Is your lead generation strategy not working the way you would like it too? Keep reading to find out seven reasons why that may be!
Consumers’ buying habits are regularly changing, so it's important as a marketer that effective ways are being found to reach and engage buyers along the user journey. Nowadays, the best way to create trusting relationships is for your target audience to find your brand, rather than reaching out to them.
Lead generation helps to build trust, visibility and credibility, so by focusing on this it can help to drive high-quality traffic to your site, leading to long-lasting customers. So, you may be wondering why you're not seeing results, when you believe that you're ticking all the boxes? To help you out, below are some of the reasons why your lead generation strategy may not be working for you…
There is no point in creating content and distributing it if you are targeting it to the wrong audience. The first step to a successful lead generation strategy is to understand your customers. Ask yourself, what are your customers' pain points? What are their demographics? What will engage your audience and what do they find valuable? If this area is a little foggy for you, then it may be worth revising your buyer personas, as you may be a little off-target.
Have you updated your buyer personas recently? Is this group at the focal point when creating content? Have you made a conscious effort to truly understand your audience and find out how competitors currently engage them? Creating clear buyer personas is crucial in improving your lead generation efforts.
The customer should be at the heart of everything that you do, don't forget they are the reason you are in the position that you are. If you only talk about yourself, your offerings and why people should choose you, then it's likely your audience will get bored and turn to a competitor. This isn't the way to engage, educate, entertain or add value, it's instead important to think about how you can do these things. What are their challenges? How can you help them reach a solution? What types of content will engage them the most? What videos do they enjoy watching? Take a step back, look at the bigger picture and analyse whether the content you are currently publishing is suitable for your audience.
Although it's easy to get carried away and want to see results as quickly as possible, this often isn't the way to go. When it comes to marketing strategies, results often take time to show and this is when slow and steady wins the race. If you rush to get content out to your audience without thorough planning, it may feel as though you are spamming your customers with irrelevant and invaluable information, this is more likely to make people go elsewhere. When getting creative, it's important to keep quality over quantity in mind. Take care in creating relevant and valuable content that your target audience truly wants and will nurture your leads. As with any great thing, success won't happen overnight, so, be patient.
Converting leads is often a complex process and content plays a huge part in this. If you aren't using strong nurturing and lead conversion tools, then you may be missing a trick. Utilising such tools is a great way to help increase sales and turn visitors into customers. HubSpot is a fantastic tool, combining marketing, sales and customer relationship management all in one place. It includes many features such as email campaigns, workflows, analytics tools and much more. Do you use lead conversion tools?
Being present online is a must to increase leads and traffic to your site. If you are not making the most of relevant marketing channels then you may be missing out on reaching prospective customers. Boosting your business's credibility is a great way to enhance your lead generation strategy, don't forget to also focus on link building, interacting with your audience and increasing your social media presence.
Call to actions help to move customers throughout the user journey, from one stage to another through the awareness, consideration and decision stage. Every email you send and blog you post should have a relevant CTA attached to it to drive them towards the next action. That may be to book a consultation, contact the team or download an ebook. Overflowing your content with CTAs will often confuse the reader, so sticking to one primary one and sometimes an extra secondary CTA is the way to go.
Technology is a huge part of people's everyday lives, over half of all internet usage is completed through a tablet or mobile phone. Therefore, in a digital world, it's crucial that websites are optimised for both mobile and desktop. A website should be easily accessible, providing an optimal user experience, no matter what device is being used. If a customer is on their phone on their daily commute, or if they are sitting at home on a laptop, they should be able to easily find you. You will struggle to retain customers if websites are slow, forms break, or if too much scrolling is needed to get to the good bit. 53% of visitors will leave a mobile site if it takes over 3 seconds to load.
After reading this article, is it clearer to you why your strategy may not be working? Follow these pointers to guide you closer to your goal. Don't forget, that your audience should always be on your mind, focus on what they want and build loyal long-lasting relationships instead of simply focusing on selling goods and services.
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