Developing an online marketing funnel is very challenging. The awareness part of your funnel is designed to inform potential customers about your products/services. If you do a good enough job of providing this information, then generating leads should be easy.
Around 61 percent of marketing professionals polled in a recent survey claimed that lead generation was their biggest challenge. The process of generating online sales leads can be nearly impossible when certain mistakes are made. The key to optimizing lead generation strategies is identifying possible mistakes and addressing them quickly.
The longer lead generation mistakes are allowed to linger, the harder it will be to edge out the competition. The last thing you want is to drive potential leads to your competitors, which is why it is time to correct the marketing mistakes you’re making. Below is some information about common lead generation mistakes and what can be done to correct them.
Take a Look at Your Lead Generation Strategy
Before you can start driving potential leads to your website, you’ll have to develop a detailed strategy. You need to look at your lead generation strategy as the engine of your lead generation efforts. Without certain foundational components in this strategy, lead generation success will continue to elude you.
There are certain mistakes that can make your lead generation strategy ineffective.
Focusing Too Much On Lead Generation Hacks
Some business owners think that there are shortcuts they can take to achieve their lead generation goals. You need to realize that a successful lead generation strategy is about much more than hacks, tricks and tools. What you need to focus on is how all of the components of your lead generation strategy work together.
If you want to unlock your true lead generation potential, you need to focus on foundational elements like:
- Defining your target audience
- Segmenting your audience
- Using well-written call-to-actions
- Creating landing pages
- Offering great content
- Providing a great website user experience
Once you have these foundational elements in place, you can begin to incorporate certain hacks and tools to push your lead generation efforts into overdrive.
Rushing The Launch of Your Lead Generation Strategy
Every business needs online sales to thrive. The desire for new leads can result in a business owner getting in a hurry. Rushing the launch of a lead generation campaign can be disastrous. Before launching a new lead generation campaign, you need to ensure a few basic things.
The first thing you need to check before launching a new lead generation campaign is your team’s ability to handle a sudden influx of sales leads. If your lead generation campaign is designed to push a new product/service, then you need to make sure your team has in-depth knowledge of them. With this knowledge, team members can answer questions and close deals with potential customers.
You also need to make sure that the offer being made in your lead generation campaign satisfies a need in your market. Making sure that the offer being made can help your target demographic solve a particular problem is crucial. By solving a problem for members of your target audience, you can easily generate new sales leads.
Don’t Treat Your Audience As One Big Pool of Potential Customers
As previously mentioned, identifying your target audience is a foundational element of a successful lead generation strategy. All too often, business owners treat their target audiences as one pool of potential clients. Realizing that your target audience is comprised of many different buyers is the first step to generating quality leads.
Ideally, you want to use the audience research you perform to create buyer personas. With your list of buyer personas, you can segment leads based on where a person is in their buyer journey. Identifying the stage a buyer is at allows you to personalize your content. This personalized content can be used to motivate consumers to take action and invest in your products/services.
Focus On One Marketing Channel at a Time
Modern business owners have a number of channels they can use to market products/services to consumers. The most popular marketing channels used for lead generation are:
- Content marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Search engine optimization
- Social media
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
Newcomers to the world of online lead generation tend to spread themselves too thin. Trying to create lead generation campaigns on every marketing channel at your disposal can be problematic. The best way to save time and money on your lead generation efforts is by exploring one marketing channel at a time.
If you want to engage with consumers on various marketing channels, you need to realize the importance of hiring professionals. With the help of marketing professionals, you can keep the various lead generation campaigns you’re engaged in organized and successful.
Assess How You’re Lead Generation Campaigns Are Executed
Once you feel confident in a new lead generation strategy, you’ll need to iron out the details of how to execute it. While this might sound like a relatively easy process, it is anything but. Mistakes made during the execution of a new lead generation strategy can result in lackluster results being achieved.
Don’t Use the Shortcut of Buying Leads
The desire to get quick results from a lead generation campaign can be extremely problematic. Trying to use certain shortcuts can ruin your attempt to generate leads before you even get started. Perhaps the worst thing you can do to get quick results from a new campaign is buying leads.
The main reason to avoid buying leads is that the people on these lead lists aren’t aware of your company. If a lead has never heard of your company or the products/services you provide, converting them into customers will be time-consuming and challenging. The only way to achieve your lead generation goals is by marketing to consumers that have actually shown interest in your products/services.
Failing to Unlock the Power of Remarketing
Using pay-per-click in your lead generation strategy is a wise move. Tools like Google Ads provide business owners with a plethora of tools designed to help them reach a wider audience. Remarketing ads are one of the best tools you can use to attract attention from interested consumers.
When a consumer visits your website or engages with your brand on social media, their IP address is logged. If you invest in remarketing campaigns, interested consumers will be targeted with ads about your brand. Using remarketing can help you accomplish things like:
- Make marketing campaigns more cost-effective
- Generate more sales leads
- Improve brand awareness
- Easily reach interested prospects
If you’re unsure about how to use remarketing to your advantage, then bringing a knowledgeable marketing professional on board is in your best interest. With their guidance, you can reach interested consumers with your message and convert them into customers.
Avoid Dropping the Ball In the Conversion Phase
The last phase of implementing a lead generation strategy is using content to convert interested consumers into customers. As you create content for your lead generation campaign, you must avoid a few mistakes.
Consumers Want to Feel Safe On Your Website
The bulk of the content created for a lead generation campaign will be published on a company’s website. When people visit your website, you want them to know that their data is safe. The best way to accomplish this goal is by investing in SSL certificates. Providing website visitors with secure forms will also drive home the point that your website is safe to use.
Make a Good First Impression with Your Website
If you want to win potential customers over, then providing them with a user-centric web design is imperative. A website that is easy to use and navigate is usually a big hit with modern consumers.
You also need to make sure the website copy you have in place is in pristine shape. There are many things that can hurt the credibility of your website copy like:
- Using pushy tactics in your copy
- Grammar and spelling errors
- Providing unproven testimonials and data
- Developing content without considering your target audience
Are one or more of these issues present in your website copy? If so, it is time to address them before they drive away potential customers.
Create a Sense of Urgency
After a potential customer lands on your website, you want to give them every opportunity to buy your products/services. Improving conversion rates will be much easier when using a sense of urgency in your marketing copy. Using the illusion of scarcity can motivate a person to take action. You can also use bonus offers, lead magnets and discounts to provide your target demographic with the motivation they need to become actual customers.
It’s Time To Fix These Lead Generation Mistakes
As you can see, there are many mistakes that can derail your attempts to generate leads online. By addressing the problems mentioned above, you can optimize your lead generation campaigns and produce better results.