Everyone knows that, compared to the B2C domain, the world of B2B marketing is comprised of more challenges. Companies opt for lead generation and appointment setting services to effectively hook the right prospects and leads.
Lead generation and appointment setting are two important aspects of any business. Lead generation is the process of acquiring new customers or clients, while appointment setting is the process of arranging meetings or appointments with potential customers or clients.
Lead generation and appointment setting share a mutual set of rules and stages. However, they possess different variations in their approach. They do not produce absolute results for all businesses equally. It means one may produce more results for a particular business compared to the other.
This blog post is intended to compare both approaches and how to decide which one – lead generation or appointment setting – is right for your business.
Difference Between Lead Generation and Appointment Setting
To get started, it is important to draw a fine line between two widely used terms leads and prospects. People often use these words interchangeably. But there is a difference between both of them.
In fact, both terms are not alternatives to each other. This is where the fundamental difference parts both methodologies.
Let’s discuss what is the difference between leads and prospects.
A lead is considered an individual or a company that submits its contact info in exchange for something valuable (like gated content, webinar, testimonial, free trial, discount code, etc) to explore your particular products or services.
On the other hand, a person or business is considered a prospect who has already interacted with your appointment setter, SDR, or sales team, showcasing their interest in buying your product or service.
Fundamentally, lead generation involves triggering interest and collecting the contact info of the prospect to turn it into the lead. Whereas, an appointment setting is all about qualifying prospects and pushing them further down the sales funnel toward a successful sales deal.
Let’s go into further detail and discuss both methodologies in detail, one by one.
What Is Lead Generation?
Lead generation involves triggering the interest of website visitors in a particular product or service. The strategies used in lead generation include paid advertising, content marketing, webinars, referral programs, email marketing, etc.
A few impactful strategies used in lead generation include publishing SEO blog posts or articles, hosting webinar sessions, offering discount coupons, leveraging social media channels, etc. It involves anything that ignites the interest and generates hot leads for your business.
Most lead generation strategies are linked with advertising. However, it’s not limited to paid resources. Non-paid approaches like customer referrals or on-site SEO can cast a remarkable impact on your lead-generation efforts.
Lead generation is just the tip of the iceberg. Each lead is crafted further by lead nurturing efforts. Lead nurturing is followed by a sales conversion process where your sales team evaluates and qualifies the lead based on its likelihood of becoming a sale. This is where your leads go through the conversion phase to improve the bottom line of your business.
What Is Appointment Setting?
Appointment setting involves efforts that gear toward engaging new prospects by scheduling appointments.
In an appointment setting, your sales team or SDRs typically establish contact with the sales-qualified leads. Once they get them on board, they become liable to qualify these prospects as loyal customers. It definitely casts a notable impact on the ROI of all your lead generation efforts and overall business model.
The next step is to schedule an appointment with these prospects for further discussion about the particular product or service. Most businesses opt for outsourcing this part as it spares the crucial time and effort of the sales team time for core sales activities.
The appointment setting is fundamentally the last and most determining step of the overall lead generation model. Upon scheduling the appointment, it becomes the liability of your sales team to drive the prospect through the sales journey up to sales closure.
Active engagement reveals the intention of the prospect to make a purchase and conclude your all lead generation efforts.
Primary Differences Between Appointment Setting and Lead Generation
1. Goal
The primary objective of appointment setting is to showcase your business to fresh prospects and enable your business to make new ties and crack sales opportunities. On the contrary, your lead generation efforts aim at attracting and engaging new prospects and turning them into leads.
2. Strategy
Both appointment setting and lead generation are linked with engaging fresh potential customers. With appointment setting, you go the extra mile by scheduling a date on the calendar and setting the date and time to connect with the prospect. Whereas, lead generation involves engaging new website visitors, then converting them into leads by offering value through different means in exchange for their contact info. This lead information is then used for the lead nurturing process.
3. Process
Being a sales-oriented model, appointment setting is a very directed approach. The appointments pop up on the calendar, and the sales representatives make calls, send invites, or push emails to the prospect on the scheduled date and time. Lead generation is simple though, but the journey and outcome are more uncertain. You will fetch info about your prospect, but there will be no appointment scheduled for any given time.
What Is B2B Appointment Setting and Lead Generation?
B2B lead generation is an approach lead generation experts leverage to attract high-value prospects to their business website using different paid or organic strategies. It involves different inbound activities that ensure brand awareness and prospects’ interest within a defined and targeted niche. The end goal is the list of valuable lead data and their contact info.
The appointment setting is fundamentally the last battle that you need to win at the bottom of your lead generation funnel. After scheduling the appointment and going live, it becomes your sales team’s responsibility to drive your appointment setting leads toward your sales goal and wins a customer.
When it comes to B2B appointment setting leads, only the hot leads will be deemed favorable prospects. A hot lead typically denotes a prospect who is showing immense interest in your business offerings by interacting with your business website and content.
Lead Generation vs Appointment Setting – Which Is More Suitable for Your Business?
From what we’ve discussed so far, we believe it is obvious that it’s almost impossible for any business to adopt one approach and abandon the other. Both lead generation and appointment setting services complement and fuel each other.
If you’re running a B2B business, it’s vital to adopt an effective combo of both strategies. Getting qualified leads and setting an appointment with your prospects requires synchronization between your marketing and sales teams.
If you stress both lead generation and appointment setting efforts rightly, you will have higher conversion and better ROI for your business.
Lead Generation and Appointment Setting Services
To set up an effective and impactful lead generation model or acquire promising appointment-setting services, consult Tech-Drop. With industry-leading technology and a skilled workforce, we are committed to providing excellent lead generation services and appointment-setting services to our clientele.
With the help of our experienced and dedicated appointment-setting team, we make sure to produce high-quality leads. Boost your ROI by letting us handle your lead generation and appointment setting services.
Conclusion
Lead generation and appointment setting fuel and complement each other and plays a vital role in your business growth. Whether you are an SMB or enterprise-grade organization, it’s recommended to outsource an experienced lead generation and appointment setting agency like Tech-Drop
