We were delighted this week to produce an eBook for Perfect Octave. Entitled 'The only guide you'll ever need to Playing Music in Your Business', this eBook is a guide to music licencing in the UK, containing all the do's and don'ts to playing music legally in a business.
eBooks are a fantastic tool for lead generation, if used correctly, on your website.
What is Lead Generation?
A lead is a person who indicates an interest in a company's product or service in some way, shape, or form, and the download of an eBook can indicate just that. Other examples include job applications, blog posts, coupons, live events, and online content.
Leads are an important lifeblood of any given business and they typically form part of a broader cycle in the process of generating business, falling into four categories;
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
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 or an eBook.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
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)
Contacts who've used your product and taken actions that indicate interest in becoming a paying customer. PQLs exist for companies who offer a product trial or a free or limited version of their product (like HubSpot CRM!) 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.
Service Qualified Lead
Contacts or customers who've indicated to your service team that they're interested in becoming a paying customer. An example of a 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.
With lead generation activities it is vitally important each area of a business is engaged (or automated) enough to recognise when they receive a lead and aligned closely enough to sales to hand over the lead in whichever qualified state it is received, for the sales team to receive and action the lead with sales activities, typically to agreed service levels and times.
This is often agreed in service levels agreements (SLA's) between departments so leads are actioned in a timely manner and not allowed to fall between the cracks.
So now you understand the basics of lead generation, how do your organisations' lead generation activities perform?
Is your organisation looking for better returns on it lead generation activities?
Read Full Case Study here.
