Segmenting your leads is a way of dividing your contacts into groups with specific and representative information within your lead base to organize your content and direct your actions until the purchase closing stage.
For example, your leads attracted through Facebook should be nurtured differently than leads attracted by a particular blog post. Furthermore, leads of different ages or regions also tend to absorb content in different ways.
Segmentation occurs from a combination of factors to group your leads. Later, we’ll discuss the various ways to segment your leads according to your goals.
Understanding what lead segmentation is is recognizing that your potential customers have different needs and characteristics that are targeted in different ways from specific strategies.
The reasons for you to adopt this practice
By collecting information in forms, your company can create identification filters from your lead base.
These filters work as a personalized list that can target specific marketing actions, ensuring the nurturing of leads and prioritizing those with the greatest purchasing potential.
So, the first advantage of lead segmentation is content personalization. Using specific digital marketing techniques for each targeted group increases the chances of interaction.
This means dedicating time and money to creating assertive actions that facilitate the lead’s journey through the sales funnel.
Mapping the lead profile also helps you send the right message to the right person. Aligning the content of your message to the customer’s needs shows that you really know and care about your leads’ interests.
Another advantage is engagement in campaigns. Segmenting your leads allows you to understand the best strategies to engage leads and ensure they take the expected actions.
All of this results in increased conversion rates and sales. More engaged leads, more nurtured leads, and, consequently, more impact your actions.
In addition, there is a decrease in the cost of acquiring customers and a more significant reach that translate into positive results for your marketing team and your sales team.
Once you understand what lead segmentation is and what its advantages are, you need to know the different forms of segmentation that make this technique well developed.
How to segment your leads
The lead segmentation characteristics must be thought to guarantee the best result according to the intent of your campaign.
Recognizing lead segmentation is also meant recognizing the ideal listings for your strategy.
Collect data. Marketing automation tools and digital marketing techniques are great allies in this regard.
Use technology to classify your leads and to spread personalized content. Keep an eye on your website traffic, forms and purchase histories of your leads and use this information to segment them according to their online behavior.
This means being aware of the materials they consume, the social media they use the most, their search terms and their engagement with your campaign.
This combined information can create effective and functional segmentation lists that determine where the lead is located in the buying journey and what are the best approaches to ensure the deal is closed.
One of the main lead segmentation processes consists of assigning notes to a lead based on the configuration of their profile and their interests aligned with the intention of your company. We call this practice Lead Scoring.
Lead Scoring: analysis and selection.
Lead Scoring, in direct translation, represents the lead score from behavior analysis.
This process is used to separate and prioritize the leads most prepared to close a purchase. The idea is that the analysis of leads becomes faster and more accurate. Thus, the work is more objective and focused for both the marketing team and the sales team.
For this, it is necessary to use inbound marketing techniques to analyze the profile and interests of leads, based on the pages they visit and the materials they consume to place them more or less prominently in the sales funnel.
Segmentation Criteria
We already understand what lead segmentation is, its benefits, and one of the validation processes of this practice, lead scoring.
Now, let’s think about the criteria you can use to evaluate leads and organize your targeting lists.
The lead profile information
Collecting data from forms is the simplest way to segment your lead.
This is because filling out the form is exactly what converts a visitor to a lead, that is, the first declaration of interest of the potential customer in purchasing your content.
In these forms, you can understand who your lead is based on demographic information such as age, gender, social class, position in the company you work for, location and other characteristics that, when combined with other means of segmentation, can be effective and attractive. .
Determining ideal profiles can be a strategy to identify patterns of behavior and similarity with your business persona.
The stage in the sales funnel
In general, Inbound Marketing uses the sales funnel to automatically segment your leads.
The “deeper” your lead is in the sales funnel, the more interested in your product they are.
In this case, the focus is on the distribution of materials: the closer to the bottom of the funnel, the denser and more specific the offered material becomes. Not just to secure your lead’s interest, but to nurture them enough to secure the closing of a sale.
Communication with the lead is also different according to their position in the sales funnel. Understanding this segmentation helps your marketing team better reach your audience.
The contact platform
When your marketing strategy is publicized in different media, it is important to recognize which one your lead was attracted to.
We exemplify that a lead attracted by action on Facebook is different from a lead attracted by a blog post. Why?
In this case, the lead attracted by social media probably needs to find out more about your business’s platform and market, since they probably didn’t look for your service directly. Many of them are in the discovery stage of the sales funnel.
Meanwhile, the lead converted through the blog has necessarily already performed a targeted search to find your post, right? He already has an idea of the term he’s looking for help, as he had to type it into the search engine and filter the results.
The platform where your lead was attracted is very important for mapping their behavior. Whether through social media, blogs or emails, it is possible to segment your leads based on this criterion and obtain a good view of reach and results.
The content consumed
This criterion is perhaps the most important. After all, it is also included in the formulation of the other criteria.
Understanding what your lead consumes is also understanding your stage in the sales funnel and which are the main access platforms.
Segmenting your lead base using this criterion also means directing those leads to their areas of interest within the campaign.
That is, you must observe the material it consumes in order to introduce it to other similar materials. This maintenance serves as lead nurturing and interest identification.
Thus, you can separate your materials and offer them to those who best serve, without saturating or disinteresting other leads.
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