6 Costly Lead Generation Mistakes To Avoid Online
Here are the 6 mistakes:
- Blind Traffic
- Horrific Landing Pages
- Disjointed Content
- An Ineffective Lead Incentive
- A Broken Funnel
- Zero KPIs
To skip straight to the section you’re interested in most, just click on the link in the table of contents above.
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“If only I could just get more traffic, I would be able to generate thousands of leads”
… and then what?
That is the question business owners hardly ask themselves.
If you generate thousands of leads… and then what?
The “and then what?” question opens up another perspective, and puts one on check with regards to motive and set goals.
Without further ado, let’s examine the 6 costly lead generation mistakes many business owners are making and why you should avoid them… like a plague!
#1 “Blind” Traffic
Traffic is a broad topic, but I’ll do my best to compress it within the context of this post.
What do I mean by “blind traffic”?
When you send the wrong people to your access your content. Targeting can be a headache sometimes when one is setting up ads.
If you are targeting a very broad audience based on the keywords you choose, you are going to get a lot of drop-offs, because most people clicking through are not really your ideal prospects.
E.g. Football… we all know that football in the UK is different from football in the USA.
If you are targeting both countries with the same term, you are bound to get a lot of wrong people clicking your ads, and that will end up giving your business a bad impression.
Always be specific in your approach, even if some people will not take the desired action, at least the amount of drop-offs will be far less on the long run.
#2 Horrific Landing Pages!
Businesses still don’t understand the importance of setting up proper landing pages for their products and services.
I have clicked on ads that have taken me to the advertiser’s website homepage, which is often a turn off because there is so much going on there. If you are doing this, then you are wasting your advertising funds.
Again, specificity is needed here. If you have several products/services, create landing pages for each of them, and then drive traffic to those landing pages. That way, you will be able to track activities more effectively.
#3 “Disjointed” Content
What does this mean? When every content for your business is created by every individual you outsource work to, without any form of input from you.
When you get a piece of content here and another piece there, you end up with a combination of disjointed ideas from different mindsets about your business, which has the potential of confusing your prospects.
What you need is “Congruence”! You have to own your content. Every piece of content has to compliment each other.
If you know who your target audience is, then that will help you get the content right. Anyone creating your content should work with the vision you have.
To make this work, avoid giving out your content creation work to several people. Find a particular person or agency (if you can afford it) and work with them.
Better yet, create it yourself (if you can), and then work with someone who has both copywriting and marketing skills to fine tune the content.
#4 An Ineffective Lead Incentive
I’ll give a few examples of this one…
“Sign up for my free ebook” – okay, interesting!
What’s the ebook really about and why should I sign up? I see this a lot on websites… it’s a very terrible approach.
With the vast amount of information floating around, people are becoming more and more overwhelmed, and are now looking for filtered content that are easy to consume and are result driven… they don’t need another ebook (most ebooks people download are hardly read).
Your approach should be to pick out an aspect of your service that can solve a specific problem and give out for free. When people interested opt-in, you can then offer the full package with the promise of the overall results.
#5 A Broken Funnel
If you have been running your business online for a while now, you must know how important it is to setup marketing funnels.
A broken funnel is detrimental to any business with a digital presence. If you do not set things up properly, then you are bound to lose out in the end.
Technical issues are inevitable, and if it can happen to technology giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google, then no one is an exception.
You have to consistently check your funnels to ensure everything is working well, otherwise you will end up with traffic but no leads or sales.
#6 Zero KPIs
People often get confused when it comes to tracking their business’s online activities. If you are running ad campaigns to your landing pages, it is important to track everything that is happening.
Without a proper KPI (Key Performance Indicator) system in place, it’d be hard to figure out which campaign is doing well, and which one needs to be paused or stopped completely.
You need to know where the most traffic is coming from and which landing pages are converting the most and why.
Social Media platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter all have inbuilt analytical tools that one can use to monitor their progress within these platforms (especially if you are running ads).
If you own a website, you need to integrate Google Analytics, and other tracking tools necessary to give you a sense of direction with regards to traffic, leads, and conversion and any other online activity you wish to track.
In Conclusion…
Lead generation is a hot topic, and a lot of businesses are looking for more innovative ways to go about it.
The people we are targeting in the bid to win them as clients/customers are no longer ignorant of how these things work, and if your offer is not “juicy” enough for them, they will not opt-in.
So, in order to make headway, be sure to avoid these 6 costly mistakes (and many others), and ensure that you position the right offers in front of the right audience and also setup an efficient funnel that will bring you desired results.
Your turn… what lead generation mistakes have you also come across? Leave your comment below and don’t consume this information alone, share this post to your network!
Thanks for reading,
