April 6, 2022 0:00
Lead generation without mistakes. Problems of attracting clients and ways to solve them
Sergey Afonin
Content Marketer Callibri
Content
You attract contacts, not leads.
You don't study performance indicators
You are not targeting your customers.
You are not warming up applications well.
You don't use personalization
You are not increasing your reach.
You do not create the image of a reliable partner
You don't work with conversion
You are sitting on sites where there are no clients
You don't follow up on leads Conclusion
In marketing and sales, a lead is a potential client phone number database who has left real contact information and is interested in the company's product or service. While a lead is turning into a client, it will run into dozens of barriers, marketing will have time to quarrel with sales, and the entire budget will go down the drain.
Today, we will analyze 10 lead generation mistakes and ways to solve them.
1. You attract contacts, not leads
One of the mistakes in lead generation is to falsely assign the lead status to ordinary users who have left any information about themselves. If you classify any contact with a user as a lead, then this makes the work of marketing and sales opaque and ineffective - some spend the budget on irrelevant users, others waste time talking to people who are not interested in buying. There are numbers, no sales, time is wasted.
How to distinguish a lead from a contact with a user
And the difference is simple:
A lead is a potential client with a need for your service or product.
Contact — a person who has made contact with the company. For example, subscribed to a blog, downloaded a checklist, participated in an event, filled out a form.
At worst, these people can be classified as cold leads that need warming up. And that's another front of work that requires marketing, not sales.
How to avoid mistakes
Clearly define what you consider a lead. What action the user must take so that you can classify them correctly. For example, it could be a person who left their name, email, and phone number in a form on the website.
Don't forget about contacts - even if you separate ready leads from contacts, you shouldn't ignore the latter. Develop a strategy for warming up applications and turning users into clients.
Implement a lead scoring system — prioritization of requests. This way, you will find the most attractive clients in the general array of requests and will be able to build a plan for further actions — redistribute the efforts of the sales department or put together a new advertising campaign.
2. You don't study performance indicators
This mistake is easy to make because each team member is busy with their current work. Sometimes there is simply no time to stop the processes and see what you are doing to attract leads and what can be improved?
Even if it seems that the processes are established, there may be a flaw or error hiding somewhere. For example, marketing consistently brings in applications, but sales ignores them or processes them carelessly, or vice versa, there are many applications, but they are of low quality.
How to avoid mistakes
Set aside a day to review your team's metrics and compile them into a single report.
Use tools. To prevent data collection, analytics, and decision-making from eating up all the time in the world, use services. Analytics counters will show the number of site visitors, and messenger aggregators will show the number of dialogues across all platforms and statistics on them.
Communicate with your colleagues. Create a system of regular meetings that synchronize the work of marketing and sales. You may find that some things need to be reconsidered.
Study updates in digital. Suddenly your methods are no longer effective due to an update on one or another platform.
3. You're not targeting your customers.
How well do you know your customers? Can you name their characteristics right away? If not, then there is a problem: what if you spend time and resources on the wrong people?
It is a mistake to think that everyone can become a customer. If you contact absolutely everyone, you will spend too much money and get less results. Or you will spend more time adjusting campaigns until you reach the right users.
How to avoid mistakes
Create a portrait of your customer - collect characteristics of the person who is most likely to buy your product. Make the portrait the foundation of your campaigns.
Conduct interviews with real customers - To really understand your audience's needs and changes in their preferences, take real customers and talk to them about their experiences with you.
Use look-alike audiences - once you have a customer profile in hand, use it to reach people who are most similar to your customers.
Study the customer journey - a person may become a client not when they call you, but when they find a need that you can cover with your offer. Study the customer's life path. This way you will find out where their need originates and where the points are that you can use for repeat sales.
The Customer Journey Map tool will help with this, the essence of which we described in detail in this article.
4. You are not warming up applications well
The lead characterizes the thought "I am interested in this company's offer." However, each type has this thought at different points in time. For example, "cold" ones are interested, but now.
What are the differences between lead types?
If you do nothing about it, you can attract at least a million applications per month and not get any results. Even if you have the user's phone number and email.
A person needs motivation to move along the sales funnel. And if you have nothing to stimulate it with, your efforts are wasted. At all stages of the funnel, potential clients have questions, barriers, objections. And even the most surgically verified advertising banner will not help overcome the client's doubts.
How to avoid mistakes
Use lead magnets — free useful content that creates an expert image of the company in the user’s mind. Pack case studies, product advantages, and tell how your product solves customer problems into lead magnets . Ideally, you should have a chain of lead magnets for different platforms and funnel stages.
Keep a blog - it works not only as a platform that collects all your expert content. Articles will provide the facts that you can repackage into lead magnets, as well as on other platforms. For example, on social networks.
Use email newsletters - on average, 17% of people still actively use email. Create email chains that will remind the client about you, notify them about sales and promotions, and also remind them about an abandoned cart.
5. You don't use personalization
In a report, a person's personality is compressed to a line in a document. However, if you treat the user in a similar way at the acquisition stage, there is a high chance of losing the client. People appreciate when companies address them directly, and not conditional "dear clients".
A huge amount of information and advertising have developed banner blindness in people. A person comes to the Internet with a specific need, so he is most likely to stay on the site that appeals specifically to him and his request.
The simplest example of personalizing headings on a website
Sites with impersonal appeals or landing pages that do not match the search query will be ignored or closed within seconds after the click. No one will scroll through the catalog or other pages. You have literally 5-10 seconds to hook a person.
How to avoid mistakes
Offer personal consultation - engaging messages in chat or pop-ups will help with this. Use these tools, make it clear that you are aware of the person's needs and can help them. And if the user is about to close the site, then a pop-up window offering a personal discount and consultation will be the last chance to retain the client.
Personalize content - previously, this task required creating a landing page for each client request. This is expensive and time-consuming. Today, this can be done by replacing content. This tool tracks user data and changes the content of the page based on the context of the request. You can replace headings, subheadings, and appeals to the user. The person will see that the site "understands" him, so he will continue to study it.
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6. You are not increasing your reach
A person is more likely to trust a company they are aware of to solve their needs.
If you exist in a vacuum, do not go public and do not form a community of loyal customers around you, no one will be interested in working with you. A company's image is a chain of factors, each of which reflects your image in one or another area of life. Are you a good employer, how do you communicate with clients and work off negativity, do you participate in public life, and so on. All of this builds up the idea of you that clients are guided by.
How to avoid mistakes
Write for different blogs - create a list of blogs where your audience hangs out and go to them with guest articles. This will show that you understand the industry and get a mention of yourself beyond your own platforms. The more such articles you have, the more likely you are to stick in the minds of customers.
Experiment with platforms — try yourself in new places. Who knows, maybe the audience will like a broadcast on Instagram, a podcast or a webinar with your experts. With the latter, you can go further and speak at a conference where your potential clients are.
Manage social media - this will give you a bunch of new channels to interact with your customers, and also gather them in one place. You can use this to tell people about life in the campaign, distribute lead magnets, and also grow your audience by targeting similar users.
7. You don’t create the image of a reliable partner
The need for security is one of the basic desires of a person. If a client is not sure that the relationship with you is reliable at all stages and situations, then even a person who has made a purchase will leave a negative review, will not return himself and will push other people away.
These feelings are influenced by dozens of little things, up to the fact that you do not respond in the chat on the site. No one wants to wait in a normal situation, and if an emergency arises when it is necessary to process the negative, then even more so.
In other words, people do not enter into business relations with companies that have not convinced them of the quality of their service.
How to avoid mistakes
Study the customer experience after interaction with you - the relationship with the client does not end when he/she places an order. Study what needs may arise after and take them into account. CJM and regular interviews with clients will help with this. Let the client know that the company has not forgotten about him/her after receiving the money.
Create a page with reviews and cases — show that you already have satisfied clients who shared their experience of interacting with you. An outside opinion has a positive effect on people's decisions. If you have certificates that confirm your reliability — do not hide them.
Organize the work of technical support - people need guarantees and confidence that if something happens, the company's specialists will help solve the issues that have arisen. Write clear instructions, the same chat bot can send them. Operators should also be aware of possible problems and competently help. At the same time, people will not appreciate avatars from stocks, put photos of real people.
Respond quickly in chats - even 10 seconds of waiting in a chat is an unaffordable luxury and shows poor customer service. If you can't respond quickly, set up a chatbot that will answer all basic questions automatically and connect an operator at the right time.
8. You don't work with conversion
There is nothing difficult in simply launching advertising campaigns, especially when there are automatic strategies and campaign masters.
Conventionally, you have completed your tasks, performed mechanical actions. But this will give a zero result if a person reacts to the advertisement, looks at the site, does not understand anything and closes it.
Potential leads do not wait for the moment to buy from you. They need to be led to a purchase. Accordingly, it is necessary to improve the conversion of the site.
If the user does not understand the site, he will not try to find anything. He will simply go to those who understand everything. If the user is not led to new levels of the funnel, he will not wait for you, he will be hooked and led to a purchase by others.
How to avoid mistakes
Test different Call-to-Actions — find the call to action that works best for your audience. Create a sample and test options, A/B testing will help with this. Find the best result and implement it in your work, periodically testing new hypotheses.
Improve your sales funnel — periodically check how certain stages of the funnel work. Study the strengths and weaknesses, look for missed stages, add new channels, lead magnets. Test the automatic sales funnel in messengers, maybe you will be able to attract leads without a specialist?
Improve the website — the convenience of the website directly affects the conversion. If you want a person to become a client, the interface must be clear. So that everyone can find information about delivery, payment, order, reviews, etc. Both from the desktop and from the phone. Determine the reasons why people leave the site and fix them. Webvisor, analytics counters and a heat map of the site will help with this.
9. You are sitting on sites where there are no clients
In theory, the more communication channels, the better. However, if your audience is mostly on Telegram, and you create a community on Odnoklassniki, you are wasting your time and resources. Get a couple of classes and zero leads, that is not the result you want.
By publishing on a car dealers' blog, knowing that there are no ordinary car enthusiasts among the audience, you are wasting your resources.
Similarly, by scattering your attention across all platforms indiscriminately, you will spend more money and time. But some of them will not bring the audience, and the necessary ones will not give the expected result.
How to avoid mistakes
Study your competitors - see where market players are targeting a larger audience. There is a place for you there too. You can pick up working mechanics or, on the contrary, weak points from them, which you can turn into your advantages.
Cut off unnecessary platforms — give preference to those social networks and blogs where the audience will be interested in your content and product. It makes sense to pay attention to the rest when there is enough time and resources.
Test new niches — once you’ve established yourself on the main platforms, study the trends and try yourself in new places. For example, businesses still disdain the short video format from TikTok and Reels. This could be your chance to be the first to occupy a free niche and attract a new audience.
10. You don't follow up with leads
What happens when you get a lead? It either turns into a client or disappears.
Most often, a person studies 2-3 offers in parallel, may forget about you altogether and not return later, although they have already put the goods in the basket. If you do not have a clear strategy on how to convert a lead into a sale and warm up forgetful clients, then the work done earlier will be in vain.
The number of attracted applications does not compensate for the lack of a sales funnel. Each user must be hooked and led to the key action - a purchase.
A schematic example of a simple sales funnel involving a chatbot
How to avoid mistakes
Develop a strategy for following up on applications - create an action plan for what to do with a lead in the first minutes, during the day, month, six months, etc. Each time stage should have its own actions, be it a call, an email, or even excluding contacts from the database.
Organize a messenger marketing system - people increasingly prefer to communicate in messengers. Create a strategy that will allow you to stay in touch with the client on his favorite platform, so it will be easier for you to support users.
Assess the quality of the operators' work - often the user's decision is influenced by correspondence in the chat or a telephone conversation with the manager. Study how employees communicate with clients and highlight elements that should be improved
Conclusion
Consider mistakes as factors that deprive you of 10% of leads, and solutions as a plan for eliminating problems. Adapt methods and supplement methods taking into account your context and eliminate weak points in lead generation.
Suggest in the comments ways to avoid mistakes or other mistakes that you encountered in your work.
