As a B2B marketing consultancy firm, the main question we face every day is, “How do I generate leads?” It is common for business owners and business development teams to ask questions about how to improve the lead generation process. Some frequently asked questions include:

• How do I make sure I’m paying attention to the highest potential incoming leads?
• How do I generate leads with marketing?
• How can I be sure that our tech stack and/or marketing infrastructure is working for us?

Like any good consultancy will tell you, the answer to this question depends.  Working with over X clients from over X industries, we’ve seen the solution that tackles lead generation is not one-size-fits-all. However, we’ve developed a generic lead generation framework to provide a roadmap to answer these questions for businesses interested in generating leads for increased growth.

Understanding the components of the framework

The Visualization. The first thing to know about the framework is that it’s an illustrated journey pathway. Illustrated in the form of the diagram, users understand where they’re starting and where they’re going to end up. The visualization also brings clarity to what is overall a very complex mix of activities, behaviors, metrics, and sales and marketing activities. It provides structure and focus to understand what your business is doing now and how it can improve.

The Metrics. Next, you’ll notice specific callouts for metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). These analytics hold the user accountable for each stage of the journey pathway. They also allow for troubleshooting and benchmarking, so you can direct efforts to improving your business’s efforts without wasting resources.

Action Checkpoints. Specific areas of the visualization call out key action steps the consumer must take before moving on to the next stage of the journey. These checkpoints are vital for understanding the intent of the customer and often provide valuable information, including the identity, of prospective leads. These are key action steps that must be taken for the journey to work and progress.

Before You Start

Before you use the Lead Generation Framework, here are a couple of key concepts that you need to understand first.

Consumer Journey

The framework is built on the assumption that your customers go through a typical customer journey, including these stages:

• Awareness – customers must first become aware of the company before they can interact
• Consideration – after customers know who you are, they might consider you for providing a solution to their needs
• Intent – Once a catalyst event occurs that causes a need for your services to arise, customers will have intent to buy from your company
• Evaluation – Given all the necessary information to make a decision, customers will evaluate you against other alternatives and their own internal criteria
• Buy – In this stage, the customer signs the contract and completes the purchase.
• Re-engagement – After buying, efforts to keep the customer and stay top-of-mind continue.

Incoming Lead Generators

The framework recognizes that there are multiple avenues through which incoming leads are generated, including digital marketing, traditional sales efforts, and re-engagement of current clients.

Qualification of Leads

The framework also recognizes that not all leads are equal. Inbound leads need to be qualified to make sure they fit within your ideal customer profile. Qualification ensures that the client will have their needs met, and you will remain profitable by serving the right client.

There are several different kinds of qualified leads:

• Information Qualified Leads
• Marketing Qualified Leads
• Sales Qualified Leads

The kind of qualified lead depends on the actions and information collected on each lead. The type of qualified lead will also dictate the appropriate response from your company to nurture and sustain the lead.

Reference our key terms dictionary for more information about each type of lead.

The Sales Fulfillment Process

Collecting inbound leads is only half of the framework. The other half is the traditional sales and fulfillment process to serve the client and provide the solution they were originally looking for. The pass-off between lead generation and lead fulfillment is an important stage of the framework that must be have adequate resources and attention paid to it to success.

Part 1: Building a Funnel for Incoming Leads

In the first part of the Lead Generation Framework, you’ll see several digital marketing activities geared towards pushing customers to becoming a funnel.

In this part, a customer passes through the Information Qualified Lead (IQL) stage and eventually becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).

Part 1 starts with two digital marketing tactics: search engine optimization and social media. For business-to-business (B2B) clients, the only social media that really matters in LinkedIn. These two services attract initial visits that eventually become leads down the road. They are vital for increasing reach and your available audience. If done correctly, these efforts are targeted from the beginning and resources are efficiently used to attract companies in your ideal customer profile.

From this initial stage, the customers are then directed towards engaging materials, typically in the form of downloads. Downloads provide great information about user activities and can even provide visitor information. These downloads generally fall into two different categories:

• Ungated content – content that does not require a form fill or exchange of information to download. Ungated content should include information that you want people to know about your business, because ungated content is downloaded and used at a higher rate.
• Gated content – content that requires a form fill or exchange of information to download, typically name, company name, and email. Gated content should include value, resource-oriented materials for your client, because people will only reveal personal information if they feel they are entering a mutually beneficial exchange.

The ultimate goal of this part of the framework is to drive leads to a form fill, which will include information about the project they’d like your help with, their contact information, and an opening to set up an initial call to learn more about them and their needs.

Part 2: Getting to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)

We know that leads come from a wide range of sources, including digital marketing efforts in Part 1 of the framework, and other avenues, like traditional sales calls, emails, phone calls, recommendations, or re-engaging previous customers.

In order to be considered a Sales Qualified Lead, the lead must meet the qualification criteria. This qualification criteria ensures that the leads with the highest potential receive the most resources in nurturing and maintaining the contact.

Qualification criteria can also allow you to score and prioritize incoming leads, so you and your sales team know where to focus first. Data collected from the previous parts also informs the actions your team needs to take and customizes the user experience.

For example, if you know that a customer downloaded your eBook on implementing your training program, your follow-up sales calls can be catered to answering their specific questions about implementation, instead of using the time to tell them what they already know. In other cases, if you know they haven’t interacted with your eBook, then you can cover important information for successful adoption of your program.

Part 3: Passing Off to Sales and Fulfillment

After the lead is qualified, the project then needs to go through the standard proposal/quote, approval, and final sale process. This is the “Buy” stage of the standard customer journey.

The client’s needs, if catalogued and recorded appropriately, will be incorporated into a final project proposal that will define the scope of work moving forward and set the client up for success throughout the project implementation. Data and metrics gathered through the previous parts of the framework will be vital to informing and customizing the user experience.

Re-engagement also starts here. After a project is successfully completed, or while the project is ongoing in its implementation, then the sales and marketing teams can be working to ensure the customer experience is exceptional, so repeat business is more likely. Keeping the client contact information for future re-engagement or tailored recommendations for resources will keep the customer for the long term and increase the customer’s lifetime value.

A Note about Customization

The framework presented in this whitepaper is generic. If a company tries to apply this framework as is, they will only see a limited amount of success. In order to maximize the value of this lead generation framework, there has to be customization. The customization should take into account the specific needs and processes of your business and your sales team.

The success of this framework may also require the implementation of a customer relationship management (CRM) system to house the necessary data for informed decision making throughout the framework.

Next Steps

If you have questions about this framework, contact our team. We can walk you through case studies of successful implementation of this framework and walk you through important steps to make sure you implement it correctly.

Appendix

Key Terms Dictionary

These definitions explain how these key terms are used in the whitepaper. Please note, these may be customized as you are implementing your own lead generation framework, depending on your processes and needs.

Leads – In this whitepaper, leads are companies, identities revealed or not, that may represent future business opportunities for your business. There is not a specific project or expressed interest associated with leads.

IQL – stands for information qualified lead. An information qualified lead is a lead that has learned about your business, is aware of your company and your services, but has not revealed their identity. IQLs are represented by quantitative metrics, typically through # of engaged sessions, views, followers, or impressions.

MQL – stands for marketing qualified lead. A marketing qualified lead is a lead that has engaged with marketing materials, and may have revealed their personal identity through a gated download.

SQL – stands for sales qualified lead. An incoming lead that meets the qualification criteria to be a SQL, with an expressed interest or project that matches the services of your business.

Re-engagement – after a customer has purchased from you, re-engagement addresses the activities that keep that customer engaged with your business and services to foster repeat business.