ROI Marketing: Defining Prospects, Leads and Opportunities

Great ROI Marketing Depends On Knowing the Difference

-Everyone within your organization, specifically those who are involved in Marketing and Sales, should know the different between Prospects, Leads and Opportunities. Not only should the definition of each be known, but the exact point in which one progresses into the other should be laid out.

If you look at your website?s analytics, you know there is a difference between Prospects, Leads and Opportunities. Not everyone who visits your website is engaging with your content and not everyone engaging with you ends up being a customer. But, what exactly does a Prospect look like? Why are Prospects important?

ROI Marketing: Prospects

The above is a screenshot of our ?Prospects? page (using HubSpot analytics). You can see that there is not much information available other than the Company name (or Internet Service Provider), how many pages seen, visits, and contacts from that Company who have registered on the site. It also shows the referral site and allows you to search Linkedin based on the aforementioned criteria (a great HubSpot feature).

You might be wondering how you can glean any kind of information from these analytics. Well, you usually can?t figure out a name or contact information for each Prospect and thanks to Google nixing keyword data, you can?t generally see what they searched for when they arrived on your site.

The good news is, however, you can click on each company and see:

• Number of visitors from this Company
• Page URL(s)
• Medium
• Page seen
• Time seen
• Specific referral URLs
• Geographic location

Why is this information important?

This information allows you to see if your digital marketing efforts are working. If you?re focusing on a specific region, size of company, or promoting a certain PPC campaign ? evaluating your prospect data assists in your analysis of your overall marketing efforts and ultimately Marketing ROI.

ROI Marketing: Defining Leads

Leads are prospects who take an action on your website by submitting their contact information. Leads are typically looking for information to solve a problem and they will exchange their personal details for an ebook, whitepaper, infographic, etc. that helps solve their problem.

The way to capture information and convert a prospect into a lead is through the strategic placement of forms. Form should be placed on landing pages and should require the visitor to submit his or her information before downloading.

Once the visitor fills out his or her information, you can contact them (permission marketing) and they have the answer they were initially seeking.

Other characteristics that define a Lead can be someone who:

• Has downloaded a report
• Has subscribed to your blog or newsletter
• Clicked on a product pricing page

Now you need to categorize these leads into ?cold leads? and ?opportunities?…

ROI Marketing: Defining Opportunities

A ?warm lead? or opportunity has to meet a threshold score before you want to turn it over to your Sales team. Someone who has downloaded an ebook is considered a Lead for marketing, but it does not necessarily mean it’s an Opportunity to turn over to Sales.

You should get together with your sales team and outline specific goals that each lead should meet before the transfer to Sales. These specific goals vary from business, industry and target customer.

Commonly used criteria are:

• Requested a one-on-one
• Downloaded multiple ebooks
• Viewed a product video
• Asked for a demo
• Registered for one of your webinars

Once a lead has met a goals or a combination of goals, the lead can now be considered an Opportunity. Having goals that distinguish Leads and Opportunities allows for Sales and Marketing to agree on who is working on which and neither team is wasting time on engaging visitors who are not interested.

Different Weight for Different Actions

Again, it is important to know the difference between a Prospect, Lead and Opportunity. From a Marketing-standpoint, you need to give each one targeted messages and mediums to convert each from one stage to the next. From a Sales-standpoint you need to know who is ready to be contacted for a possible sale.

Setting up a Lead scoring system is beneficial to your bottom line. It provides boundless opportunity and insight into your digital marketing efforts and improves internal alignment between Sales and Marketing. Goal setting is pivotal!

For more information on Lead scoring, you can request a free consultation with us!

Marketing Matters Inbound?is an inbound marketing firm specializing in online conversions, content?strategy, call-to-action mapping and traditional media placement. Our experience in?B2B digital?marketing?and?traditional media?allows us to deliver results through a strategic media mix. We believe in?aligning and merging marketing and sales/operations for optimal return on your marketing investment.