If you are attracting a sizeable number of visitors to your website, you need a way of organising these leads, so that you know how to engage with them according to their profile and level of interaction so far. This method of organisation is known as segmentation. In this blog, we look at how to segment your leads, according to their point on the customer journey.
As soon as somebody visits your website, you could count them as a type of lead. Whether they progress to becoming a marketing or sales qualified lead, and eventually a customer, can be influenced by how you design your 'customer journey'.
Just browsing
This is a visitor who has spent time on your site. They could have found your home page from a search engine or another destination such as a social media channel. You might not have much detailed information about them, other than details which they have provided (through a call to action, signup or contact form) or data from a program such as Google Analytics, which can tell you where they arrived from, where they are located, which pages they visited, and how long they spent on the site.
Interested to learn more
If your lead has submitted their details through a call to action (CTA)within your content which invited them to "learn more" on a certain topic, they can be segmented as such. This would be the second stage for a lead on the customer journey, at which you could provide them with further content, and some subtly placed information on your product or service, which invites more interaction.
Marketing qualified
If a lead has explicitly expressed a desire to learn more about your product or service, you can segment them as a marketing qualified lead. They may have made a direct enquiry related to your offering or followed a CTA which invites them to "find out more" or similar. That means they are ready for information that details your products or service, your expertise and your experience, in order to help them consider a buy.
Sales qualified
The next segment indicates that your lead is now in the decision phase. A Sales Qualified Lead might have been sent several pieces of marketing collateral, spoken with a team member over the phone, made specific enquiries about a certain product, and read information related to the item. This is when your sales team can spring into action and 'seal the deal', by making a pitch or offering a specific product. Your sales team might like to further segment sales qualified leads by attributing an individual score to each lead, based on 'readiness'.
Buyers
Buyers are more than just a lead - they are a customer! But that doesn't mean that they have finished the customer journey. Customers should be marketed to based on the previous products and services which they have bought, and also presented with new types of products and services which they might be interested in. Just like a lead at an earlier stage, customers should be nurtured, rather than bombarded with offers.
Referrers
Your loyal customers can become ambassadors for your brand, so long as you give them the tools to do so. When you are consistently providing them with a product or service which they value, customers are typically happy to spread the word. You could segment these happy customers as 'referrers', and concentrate on encouraging them to follow or like your social media channels. This can keep them updated with all your latest content, and enable easy sharing on their own channels.
Above are six ways to segment your leads. Don't try and force them along. Concentrate on providing the right information, at the right time.
