As a business owner, your main focus is to make money. And in order to make money, you need to have customers. But how do you turn a potential customer into an actual customer? This is where the lead process or lead flow comes in. The lead process is the path that a potential customer takes from being a lead to becoming a customer. This path is often called the Customer Journey.
Before someone becomes a lead, they need to be aware of your business and the solutions that you offer. This is where advertising campaigns come in. Advertising campaigns can be done through various platforms such as Google Ads, TV ads, and social media ads. It is important to define the problem that the potential customer has and show that you have a solution for it. You don’t necessarily need to pay for advertising as organic social media can help with this process. Either way, potential customers (or leads) need to hear about you multiple times before they will connect you with their problem. This can be done through different platforms and mediums to have a wide net to connect with them.
Once a potential customer takes some kind of action such as visiting your website, or reading a post on social media, they become an anonymous prospect. At this point, you don’t know who they are, but they have shown interest in your business. As they continue to engage with your business, they may eventually take an action that gives you their name and email address, which turns them into a lead. This could be downloading a lead magnet, signing up for a newsletter, or potentially even liking a post on social media.
As a lead, they need to be moved down the path towards becoming a customer. This can be done through various methods such as email drip campaigns, outreach through social media, and continued exposure to your content. The goal is to build trust in your business and show that you are an expert in your field.
Eventually, you will provide them with specific call-to-actions (CTAs) that they can click on to become a customer. The goal is that each CTA moves them through the customer journey.
It is important to have a defined lead process in your business. This process should be tracked using a customer relationship management platform (CRM) so that you can keep track of your leads and move them down the path towards becoming a customer.
In the early days of your business, you don’t need a complicated technology system. You need to be testing through manual efforts and trying to find things that work to move those leads from “I don’t know about you” to “I want to give you my money.”
Having a clearly defined process means that you are able to track what works and what doesn’t and continually improve this process. It is much better than just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.
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