The Importance of Lead Generation In the world of marketing, there are few concepts more important than lead generation. Regardless of the type of industry you're operating in, the success of your business will depend not only on existing customers that you manage to turn into repeat ones through high quality products and services, but a steady stream of new people coming in the door. The process of lead generation is not necessarily a simple one, though, and can be broken down into a few core concepts that you need to understand moving forward. The Value of Lead Generation? A lead is one thing. A qualified lead is something else entirely. One thing that you ​don’t ​want to do is subject your sales team to hour after hour of making cold calls, hoping to randomly come across those one or two people who may actually be interested in what you have to say. Thankfully, with the advent of digital marketing, lead generation is much easier now than it has ever been. In essence, the mutual relationship between a customer and a business begins at the moment of lead generation. Capturing emails is one way to get this process started. If you wrote an eBook with content relevant to your target audience, for example, you might publicize the release of that eBook and set up a form on a ​landing page ​ for people to use when looking for more information. In exchange for downloading that free eBook, they can provide their name, email address, telephone number and more—thus providing you with the actionable information you need to then strengthen the relationship with that customer over time. Suddenly, you're no longer "stabbing in the dark," hoping to find someone that might be worth going after. After capturing emails and performing other data collection tasks, you have a real point of entry into someone who has already showed an interest in what you have to offer, thus improving your chances of taking that lead and converting it into a sale. This is the power of lead generation at work. Lead Generation: The Facts According to a study that was conducted by the ​ ​Hinge Research Institute ​, companies that generated 60% or more of their leads on the Internet found that they were overall two times as profitable as those companies that were generating less than 20% of their overall leads online. In a way, capturing emails and other information through lead generation and higher conversion rates typically go hand-in-hand. The more successful you are at one, the more successful you'll be at the other. If it accomplishes nothing else, lead generation breaks down the door between the customer and the company in a bold new way. Not only is it a great way to increase the total number and quality of leads, it also helps improve productivity because the leads are naturally a higher quality and helps to align strategies between your sales and marketing teams at the exact same time. These types of digital strategies are ones that you can't afford to ignore. Ready to start generating leads for your business? Learn how you can capture leads with edocr ​! Thank you for your support & use of edocr. (This document is a googledoc, easily edited as needed (and has been like five times already!) - see how to use googledocs, sheets & slides in edocr ​here ​.)