As the manager of sales and business development, the lead generation is your daily challenge. To reach your objectives, you are constantly hunting leads that will then need to go through a filter process to qualify them, so you can eventually convert them into opportunities with great commercial value. However, as time goes by, you probably have questions about the return on investment of your lead generation strategy.
The objective of this article is to help you think deeply about your approach and avoid the frequently made mistakes.
Error 1: Setting Sales Targets without Any Lead Generation Strategy
In order to reach your sale objectives, you first must establish your lead generation strategy. In the case that there is no lead generation program, you will not be able to reach your potential clients, even if you offer the best product in the world.
The best way to increase your sales is to define a real lead generation strategy, which will guarantee you visibility among your potential clients. It is, therefore, important to invest and hire the necessary resources, right from the beginning, establishing a social media strategy based on the sharing of content and exclusive promotional offers in exchange for your leads’ contact details.
Error 2: No Lead Segmentation Strategy
You make a considerable effort by establishing a lead generation strategy, but once you feed your database with potential clients, have you thought about segmenting them? Not defining your potential segments can dramatically affect the qualification strategy of your leads by:
- Addressing offers to the wrong person;
- Increase the chances that someone unsubscribed from your newsletter campaigns;
- Never reaching your sale objectives.
You have to be sure that, at all times, your lead generation tools and newsletter campaigns allow the automatic segmentation of your leads.
Error 3: Not Doing a Follow-Up or Doing It Late
In order to reach your sale objectives, you have been active on all fronts for a long time; you participate in tradeshows and you have generated leads on your website…
Following up within the first 24 hours, or even in the first few minutes, for the leads generated on your website, is very important. Otherwise, you have a good chance of being forgotten, because your prospects are not only very busy, but they need an immediate answer. And if they don’t get it, they will systematically move to another website.
Error 4: Present Everywhere, But Without Any Results
Some marketing managers make the mistake of publishing their content on social media, but in the end, they realize that they still do not reach potential prospects. In other words, if your target is mostly present on LinkedIn, you do not need to be wasting your time with Facebook.
It is very important to take the time necessary to get to know your prospects to understand their digital behaviour, identify their most visited platforms, and concentrate your efforts on the latest. You then have to test and evaluate the impact of your actions.
Error 5: Not Having a Management Tool/Software of Your Lead Generation Strategy
A good lead generation strategy focuses on capturing leads as soon as possible and maintaining a regular communication with them in order to support them throughout the entire thinking process. Without a computing solution, it is difficult to do newsletter campaigns and offer customized content based on your leads’ digital behaviour and information needs in relation to their place in the buying cycle.
Here is an overview of the automated marketing tool functions:
- Creation of Landing Pages with integrated forms.
- Publishing content on social media in only one click.
- Do a follow-up of the visitor’s digital behavior (number of clicks, pages visited…)
- Management tools of complexed scenarios, mailing automation programs for emails and customized content in response to the leads’ behavior.
- Attributing scores based on many criteria used to identify the leads that have a strong engagement with your products and services.
- Detailed reports supplying information on the return of investment on your marketing actions.
If you want to get more information on the lead generation strategy, here is an eBook explaining lead generation strategy best practices:
In addition, if you are in looking for a tool to help you in your lead generation strategy, here is a comparative guide to the automation marketing tools leaders.