What’s the ultimate goal of your lead generation strategy? Where are you taking your leads? If your lead gen program takes prospects on dead-end detours and meandering diversions rather than on a cohesive buying journey that results in a sale for you and a solution for them, you’re missing some vital ingredients for long-term success. Lead generation depends not only on pinpointing the right leads, but also understanding how to approach them at the right time to be relevant to their needs.
Take a look at these common lead gen mistakes and their solutions to discover where your organization shines and where it might be ready to make a change.
Being Too General
No business can offer every solution to every problem, but that doesn’t stop some companies from trying. You’ve probably encountered email marketing from these Jack-of-all-trades businesses, but you probably haven’t spent a lot of time looking at them because their message is muddled. Going general with your content doesn’t give you broader appeal; it only limits your relevance to the people who matter most: your leads. Because prospects have specific problems, they aren’t looking for a general solution.
Solution: Make specificity your by-word. Choose your niche and occupy every corner of it first; then your marketing efforts can expand to new territory for lead gen activities.
Not Offering Enough Value
Lead generation is a mutual process, not active marketing on your part and passive consumption on your audience’s part. Your prospective customers want quid pro quo, value for value. Before they give you valuable information about themselves, you need to prove yourself by giving them something worth their investment of data, time, and effort. They’ll exchange their contact information for an ongoing newsletter or an in-depth white paper, but they won’t fill out lengthy forms to reach a brief overview or advertising content.
Solution: Follow the principle of reciprocity. The more you offer with your gated content, the longer your forms can be.
Inefficient Organization
Leads love it when you consider their time as valuable as your own. Give them bullet lists and relevant information above the fold (the part of the page that’s visible before scrolling), and they’ll reward you handsomely with conversions and referrals. Test their patience by making them hunt for what they need to know, and you’ll feel the sting of their indifference.
Solution: Whether your lead gen is through your blog, in email, or on social media platforms, put the salient information first. Stay above the fold with key points and reserve long-form content for downloads your leads can refer to at their leisure.
No Clear Call to Action
Many companies do a great job with email marketing until they get to the ultimate point of the message: persuading the recipient to act. Calls to action can be as simple as “Try a Sample Today” or as complex as a multi-step process that gathers a great deal of data along the way, but it needs to be there – and it needs to be clear. Ideally, each email contains a single call to action so readers aren’t left in any doubt about where they’re headed next.
Solution: Keep it straightforward, keep it clear, and keep it to a single CTA.
Lack of Landing Pages
Having a great call to action is only the first step; the next is defining what action you’d like your leads to take. You’ll notice that this section mentions plural pages, and that’s not a typo; offering customized landing pages that have higher specificity for different audience segments will achieve far higher relevance for your leads. Clicking a CTA is a strong signal of action, so don’t let your leads down by failing to catch them when they take that leap.
Solution: Customize multiple landing pages and give prospects a clear indication of the next step they should take.
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