Sometimes it may appear that the performance of your salespeople has dipped and they are not delivering the same results as they did before. One of the leading cause here is that as time progresses, they have to take more efforts to take suspects to the prospect stage to lead stage and subsequently convert them to customers. Here, it makes sense to opt for lead generation services to provide salespeople with hot leads so that there is a significant increase in sales.
By going for lead generation services, you free your sales person and let them focus on the most important part of their job description – selling. Although you need to ensure that the service provider is reliable and efficient in getting you the results. There have been many instances where despite outsourcing lead generation to a service provider, the company has failed to see any benefit.
Here are some of the biggest mistakes lead generation companies make:
1.   Not defining your target audience:
Content marketing goes hand in hand with lead generation. With this in mind, your service provider may be writing the most inspired and thoughtful content out there. But if you still find that it has not made any impact or there are still no visitors to your website then you need to determine whether that content is actually helpful to your audience.
The first mistake that the lead generation company could make is not identifying and determining your target audience before beginning the entire process of developing and promoting content. Understand first what defines a prospect, what will they be interested in and what would your ideal customer look like?
By defining this target audience, it becomes easy for them to write content for each segment as well as according to each stage of the buyer’s journey.
2.   Purchasing database vs organic leads:
It has been a common practice in the past to purchase databases and sending emails to identify any of these have a need for your products and services. While it may have worked well then, this practice has been facing a severe backlash in recent times. No one wants to be bombarded with messages that are not relevant to them. Besides, with stringent measures being put in place, like GDPR compliance, it is rather risky to follow this method.
Instead, lead generation companies should focus on generating leads organically i.e. by writing and promoting content which is useful for your target audience and getting them to visit your website on their own. You now have prospects that are interested in exploring and understanding more about your products and services.
3.   Not communicating your value in marketing:
Lead generation companies are given the authority to interact with your target audience on your behalf. It could be through telemarketing, social media or content marketing. Here, while communicating with your audience, they need to display the same professionalism and attributes that you would expect your own salespeople to follow. They should be familiar with your values and likewise be able to reflect them in their behavior in all their written and oral interactions.
Any negative impression that your audience develops is not of the service provider, but you. Your prospects will presume that it is you or your representatives who are rude, unethical or incompetent and this definitely reflects poorly on you.
4.   Not leveraging your content:
It is true that good and high quality content can bring more visitors to your website and with time get them more interested in your products and/or services. But there is another opportunity that most marketers appear to seemingly miss frequently. Your highest performing posts are a potential gold mine for leads and should be treated as such.
There needs to be a clear and precise to call-to-action (CTA) on this page to get more information about the prospect and add them to a list of prospects. This lead needs to be nurtured and slowly moved down the marketing funnel to ultimately hand them over as MQLs (marketing qualified leads) to salespeople.
The more such pages you have, higher are your chances of getting more qualified leads.
5.   Not having a social media strategy:
On the same lines as content, many companies fail to have a good social media strategy in place. Social media is not just about getting more shares, impressions and followers or connections. Have they identified individuals or companies that frequently interact or respond to your posts or tweets? These individuals or companies may be potential prospects and need to be treated as such.
Another way you can use social media to generate more leads is by sharing a link to gated content or your most popular posts/blogs and getting these connections to visit them. And if that page has an efficient CTA, you have a quality lead in your hands.
While we have only listed some of the biggest mistakes lead generation companies make, there are many other ways to improve the lead generation process. Get in touch to understand more.