We can classify a lead as any person or company that shows interest in your service, product or content. It is a potential client, which needs to be worked on within the sales funnel to actually become a customer. To understand more deeply about what leads are and how to turn them into customers, we must also understand how we relate to them through Inbound Marketing.
It is not enough to understand the profile of a certain target audience. It is necessary to go further in strategies and decision-making that involve capturing, managing and converting leads. These strategies must be based on the study of people’s behavior, the market and your own institution. While many understand that to attract leads It is necessary to change the entire personality of your educational institution, what actually brings positive results is the way in which institutions show their value.
That is why it is important to know the concepts and definitions of digital marketing, clearly structuring the relationship between “the organization and people''. This entire relationship to be built will directly influence the development of a suitable sales funnel, who knows the path that the lead takes, until becoming a student.
What you will see in the post:
The importance of generating leads
But how does this work in Inbound Marketing and applies to the sales funnel?
Good reading!
What are leads?
When one client or consumer, interested in consuming products from a certain brand, provides their contact details, becoming your lead. In other words, leads are potential customers who show interest in a specific product or service from a company.
It is common to have doubts regarding the definition of leads and prospects. So let's clarify! While prospects remain at the beginning of their search for information and have not yet identified the need to purchase, leads show interest in consumption and fit within your buyer profile. That's simple.
To summarize, within the action scenario of inbound marketing and Educational Marketing, leads are pre-university students who are in the process of deciding on a course or university. When well managed, they are strong candidates for your educational institution.
The importance of generating leads
Lead generation offers real and tangible opportunities for a considerable increase in enrollment numbers. This is because relationship management in decision funnel is a mandatory subject for every manager who seeks to develop relevant work in the digital environment. This relationship occurs through the intelligent management of leads and their movement from content channels to your classroom.
Working with relevant content is an excellent way to optimize student acquisition with inbound marketing. Whether through infographics, streaming videos, gamification or even webinars, all of this contributes to the lead reaching you. With the lead in hand, it’s time to understand why the sales funnel stage.
The sales funnel
To facilitate our understanding of the sales funnel, we must understand that it is not just a step visualization model. In fact, the sales funnel is a strategic model that, through the construction of stages, reveals the customer's journey, from the first contact with the product brand to the purchase phase. It is the simplified design of the path a prospect takes to become a lead, and what a lead does to become a customer.
When we think about the path that students take until their graduation day, we often don't imagine how many stages and processes of information, reflection and decision-making they have gone through. It all starts much earlier, when they understand that in the 3rd year of high school they must make a decision and choose a course at an institution if they want to enter university. The dialogue between educational institutions and students must start there. This is why many colleges offer high school and technical courses. These institutions aim to capture attention and generate a relationship with their “future university”, from then on.
But how does this work in Inbound Marketing and applies to the sales funnel?
The entire journey that this student takes online, before, during and after the purchase, is related to the steps defined in the funnel. These steps are important so that you understand the needs of your potential customers and develop good attraction strategies. In this journey, at each stage, an action must be defined for the customer to move on to the next one. And it doesn't end at graduation. After all, we want him to start his postgraduate, master's and doctorate studies, right?
Read too:
- Inbound Marketing: 7 metrics to track and optimize;
- What is link building? Learn how to make it successful;
- How to create a landing page? The 7 best practices!
Funnel steps
To know the stages of the funnel It's super important. There are strategists who divide the funnel into 5 or 7 phases, depending on the business and its target audience. To simplify, the sales funnel is commonly divided into 3 main stages:
- TOPO: It is the knowledge stage, in which the person did not know what their needs were and, only upon contact with its content, begins to reflect on whether or not to purchase your product. It's the ideal time to show yourself relevant.
- QUITE: In the middle of the funnel, the person understands that they have a problem that needs to be solved and then begins to consider a solution. At this point you must position yourself as a solver.
- BOTTOM: At this stage of the funnel, the lead realizes that they cannot solve the problem they identified on their own. This is when you must show yourself as the best option.
How to set up a suitable sales funnel
The main focus is to move the potential customer towards purchase. Never lose sight of this. To help you with this, we’ve put together some best practices for building your sales funnel:
1 - Knowledge is everything
Start at the top of the funnel and understand why your institution was, is or could be relevant to the lead at this stage. Knowing how users experience your content for the first time is a key point. In short, the ideal is to know your leads, your content and your brand well!
2 – Be objective
Have a well-defined objective in your strategy. Many sales are lost because managers get lost in the flow of information and saturate the lead with what they don't need. Whatever you understand to be solving the problem of those who consume your content, must always come first.
3 – Don’t be in a hurry
Sometimes the purchasing journey can take longer than expected. No problem. Of course, a faster purchase journey can help you if you need a faster inbound flow. However, having patience to build a trusting relationship is the best thing to do.
Rushing the lead through the funnel because you are in a hurry can be quite a strategy to break the solidity of your conversions. Build steps that work at the correct speed and you won't have a headache.
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