Inbound Lead Generation and Management: The Ultimate How-to Guide for Hyper-Growth Companies

Generating inbound leads is one thing. Turning them into customers requires your inbound lead management practices to be efficient, speedy, and automated. 

What is inbound lead management? It’s the process of guiding those inbound leads you generate along the path to purchase. This multifaceted process includes enriching, qualifying, routing, scheduling, nurturing, engaging, and pipelining the lead. 

This article will break down the process of inbound lead management & generation. Read on to learn how inbound lead gen works, top strategies for generating leads, automation best practices for managing inbound leads, and more. 

What is an inbound lead?

An inbound lead is a potential customer that initiates contact with your business through a marketing channel. Contrast that with outbound lead generation, where a member of your sales team initiates contact. 

Sounds simple, right? Well, not exactly. The dynamics of B2B marketing and sales blur the line between inbound and outbound lead generation. Consider the following example:

A salesperson contacts the CTO of a prospect company through cold calling and initiates a conversation. That CTO then delegates the process of vetting your product to one of their engineers, who visits your website and requests a demo. 

In this example, is the engineer an inbound or outbound lead? It all depends on how you define it. 

That’s why inbound lead management is a critical business practice. Without clear definitions and processes for handling leads after they convert, you’ll end up with friction and bottlenecks, which hurt your overall speed-to-lead. 

How does inbound lead generation work?

Inbound lead generation works by creating useful, expert content that attracts your ICPs to your website. Leads encounter that content through a variety of channels, including search engines, social media, email, paid ads, third-party partnerships, conferences & live events, business directories, and more. 

The most effective content at generating inbound leads meets one (or more) of the following criteria: 

• Experience. Your content is based on your actual experience with clients & customers, showing that you walk the walk. 
• Expertise. Your content demonstrates an advanced understanding of the problems your prospects face. Ideally, this should be borne out from your personal experience. 
• Authority. You have testimonials, case studies, and other social proof to back up your claims. 
• Trustworthiness. Your content is accurate, helpful, and relevant to your prospects’ problems. 

Once a lead engages with your content, embedded calls-to-action will convert them into a marketing- or sales-qualified lead. If your content meets the criteria listed above, you should have no further problems attracting qualified inbound leads that are eager to buy your product.  

17 ways to generate inbound leads

Now let’s take a look at the different tactics you can use as part of your inbound lead generation strategy. We’ll break these down into four categories: capture, content, promotions, & optimizations. 

Lead generation capture tools

1. Forms

The most common lead capture tactic is forms. You can embed forms on any page of your website. Ideally, you’ll have three to five fields where prospects input relevant information (name, email, phone, company details, etc.). 

Based on Default’s proprietary study of 88K+ inbound leads, we’ve identified essential tactics for your form automation software to convert the leads you generate into qualified meetings:

• Keep the number of form fields to less than five
• Use automated lead enrichment to provide a more holistic picture of the leads
• Integrate scheduling links directly with forms to book meetings faster

2. Landing pages

Landing pages are web pages built specifically to drive conversions. Typically, a high-converting landing page includes no navigation menus, limited content, and one message per page. That message can vary based on where in the funnel you’re targeting the landing page:

• Download an eBook
• Register for a webinar
• Request a demo
• Provide product feedback

3. Chatbots

AI-trained chatbots are an increasingly common lead capture tool. 58% of B2B companies use AI chatbots somewhere on their website. These bots can act as a frontline salesperson to not only capture but qualify sales leads. 

4. Native social media flows

If you’re using paid ads to help promote your inbound marketing content, you can also take advantage of native lead capture flows within these social media platforms. A famous example is LinkedIn, which uses native lead gen forms within their ad platform.  

Lead generation content formats

5. Social posts (short-form)

The most succinct type of content for lead generation will be your social posts. Different social media platforms have different specs and formats for their content, but few will exceed 200 words. Because social media users have short attention spans, social content must be succinct, relevant, valuable, and have a strong hook that gets them to stop scrolling.  

Typically, lead gen success doesn’t happen overnight. It happens by consistently posting relevant content for weeks, months, even years and building up an audience. 

(Note: Social media marketing can also be used to promote your mid-form, long-form, and video content. It covers multiple circles in the inbound marketing Venn diagram.) 

6. Blog posts (mid-form)

Blogs provide the backbone of most inbound marketing strategies. Most content used to rank for search engines and attract inbound leads to your website will be blog posts. These typically range from 1,000-3,000 words. At Default, we’ve found that posts of 2,000+ words tend to perform best. 

Specific subcategories of blog posts include:

• How-to guides
• Comparison guides (vs.)
• “Best of” lists
• Case studies & customer stories
• Thought leadership

7. Pillar pages (long-form)

If you’re targeting a search term with a high volume of monthly searches, a typical blog post likely won’t be competitive. For this, you’ll need a pillar page. Pillar pages range from 3,000-5,000+ words, and include comprehensive information on a high-value topic for your content strategy.

Types of pillar pages include:

• 10X pillar page
• Resource pillar pages
• Product pillar pages

See an example of one of Default’s pillar pages here: The Ultimate Guide to Revenue Operations.

8. Lead magnets (long-form)

The three content types listed above are primarily used to attract leads to your website. But lead gen content shouldn’t just attract leads, but should help convert them. That’s where lead magnets come in. 

Lead magnets are long-form, downloadable pieces of content that users receive in exchange filling out a lead capture form. In the past, a mediocre eBook used to be enough to entice people to give you their email address. Now, prospects are skeptical about where they share their information. They’re also skeptical about the quality of content on the other side of the landing page. 

To be successful with lead magnets, then, you need to offer highly valuable content. Examples include:

• Original research & white papers
• Thoughtful, tactical advice to help solve a tangible problem a buyer is facing
• Online interactive tools (like Ubersuggest or HubSpot’s Make My Persona)
• Free trials or freemium pricing tiers
• Online courses & certifications (e.g. HubSpot Academy)

9. Webinars (& other video)

Online webinars are a great way to attract marketing and revenue leaders looking for quick and easy professional development opportunities. Because these are live events, you can engage potential customers in the moment and capture them at a moment of high enthusiasm. 

Tips for making your webinars stand out:

• Partner with speakers & brands that have their own audiences that you can capture
• Make it easy for prospects to invite their teams to the live webinar
• Make the recording accessible for further review and sharing

You can also promote short-form video content via social media, embed it into blog posts and pillar pages, and use it in paid digital ad campaigns. 

Lead generation promotion tactics

10. Search engine optimization (SEO)

The most common tactic to support an inbound strategy is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO enables you to capture prospects’ attention when they’re actively searching for solutions to the problems you solve. 

If you choose your keywords carefully, you can attract qualified active buyers. If your content is engaging, relevant, and helpful—and you have strong lead capture methods built-in—you can convert that traffic into qualified demos. 

11. Digital ads

Marketers and revenue leaders still debate whether digital ads are an inbound or outbound tactic. We’re including in this list because many organizations use digital ads to boost and promote their content on social media. 

Digital ads can drive targeted, high-quality traffic to your content. This not only increases conversions, but can also boost the content’s performance on search engines. What’s more, digital ads can elevate your brand recognition and prompt return visits in the future. 

12. Email marketing

We’re going to guess that 90% of your email marketing will either be to existing prospect or customer lists, or part of your marketing automation workflows. But if your emails are valuable or memorable enough, someone may forward them to a friend or colleague, who could then become an inbound lead. 

13. Third-party partnerships

Never underestimate the power of third-party partnerships. Guest posting is a great way to capture another brand’s audience. Before you agree to a partnership, ask whether you can post inbound links to your website or landing pages. Otherwise, you won’t have a method for capitalizing on that traffic. 

Lead generation optimizations

14. Website analytics

The audience you attract is a leading indicator of your lead gen success. By analyzing your website traffic and performance, you can diagnose whether you’re bringing in the right people by gauging the rate at which you convert visitors into leads.

High bounce rates, low time on page, and few page views per session indicate an uninterested audience. Either you’re capturing the wrong audience, or your content isn’t good enough to entice them to stick around. 

15. A/B testing

Lead gen optimizations rarely happen in broad strokes, but one test at a time. Headlines, subject lines, social media hooks, form placement, form content, featured images—any one of these elements can draw a lead in or turn them off. 

A/B testing is a method of showing two variants of an element to a small segment of your audience, then showing the winning variant to the rest. The idea being that your ideal customers and buyer personas will resonate with the winning variant.

16. AI-powered tools

When it comes to lead gen optimization, artificial intelligence (AI) serves a range of functions. For example, you can use AI to aggregate lead data and provide summaries to your salespeople. Marketing can use these summaries to evaluate whether they’re attracting the right leads. If not, marketing can adjust its strategies accordingly. 

Other use cases for AI in lead gen optimizations include:

• Predictive lead scoring to instantly determine whether an inbound lead matches your current ICP
• Automatically enriching contact details with real-time data
• Performance analysis to accelerate insight creation & recommend action

We also discovered that when AI is used to summarize enrichment data, it speeds up lead qualification by as high as 31%. 

17. Automations

Manual processes slow down lead gen efforts, especially as you expand and diversify your inbound operations. For example, if a lead fills out a demo form, but has to wait for a salesperson to reach out and schedule the meeting, the chances of booking a meeting can decrease by as much as 100X. 

Inbound marketing automation software is critical to optimize not only lead generation, but the back-end management of those leads. 

What is inbound lead management?

Inbound lead management is the process of engaging and nurturing an inbound lead until it enters the sales funnel. You can generate all the inbound leads in the world, but if there's a significant dropoff between initial conversion and pipeline generation, you’re leaving money on the table. 

Different organizations will handle inbound lead management in different ways. For startups and early-stage companies, usually one GTM person or small team will be responsible for both generating and managing inbound leads. 

As the organization grows, the responsibilities may be split among marketing, sales, and success. Even more mature and sophisticated organizations will use RevOps methodology and technology to ensure seamless and efficient handling of inbound leads across the B2B sales cycle.

Inbound lead management: how-to guide

Once a lead converts, there are several steps before that lead enters the sales funnel. Failure to follow them can result in poor qualification, inefficient routing, wasted time, and revenue leakage. 

Step #1: Enrichment

As mentioned above, an optimized inbound form will only capture 3-5 pieces of information. For a new lead, three of those will be first name, last name, and email address. This is hardly enough information to qualify a lead. 

Which means you’re left with two options: enlist your salespeople in manual contact research to fill in the gaps, or integrate your inbound forms with automated lead enrichment. We highly recommend the latter approach. Not only is it faster, but you’ll gather far more comprehensive information than if you rely on manual processes. 

Learn more about how our lead enrichment software works here. 

Step #2: Qualification

Inbound lead qualification is the process of determining whether a lead is a good fit and ready to buy. 

The best way to qualify leads is through lead scoring. In lead scoring, you assign a value to all fields in your CRM. The attributes that best align with your ICP will have a higher value than those that don’t. Once the total value of all fields passes a certain threshold, the lead is considered “qualified” and enters the next phase of inbound lead management. 

Another approach to lead scoring is predictive lead scoring. With predictive lead scoring, an AI algorithm inside most of the best lead qualification software analyzes your existing customer base. Then, when an inbound lead comes in, the AI will score the new lead based on how closely it aligns with that model. 

With either lead scoring model, the more data you have at your disposal, the more accurate your lead scoring model will be. That’s why enrichment is a critical link in the inbound lead management chain. 

Finally, marketing and sales will each have their own lead qualification process. The difference between an MQL vs. SQL (marketing-qualified vs. sales-qualified lead) is really only about which team does the qualifying. In both cases, the objective is the same: determine whether the lead is a good fit and ready to buy (both in terms of enthusiasm for the product and available budget). 

Step #3: Routing

Once leads are qualified, it’s time to take action. But different leads require different actions. This is why it’s important to have a robust, flexible lead routing software. Must-have capabilities include the following. 

Round-robin routing

Leads are rotated among sales reps evenly, regardless of other factors. This is a basic approach, but works for early-stage & starter sales orgs.

Rules-based routing

This more sophisticated routing approach takes into account factors like company size, industry, previous rep history, and more. For example, if you get an inbound lead from Microsoft, you don’t want to assign that lead to a junior rep. Instead, you’ll want that to go to someone with experience selling to enterprises. 

Outliers

Let’s say your ICP only includes businesses who’ve achieved Series A funding or later. But you get an inbound lead from a pre-Series A startup with backing from a VC you know. You may want to go ahead and initiate a conversation with that lead, even though they technically don’t meet your qualification threshold. Your sales scheduling software should be able to handle these kinds of outliers. 

Lead-to-account matching

If a contact comes in from an existing account, you don’t want to assign that to a new sales rep. For starters, this creates a jarring experience for the lead and reduces your chances of closing the deal. What’s more, it can cause friction among your team. Built-in lead-to-account matching is critical for lead routing to work effectively. 

Flexibility and control

More than anything, your lead routing software should offer a high level of flexibility and control over your inbound workflows. Otherwise, you’ll end up forcing your customer experience to fit the software, not the other way around. 

Step #4: Scheduling

Once a lead is routed to the correct sales rep, they should immediately be prompted to schedule a meeting. Based on our analysis of 88K+ inbound leads and 19K+ qualified bookings, we’ve found that integrating scheduling with your inbound forms accelerates speed-to-lead by 240X. 

All of these first four steps should happen within the first five minutes of a lead’s conversion. Otherwise, you’ll significantly reduce the chances of booking a meeting with them. Obviously, this can’t happen manually. That’s why you need inbound lead management automations solutions. More on that below. 

Step #5: Follow-up & nurture

If a lead books a meeting, you want to follow-up with them as quickly as possible to increase their odds of booking a meeting. And if they don’t book immediately, you’ll definitely want an automated follow-up lead flow. According to our own data, this can lift conversions by as high as 14%

Step #6: Pipelining

Once a lead has followed all five of the steps above, odds are high that they’ll close. At this point, you can put them into the pipeline knowing that marketing has done its job. Whether they close or not depends entirely on the quality of your sales team. 

How to automate inbound lead generation, qualification, & management

When automating inbound sales, lead generation, & lead management, most organizations make a critical mistake. That mistake: using separate point solutions to handle each of these elements of inbound lead management. 

While, yes, point solutions are easy for getting started, they expose you to serious risk as you start to scale: 

• Instead of saving money, you spend more on a 100+ tools and significant developer resources trying to orchestrate them all
• Instead of having a seamless, easy-to-manage tech stack, you spend too many hours per week wrangling a bunch of disparate tools
• Instead of enabling scalability, your systems break as you grow—leading to lead dropoff, data loss, and revenue leakage
• Instead of being flexible enough to customize and adapt, you end up having a rigid tech stack held together by a bunch of integrations and a prayer

Automating inbound lead management requires you to have a centralized sales workflow software where all the steps mentioned above happen in a single location. If you rely on integrations and APIs to bounce a contact from one stage to the next, any one of those integrations can jeopardize the whole stack. 

Inbound lead management FAQs

Who handles inbound leads in a business?

In most businesses, inbound leads are handled by the marketing team. Marketing will capture, qualify, and route inbound leads to the appropriate salesperson. Once sales qualifies the inbound lead, they’ll enter it into the sales pipeline. 

What is an example of an inbound lead?

Here’s an example of an inbound lead: a decision maker at a target company sees a blog post you wrote via LinkedIn, and clicks to that page. Although that person clicks away, three weeks later they see a retargeting ad for a white paper that delves into that topic in more detail. They download it, and after receiving a series of automated emails about your product, decide to request a demo. 

How quickly should you respond to inbound leads?

The faster, the better. If you respond to a lead within five minutes of their form submission, they’re 100X more likely to close. If you respond within 30 minutes, they’re 21X more likely to qualify. 

Final thoughts on inbound lead management

Here’s the bottom line: on average 80% of converted leads never close. If you want to beat the odds, you have to proactively manage those leads from the moment they convert. Automated inbound lead management is critical if you want to accelerate speed-to-lead.

The best approach is to use a unified inbound automation platform like Default. Our customers have used our platform to accelerate speed-to-lead by 67%. Contact us to schedule a Default demo today.

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