition of this term in the video below.
Furthermore, good lead management processes specify the exact position of the prospect in the marketing funnel. It is true that more data, and better internal communication, help to get a clearer picture of the current status of your potential customers.
3 steps for a good lead management strategy
We conclude this article by presenting you with the best practices in lead management. Here are the 3 main axes of a good tactic to retain your customers: lead generation, organized database, and multiplication of customer relationships.
Generate leads
First, practicing lead management requires a good understanding of the practice. Indeed, we must maintain sight of the objective: to discover and attract new customers. So, the most important step is to generate as many leads as possible. To do so, companies can play on content-based lead generation strategies. In the case of a blog, feel free to solicit the user as many times as possible to collect data about them.
Organize your prospect database
Next, companies interested in lead management must focus on capturing and qualifying prospects. In concrete terms, these processes help brands identify and classify their prospects according to their propensity to become customers. In short, these two terms can be defined as follows:
- Lead capture: obtaining, then keeping the contact information of potential customers
- Qualification of prospects: assessing prospects in terms of their potential value and adherence to the company’s brand image.
Thus, qualified prospects are identified, and we communicate effectively to sell more and to more customers.
Thanks to this, companies focus their efforts on the most promising prospects! This is how the customer conversion rate improves.
Multiplying customer relations
Finally, as leads multiply and are increasingly converted into customers, it is now the relationship phase that counts. Here, communication efforts are key. Brands are looking to increase their sales by maintaining strong customer relationships. There are several levers of action:
- Maintaining regular contact with their most qualified prospects
- Provide relevant information to promising prospects to convert them more quickly.
- Determine the typical profiles of customers
- Personalize marketing campaigns
- Reward the best customers to promote advocacy marketing
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