What are leads: a glossary for small businesses
Below are six terms a small business hears while looking for customers: what leads are, how hot leads differ from cold ones, what lead generation is and a few neighbouring words. Each explanation starts with the answer and takes a few sentences.
These are general definitions used in marketing and sales, not our inventions. In Namir the word «lead» has a narrower meaning: a public post where someone asks. That is said separately at the end.
Updated
What are leads
In sales a lead is a potential customer: a contact you could sell something to. The word is used loosely, so leads are graded by readiness to buy into hot, warm and cold. A hot lead is already looking for someone to buy from, and a cold one does not know you yet.
A lead is not yet a customer: they have bought nothing, and whether they will is partly up to you. That is why leads are assessed: whether the person really wants to buy, whether they are in your city and whether what you offer suits them. A website visitor becomes a lead only when you can contact them and offer them something.
Can anyone recommend a nail technician in Zhytomyr? Mine broke right before a holiday.
What a lead looks like in a public post is shown in the guides by niche
Hot, warm and cold leads
These are three degrees of readiness to buy. A hot lead has decided to buy and is looking for whom to buy from: they write «recommend a plumber» or «where to buy». A warm lead is interested but still choosing: they subscribed, are comparing, are asking questions. A cold lead asked you for nothing: this is a contact you plan to offer something to, for example from a contact base or among those who were shown an ad.
The split is conventional and different authors draw the lines differently, so it is a convenient scale, not an exact category. The practical point for a small business: a conversation with a hot lead is shorter, but the lead does not wait, while with a cold one you first have to explain why you are writing at all.
Thinking about redoing the bathroom this year. Anyone been through it, where do I start?
Lead generation
Lead generation means the work of finding and attracting leads, that is, people who may become customers. It covers everything that brings a first contact: ads, a website with an enquiry form, mailings, cold calls, taking part in communities, replies to public requests.
In large companies a separate department or an agency does it. In a small business lead generation usually falls to the owner, who looks for people who need the service. It is important to tell the number of leads from their quality: a hundred random enquiries can give fewer sales than five people who really were looking for you.
Cold lead generation and cold outreach
Cold lead generation means looking for customers among people who did not ask about you and do not know you: cold calls, messages to strangers on social networks or messengers, emails to a contact base. The opposite approach is warm: working with those who have already shown interest, for example subscribed or asked themselves.
The cold approach lets you choose whom to write to and needs almost no budget. At the same time only some people reply, and the rules of many platforms limit mass unsolicited messages. So cold messages are better written personally, not from a template, with the platform rules and the laws that apply to you checked beforehand.
Customer acquisition
Customer acquisition is everything you do so that new people buy from you for the first time: ads, recommendations, social networks, a website, taking part in communities, replies to requests. It differs from retention, which concerns people who have already bought.
For each channel it helps to count two numbers: what it cost you in money and in time, and how many customers it really brought. Without that it is easy to spend effort on a channel that only looks busy. A small business usually combines several channels and keeps the ones that paid off.
Lead, prospect and customer
A lead is a contact you could sell to, a prospect is a lead you have checked and who looks like a plausible buyer, and a customer is someone who has bought. Teams draw these lines differently, and many use lead and prospect for the same thing, so treat the order as a common convention, not a rule.
Qualified lead is the usual name for a lead that meets your criteria. The Ukrainian word «лід» is borrowed from this vocabulary, which is why Ukrainian texts about leads and lead generation use it for the same idea.
How we understand the word
In Namir we call a lead a public post where a person asks about what you sell, after the service has checked the match and scored it. The potential customer is the person behind the post, and the lead is the post itself. It is a hot lead in the sense above: the person has put the need into words themselves.
How many such posts there will be in your niche we do not promise: it depends on the city and the phrases, and there are no measured numbers yet.
Try it on your own post
Found a post where someone asks about your service? Paste it and Namir prepares a draft.
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