Lead generation, at its most basic level, is the art of getting a potential customer or lead interested in your products or services. After you peak a lead’s interest, start focusing on turning her interest into an actual sale. Keep reading to learn about specific steps that you can take to turn your leads into sales.

Role market research plays in lead generation

But first, let’s quickly cover a few ways that you can start to find customers; each step is a part of market research. Market research helps you to identify the size of your potential target audience. Market research also shows you where your target audience hangs out and how much disposable income the audience has. The research also reveals where your target audience tends to work and what types of magazines, journals and newspapers your audience reads and trust.

This is important. You need to know who and where your target audience or potential customers are in order to turn them into leads. Tools that you can use to conduct market research are:

• Surveys
• Social media
• American Fact Finder
• FedStats
• Pew Research Center

Data points to gather about your target audience include:

•  Gender
•  Age ranges
• Education level and major/minor

Primary languages used (This one may seem unimportant. But, if you opened a restaurant that served Indian cuisine, knowing who, within 20 miles of your restaurant, spoke Hindi or Indian French would prove smart.)

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