It can take a bit to figure out the audience that you want to put focus on at the beginning of gathering leads. It’s essential that you turn that audience into quality lead generation. There are plenty of mistakes that seem to come up along the way that can cause problems getting you the results you want for your business. Before you watch all your traffic go on by without turning into a lead, understand what things you should be avoiding.
Landing Pages Missing or Non-Existent
When traffic is coming to your page because of a promotion or ad that they were interested in, you have to have a landing page that is related directly to what they clicked on. If you send them to your full webpage, there’s a high probability that they are just going to leave and go on to something else. There should be a page that guides them through some objective. That’s how they go from traffic to a lead because you are gathering information.
Check out: Lead Generation Checklist For Landing Pages: 10 Examples & Best Practices For More Conversions
Being Too Generic
You want to have information and details that can attract a plethora of types of businesses to yours. It’s somewhat of a two-way street though, because you don’t want to be too generic in hopes of attracting everyone. It’s up to you to narrow down your audience a bit and figure out exactly what kind of information they are interested in. By producing more personalized content, you will find better matches for your company.
Investing Too Much or Not Enough in Social Media Outlets
The world is driven by social media these days. Everyone is on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and any other platform that will allow for interaction of the like. Companies fail with B2B lead generation because of several reasons on social media. Either they are not putting out enough information, or basically, they start up a page and leave it. Or, they are dumping too much information out and overloading their visitors. What works best is when quality content is distributed at decent intervals to catch and keep the attention of the audience.
While on the topic of social media, it’s also important to know what kinds of social media you should be focusing on. You don’t want to waste time loading up your Instagram page when there isn’t anyone on there that is interested in what you are working on. Find out where your target audience is and invest your time in that.
Check out: 5 Super tactics to generate leads through social media
Failing to Nurture the Lead
Many think that when they get a lead to land on their page and complete the campaign, they are done with the process. That’s not true at all. Only a little over 10% are ready to make a purchase when they respond to campaigns. To get the remaining traffic to commit to something, you have to nurture the leads and give them some personalized and focused attention to keep them interested.
In fact, most of marketing automation is all about timing. So a great follow up strategy is to find out whenever a prospect’s timing is changing to your advantage and to build a relationship with prospects whose timing isn’t quite right yet. We want to know if the prospect is in the Awareness, Consideration, Selection or purchase phase. A good first step is to at least don’t forget to follow up. So get a follow up strategy in place.
You might be wondering what to send after the first email and the correct tone of voice. A great email marketers knows how to control emotions through email copywriting, which is an aspect often overlooked. We want to sway and get the prospects to feel beyond the mere facts or a totally ignorable: “Just checking in, have you looked at my last email”.
Not Monitoring and Updating Regularly
B2B lead generation, even when it is successful, isn’t a set it and forget it kind of a system. You might be getting a good number of leads, so you think your job is done and you can keep doing the same thing. Well, what works at one time isn’t necessarily going to work later on. You have to keep a close eye on what’s working and what isn’t. The methods that aren’t working need to be tweaked and updated so that they can start getting results again.
Quitting Too Soon
Once you try and make contact with a potential quality lead, there is a bigger chance that they aren’t going to respond than one that they are. In fact, it takes about five attempts at reaching someone through a lead generation before it is successful. That means you can’t email them once and when they fail to answer you, forget about them. It’s only going to work if you keep working at it. Stick with them remaining consistent with your nurturing until they are ready to commit.
Ineffective or Missing Call-to-Action (CTA)
Your CTA is perhaps the most crucial part of the whole process of lead generation. It tells your visitors what to do next. It’s when they click through on a free trial, email list, or download something from your site that you gather their information. If that CTA is missing, there is no way for you to collect the details you need to try and convert those leads. Be sure that your CTA is also noticeable and easy to maneuver through. If it’s overly complicated or the colors make it difficult to see, for instance, your traffic isn’t going to bother with filling it out. Keep the wording simple and direct, so they have an instant idea of what they are supposed to do. You want this part to be attractive and attention-grabbing in every aspect.
Sameer Panjwani
Founder & CEO of Mondovo
Sameer Panjwani is the Founder & CEO of Mondovo, an online marketing toolset that helps you track your rankings, monitor your site stats, and research your competitors. A man of many talents, Sameer is currently on a mission to help 1 million businesses grow organically through his products and services.