Right now, valuable leads are slipping through your fingers at the last minute because of easily overlooked mistakes you made when attempting to generate leads in your B2B marketing funnel.
When you've taken the time to craft an enticing value proposition and your marketing and sales team are both excited to implement it with the latest marketing tools, it can be easy to forget the fundamentals and make some common lead generation mistakes. The modern inbound marketing funnel is a complex beast, but like any other detailed process, the basics must be in place to get the best results.
It all starts with your content.
The internet is made from one thing: content. And by definition, content must be king. It is the most vital part of your inbound marketing strategy.
The following applies to your landing pages, website, blog and anything else published throughout social media
The effectiveness of your headlines is something you should measure continually on your lead generation campaigns. As pointed out by renowned management consultant and author, Peter Drucker, “what gets measured gets managed”.
By committing to measuring the conversion rates of your headlines in every lead generation campaign and continually improving them by engrossing yourself in the material published by the likes of Copyblogger, your headlines will get increased clicks across both social media and RSS feeds.
Latent semantic indexing (or LSI) refers to the portion of Google’s algorithm that looks for words synonymous with any given keyword. For example, “London discounted widgets”.
In your content, intersperse your copy with variations such as “discounted widgets in London” and “London widgets on discount” or “reduced price widgets in London”. Don’t reuse the same exact match keyword over and over; vary it up instead. It’s more natural for the reader and it’s better for Google, too.
It’s surprisingly common to still see websites, blogs, landing pages and other content falling into the “wall of text” trap. It’s impossible to overstate just how fleeting the attention span of the average internet browser is.
Consequently, all content should be broken up using sub headings, bullet points and numbers’ lists. Make this change and watch both your reader retention, lead generation and conversion rates increase.
A closer look at landing pages
Landing pages should be a key part of your inbound B2B lead generation strategy. One study of over 7,000 businesses published by inbound marketing company, HubSpot, showed that companies that increased their number of landing pages from 10 up to 15 saw a massive 55% increase in generating leads. The more you have, the better – provided the fundamentals are in place, of course.
Having more landing pages with lead magnets allows you to optimise them for specific demographics or people, at specific stages in your marketing funnel and streamline your lead generation efforts. Whatever marketing analytics you use, try to segment your leads in a way that's appropriate for your business. It might take a little more time, but you'll see serious returns if done properly by acquiring quality leads that are very likely to convert.
Leads must be organically cultivated and attracted. Buying leads is "throwing things on the wall and seeing what sticks". Many lead generation tactics and even lead generation tools can be used to ease the process for you, but ultimately, the fundamentals remain the same.
If you’re not already A/B testing, you should be. If you are already testing your landing pages, you should be committed to becoming an A/B testing master. This process is like writing headlines in as much as it’s a skill one must commit to mastering. Make sure you keep up-to-date by reading material such as Conversions XL to continually improve your methodology.
Is all of your marketing material (emails, blog content, advertising etc) congruent with what people find when they get to your landing page?
For example, if you send someone an email offer using a particular style of writing and colour scheme, people expect more of the same when they arrive at your landing page. Without this consistency, a disconnect is created with people’s expectations and your bounce rate will go up.
Successful lead generation uses a combination of well-structured methods to not only improve the quality of your soon-to-be-generated leads but also improve your relationship with your target audience.
Opt-in form optimisation is a remarkably elusive process. Tiny changes such as the colour, capitalisation and choice of words on your sign-up button can have dramatic impacts on your conversion rates and B2B lead generation activities.
Needless to say, all of the opt-in forms in your landing pages should also be A/B split tested to find which works best for your audience.
It ought to go without saying that, should someone give your highly reputable company their email address, it won’t get shared around to marketers and result in them being inundated with spam. However, having a privacy policy on your opt-in forms is a proven way to increase conversions.
If people have to scroll down the page to see the opt-in form, they’re much less likely to sign up. On the face of things, it doesn’t seem like an index finger scrolling a mouse wheel would make such a big difference, but it does. Always have your opt-in forms above the fold.
The more information we have, the better decisions we can make. Consequently, it's tempting to ask for a little too much information from your customers using lead generation forms for example, in the hope that you can gather a little extra intel.
However, even adding one more field, (say, pushing the total number of fields to fill in from 3 to 4) can have a significant impact on how many people sign up. Only ask what’s absolutely necessary to make the sale.
Marketing and particularly inbound marketing, is a complex and often rewarding endeavour. Sure, the fundamentals might not be the sexiest part of the process, but they certainly are one of the most important if you’re serious about maximising your marketing spend and increasing your B2B lead generation.
To avoid the basic lead generation mistakes made by so many companies, follow the above foundational rules. We guarantee that if you follow the steps here, you’ll see a return on investment on both the time and money you have spent.