What All Marketers Should Do to Turn Suspects into Leads

The challenge for you, as a marketer, is to turn your suspects into leads. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the two. However, such a distinction can save you from costly, poorly targeted and less effective marketing actions. It is therefore essential to differentiate a prospect from a simple suspect.

A suspect is a potential prospect who is not yet qualified to be considered as such. It will only be when it has fulfilled certain conditions . A priori, they must have a very specific need, have expressed interest in your offer and have the ability to pay for the products or services you offer.

It is not difficult to obtain the contact details of a potentially contact in your target. The challenge is to ensure that this contact is really interested in your offer. That he begins to interact with you, turns into a qualified lead and gets closer to the conversion phase.

To turn your suspects into prospects, here are some best practices to apply.

1 – Use CTAs and Lead magnets in your content

Lead generation should be your priority when doing content marketing . Your content should attract your prospects to you. This type of content is what is called a “Lead magnet” or “Gated content” in marketing terms. It is web content that has been designed to transform a simple visitor to your website into an identified lead. This content, often premium, is offered in exchange for the visitors' contact information. This is therefore content that is only accessible after submitting a form, for example white papers, downloadable templates, checklists, etc.

The lead magnet can include different elements, but the most important is the CTA or call-to-action. This is an essential tool for prompting your visitors to take an action instantly. It often takes the form of a special button that particularly attracts the attention of the person browsing a web page. Once you click on it, you will be immediately redirected to another page. A CTA can be very effective when you use it to promote your content.

The Lead magnet can help you gradually increase the traffic of your website However, know that there is no point in gaining traffic and visibility if you cannot integrate this audience into your database . The ideal is to collect relevant information about your visitors.

2 – Sort your qualified suspects from those who are not

Inbound marketing strategies can allow you to get many contacts. Not all will be your target. You can have 20,000 contacts in your database , but they will not all be prospects.

Your customers were prospects before they became prospects, and your prospects were suspects before they became prospects. A suspect may, by their behavior, match your ideal customer profile, but you don't have enough information about them to qualify them. This target individual has never contacted your company or shown interest in your offering. You must therefore rework your database to differentiate your qualified suspects from those who are not yet qualified. Don't hesitate to sort them to create the most qualitative database possible. If you don't do this, your campaign statistics will be skewed and this will prevent you from making progress.

Now there is an easier way to make your job easier. You can automatically sort contacts in your database without wasting a lot of time. This is possible thanks to Magileads, the automated omnichannel platform.

3 – Don’t neglect lead nurturing

The majority of your prospects need reassurance and to learn more about you. Especially in B2B , where purchasing decisions are not impulsive. Before becoming customers, your prospects must go through different stages. If their interest in your brand has not yet been clearly identified , they will be considered a cold prospect who will need to be nurtured until they become mature enough for conversion. Hence lead nurturing , which consists of offering content tailored to your prospects and their needs. The goal is to create, maintain, and foster a lasting marketing relationship with them.

To develop such a relationship, sending personalized email sequences to your prospects can be a good initiative. This is a series of emails sent automatically to specific segments of people in your contact database. These emails can be triggered by filling out a contact form on a website for example, or by subscribing to a newsletter. Sending automatic emails is based on the concept of marketing automation .

These emails may aim to generate sales or leads. Hence, the importance of promoting your content to nurture your prospects and make them more mature.

4 – Use lead scoring to monitor the evolution of your prospects

Tracking the behavior of your prospects is the key to sending them impactful messages. And therefore lead them to be interested in your products or services.

In a lead nurturing and inbound marketing , lead scoring is very important. It consists in awarding a score to each prospect to identify those who have reached a more advanced stage in their purchase cycle. In this way, your salespeople can prioritize their actions on hot prospects qualified by marketing. This is called MQL or Marketing Qualified Leads leads. 

Lead scoring not only allows you to track the progress of your prospects, but also to assess their maturity, i.e., their conversion potential. If you'd like to learn more about this practice, we invite you to discover our article which shows you How to effectively score your prospects ?

5 – Stay active on social media

Always keep in mind that you need to communicate consistently with your suspects. Integrate yourself into their network so they understand who you are and how you run your organization. This process is a more subtle way of introducing yourself to this person.

If you found your suspects through social media, continue to regularly post relevant news articles and other items that would generally benefit your target market. Posting regularly can strengthen the relationship with your suspects. They get to know you. Your e-reputation will be considerably improved, your business will be more credible and your brand will also have more notoriety and visibility. You will be able to attract new prospects to conquer.

Note that you will save precious time to use the Magileads tool, which allows you to carry out your marketing campaign from A to Z, from targeting to retargeting . Your marketers will have access to a database made up of 20 million suspects. The automated platform process will regularly generate qualified prospects that your salespeople can easily convert to customers.

Transform their suspects into prospects

Expert references and credible studies

Suspects in prospects and data

• Harvard Business Review (2023) : “Companies using a lead nurturing approach see their conversion rates increase by 50% on average” Read the study
• Salesforce (2024) : “Marketing automation allows you to qualify 30% more leads” See the report
• Gartner (2023) : “Personalized campaigns generate 20% more sales than generic approaches” View the analysis

Experts recognized in suspects in prospects

• Neil Patel : “The key to converting suspects into prospects lies in analyzing the customer journey” Read his article
• Seth Godin : “Permission-based marketing is the most effective method for building trust” See his post
• Ann Handley : “Quality content is your best conversion tool” Read her analysis

Direct testimonies on prospects suspects

1. Marie Dupont, Marketing Manager at TechSolutions : “By applying these methods, we increased our conversion rate by 35% in 6 months” Read the full testimonial
2. Jean Martin, independent entrepreneur : “These strategies allowed me to triple my pipeline of qualified prospects” See his interview
3. Sophie Lambert, Marketing Director : “We have reduced our acquisition costs by 40% thanks to these techniques” Read the case study
4. Alexandre Roux, founder of StartUpX : “In 3 months, we transformed 60% of our suspects into hot prospects” See the testimonial
5. Émilie Chen, growth marketing consultant : “These fundamental principles have changed the way I approach marketing” Read her feedback

User experiences of prospects suspects

1. BNP Group : “The implementation of these strategies generated 25% more qualified leads” See the study
2. Small business BoulangerieDuCoin : “We doubled our customer base by applying these simple methods” Read the article
3. DataBrain Scale-up : “Our conversion rate increased by 40 points in one quarter” View the customer case
4. Michel Durand, independent salesperson : “These techniques allowed me to sign 3 new major accounts” Read his testimonial
5. WebCreators Agency : “We have optimized our lead qualification process using these methods” See the feedback

Stories and anecdotes on suspects in prospects

1. How Dopbox has multiplied its conversions by 10 Read the story
2. The qualification error which cost a startup € 500,000 to see the analysis
3. The LinkedIn Campaign which generated 1000 leads in 7 days Read the case
4. How a well -formulated email converted 60% of recipients to see the study
5. The A/B test which revealed the power of the personalized CTAs Read the results

Strategic segmentation: Suspects in prospects

Diagram of the conversion process :
[Image] Suspects → Contacting → Qualification → Nurturing → Prospects → Sale

Questions/Answers on prospects suspects

1. What is the first step to transform a suspect into a prospect?
Precise identification of his needs via open questions, as recommended by Salesforce in their qualification guide Read the guide

2. How long does it take to see results?
According to a Marketo study, 78% of companies see improvements in less than 3 months see data

3. What tool is essential for this transformation?
A well -configured CRM is essential, as HubSpot demonstrates in their analysis Read the article

4. How to measure the effectiveness of its strategy?
By following the suspicious conversion rate → prospect and the cost by lead, as explains Neil Patel see the method

5. What error is absolutely avoiding?
Neglect the qualification phase, an error that costs 30% of the time of sales teams according to Gartner Consult the study

6. How to adapt your strategy to VSEs?
By focusing on low-cost but highly personalized approaches, as recommended to read the analysis

7. What content works best?
Concrete case studies convert 45% better than promotional content (Demandgen Report) See figures

8. Should we favor digital or physical?
A combination of the two gives the best results according to Forrester Read research

9. How to manage current objections?
By anticipating the 5 main objections in your argument, technique proven by Gong.io See the study

10. What is the 2024 trend in terms of conversion?
Hyper-personalization thanks to AI, such as McKinsey analysis read the report