You’ve hit on a really important Marketing Qualified distinction! Lead generation is a function that sits at the intersection of marketing and sales. It’s not strictly one or the other, but rather a crucial bridge between the two.

Here’s how to think about it for both B2C and B2B:

Lead Generation: The Bridge Between Marketing and Sales

Marketing’s Role in Lead Generation:

• Creating Awareness: Marketing typically starts the process by making potential customers aware of your product or service. This involves broad outreach.
• Attracting Interest: Through various channels like content marketing (blogs, videos), social media, paid advertising (Google Ads, Facebook Ads), SEO, and email campaigns, marketing generates initial interest.
• Capturing Information: Marketing c level executive list efforts often encourage people to provide their contact details. This could be by filling out a form for a download, signing up for a newsletter, or attending a webinar. These are  – they’ve shown interest but aren’t necessarily ready to buy.
• Nurturing Leads: Marketing blank contact information linkedin continues to “nurture” these MQLs, providing them with more valuable content and information to build trust and move them further down the sales funnel. This could involve automated email sequences or targeted content.

Sales’ Role in Lead Generation: Marketing Qualified

• Qualifying Leads: While marketing generates leads, sales is often responsible for qualifying them. This means assessing whether a lead is a good fit for your product and has a genuine need and budget. These become Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
• Direct Outreach: Sales teams, especially in B2B, often engage in direct lead
  

  B2C & B2B Lead Generation:

  generation activities like cold calling, personalized email outreach, and networking at industry united states business directory events. This is a more active, one-to-one approach.

• Closing Deals: Ultimately, sales is responsible for converting qualified leads into paying customers. They take the nurtured leads from marketing and work to close the deal.

Why it’s “Both” (and why alignment is key): Marketing Qualified

• Marketing feeds Sales: Marketing creates the initial pool of potential customers, making sales’ job easier by providing warmer leads.
• Sales provides feedback to Marketing: Sales insights into what kinds of leads convert best, and what challenges they face, help marketing refine their strategies to generate even better leads.