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 contact potentially in your target. The challenge is to ensure that this contact is genuinely interested in your offer. That he starts interacting with you, turns into a qualified lead and gets even 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 must attract your prospects to you. This type of content is what we call a “Lead magnet” or “Gated content” in marketing terms. This 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 visitors' contact details. This therefore involves content that is only accessible after submitting a form, for example white papers, templates to download, 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 help you get many contacts. Not everyone will be your target. You can have 20,000 contacts in your database, but not all of them will be leads.  

Your customers were prospects before they were, and your prospects were suspects before they were. A suspect's behavior may 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 expressed interest in your offer. You must therefore reshuffle your database to differentiate between your qualified suspects and those who are not yet qualified. Do not hesitate to sort them to create the most qualitative database possible. If you do not do this sorting, your campaign statistics will be distorted and this will not allow you to 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 to be reassured, to know more about you. Especially in BtoB 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 , then they will be considered a cold lead who will need to be nurtured until they become mature enough for conversion. Hence Lead nurturing which consists of offering content adapted to your prospects and their needs. The objective is to create, maintain and maintain 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 be intended to generate sales or leads. Hence the interest in promoting your content to nourish 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 involves assigning a score to each prospect to identify those who have reached a more advanced stage in their purchasing cycle. This way, your salespeople can prioritize their actions on hot prospects qualified by marketing. These are called MQL leads or Marketing Qualified Leads. 

Lead scoring allows you not only to follow the evolution of your prospects, but also to evaluate their maturity, that is to say their conversion potential. If you would like to know more about this practice, we invite you to discover our article which shows you How to accurately 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 valuable time by using 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 of 20 million suspects. The platform's automated process will regularly generate qualified leads that your salespeople can easily convert into customers.