Investing in marketing strategies to attract consumers’ attention is essential for any business. But before that, you need to understand the difference between a lead and a prospect to achieve success with such actions.
Not all leads reach the database and become prospects. Confusion between the two terms can be detrimental when it comes to guiding potential customers towards a purchasing decision.
In this post, understand the main characteristics of leads, prospects and the actions indicated for each stage of the funnel.
What are leads?
In short, leads are consumers who spontaneously provide their paraguay whatsapp data data and information — such as name, email and telephone number — to start a relationship with the company.
This data allows you to identify the stages of the sales flowchart that the potential customer is in. This allows you to educate them with relevant content until the purchase decision is made.
What are prospects?
Prospects are people or companies that have shown interest in your company's solution and have left their information. Although the chances of closing a deal in the future are good, they have not yet identified what their real pain points or needs are at this prospecting stage.
What is the difference between a lead and a prospect?
There is a difference between a lead and a prospect, although both are potential customers. For a lead to be considered a prospect, they must be aligned with your business's persona, whether by their level of engagement or by the stage they are at in the purchasing journey.
Even though the lead has spontaneously entered the marketing funnel and been fed with information that leads them to decide to make a purchase, they are still not sure about making the purchase.
The prospect has gone through the same process and has demonstrated that he is aligned with what you expect from a customer. Since he is at a more advanced stage of the funnel, he should receive a more direct sales approach, with the aim of being converted into a customer.
What actions are recommended for each stage of the funnel?
After understanding the difference between a lead and a prospect, the next step is to define the actions to increase the opportunities to close a deal. Check it out below.
Meet the persona
Defining the business persona is essential so that you can develop a strategy targeted at each stage of the sales funnel. Using characteristics of real customers, you will be able to define everything from the language used to create the chatbot to the segmentation for boosting posts.
Make the qualification
In addition to creating targeted campaigns on social media, you should invest in ads with keywords that are very specific to your company (long tail).
Also invest in landing pages and professional networks, such as LinkedIn. This will enable you to qualify the lead and forward them to other stages of the funnel.
Know the funnel stages
While the top of the funnel aims to stimulate the interest of this audience, the middle of the funnel is where the leads are located. The bottom of the funnel corresponds to potential buyers who are more mature in terms of decision-making, i.e., prospects.
Understanding the customer's journey through the sales funnel is essential to increasing the chances of closing a deal. This is because it allows you to present your target audience with more precise content and email marketing, according to their needs and knowledge of the unique features of your product.