Getting to Know Your Leads Through Progressive Profiling

Would you believe us if we told you that acquiring new leads and nurturing existing leads can be made simpler? Well, we’ve got news for you 🗞️.

You can gather information about your target market’s needs, goals, and interests directly from them. Skip the guesswork and get down to the nitty gritty details!

You’ve probably done this before as a brand or might have encountered it yourself. This is what us marketers call progressive profiling.

Progressive profiling is as easy as asking potential and existing customers simple questions about themselves. Later on you can enhance these opt-in questions to gather the information you really need to optimize your campaigns. Some examples of common progressive profiling questions include:

• What’s your name? 
• What’s your email address? 
• What’s your contact number?

🚗 Drive better qualified leads with these strategies. →

Progressive Profiling Defined

Progressive profiling is a digital marketing strategy that lets you get into the minds of your customers and find out what you need to do to serve them better. The progressive profiling process focuses on building trust between your brand and your customers by making them feel comfortable enough to give you information about themselves, such as their interests, likes, and dislikes over a specified period.

It’s an excellent lead generation strategy for gathering relevant data in small bits if you don’t know much about your customers — from your customers directly — without scaring them off. You should start by asking simple questions, and then strategically request more information at intervals throughout your customer’s journey.

Why use this digital marketing strategy?

As your customer’s interaction with your brand continues and builds greater trust, you can then ask more questions. This will not only help you generate leads but will also help you in better understanding where your customer is in their buyer's journey, especially for returning customers.

What’s in it for you? Understanding how your customers use and think about your product will provide valuable insights for your brand, your product, and your marketing strategies.

Examples of progressive profiling

Azure Active Directory

Pinterest

Best practices for your progressive profiling

For progressive profiling to be as effective as can be, you have to remember that you’re building a relationship with your customers, take note of the questions you want to ask, and think about the value you’re offering in exchange for their responses.

Build your progressive profiling program

Before passing the “questioning” to your customers, you should answer the following questions for yourself:

1. Who should I be asking specifically?
2. What do I need to know about them?
3. How will I use the information I get? 
4. How will I implement the questions?

Set a strategic timeline for your questions

Set up your campaign to follow the buyer’s journey and avoid asking questions on your own timeline. If you ask for too much too soon, you run the risk of ruining your relationship with your customers.

Optimize your campaign

Having more leads means having more data to use for optimization. Use the relevant data to better your customer’s journey and your overall marketing campaigns.

👍 "Steal" customer insights from competitors with information hiding in plain sight. →