Introduction to Prospect Acquisition

Introduction to Prospect Acquisition

What is prospect acquisition?

Prospect acquisition (or lead generation) refers to all the techniques used to identify and attract potential customers to your business. It is the first stage of the conversion funnel:

graph LR
    A[Cold Prospect] -->|Acquisition| B[Qualified Lead]
    B -->|Nurturing| C[Opportunity]
    C -->|Closing| D[Customer]
    D -->|Retention| E[Advocate]

B2B vs B2C: two different approaches

Criterion B2B B2C
Target Companies, decision-makers Individual consumers
Sales cycle Long (weeks to months) Short (minutes to days)
Volume Low volume, high value High volume, lower unit value
Main channels Email, LinkedIn, calls Social media, advertising, SEO
Personalization Highly personalized Segmented by audience
Key data Name, job title, company, work email Interests, demographics, behavior

The acquisition funnel

B2B

  1. Identification: find target companies (scraping, databases, Places API)
  2. Enrichment: obtain decision-makers' contact details (email, phone)
  3. Outreach: reach out through automated sequences (Lemlist, Apollo)
  4. Qualification: identify interested prospects (replies, clicks)
  5. Conversion: meetings, demos, closing

B2C

  1. Targeting: define audiences (demographics, interests, behaviors)
  2. Creation: produce ad content (visuals, videos, copy)
  3. Distribution: launch campaigns (Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok Ads)
  4. Capture: collect leads (forms, landing pages)
  5. Conversion: turn leads into customers (email marketing, retargeting)

Essential metrics

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) measures how much you spend to acquire a customer:

CAC = Total marketing budget / Number of customers acquired

Other important KPIs

  • CPL (Cost Per Lead): cost per lead generated
  • Conversion rate: % of prospects who become customers
  • LTV (Lifetime Value): total value of a customer over their lifetime
  • ROI: return on investment of campaigns
  • ROAS (Return On Ad Spend): revenue generated per dollar spent on advertising

The golden rule

A profitable business has a LTV / CAC ratio > 3. If your LTV is $300, your CAC should not exceed $100.

Tools we will cover

Tool Type Usage
Google Places API API Scraping local businesses (B2B)
Lemlist SaaS Automated email sequences (B2B)
Meta Ads Ad platform Facebook & Instagram advertising (B2C)
Google Ads Ad platform Google search advertising (B2B/B2C)
LinkedIn Sales Navigator SaaS Targeted B2B prospecting
PhantomBuster SaaS LinkedIn automation and scraping

GDPR Compliance

Warning: any collection and use of personal data must comply with the GDPR:

  • Legal basis: legitimate interest (B2B) or consent (B2C)
  • Right to object: include an unsubscribe link in every email
  • Minimization: only collect the data you need
  • Transparency: inform prospects about how their data will be used
  • Retention: define a data retention period

In B2B, sending prospecting emails to professional email addresses is permitted under certain conditions (legitimate interest), but the recipient must be able to unsubscribe easily.