What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is attracting and capturing potential customers who have shown interest in your product or service. It is the first step in the funnel and keeps feeding the sales process with new opportunities.

Lead generation channels

SEO and organic traffic for inbound leads, Google Ads and Meta Ads for paid leads, cold email for direct outreach, and social media, webinars and lead magnets for inbound lead generation.

Lead qualification

Not every lead is equally valuable. An MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) has shown enough engagement for marketing follow-up. An SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) is ready for a sales conversation. Use an ICP to judge whether a lead fits your ideal customer profile.

Lead generation and lead nurturing

Generating leads is followed by lead nurturing: keeping leads warm with email and relevant content until they are ready to buy. Most leads are not ready to buy at first contact.

What is a good cost per lead?

That depends on the average order value and the conversion rate from leads to customers. A lead should never cost more than the margin on the average deal.

B2B versus B2C lead generation?

B2B focuses on quality and longer decision cycles, B2C on volume and speed. More at developers.google.com/search.