15+1 Critical Mistakes in Lead Generation You Better AvoidLyuba LazarenkoFerraStudios.com

“The biggest mistake I ever made when it comes to lead generation is not starting early enough. I’ve only recently

been doubling down on proactively inviting people to subscribe to my updates on SujanPatel.com. I wish I would

have started five years ago.”

Sujan Patel, Co-founder of ContentMarketer.io

Influencer says:

3 Common Mistakes for Technology Companies

1Assigning cold calling to a sales rep

Making the salesperson do cold calling is a

complete waste of sales resources.

Cold calling is actually a completely ineffective

activity for a technology company that offers

services such as IT outsourcing.

3 Common Mistakes for Technology Companies

2Isolating an individual responsible for lead generation from the rest of the company

No matter how well he/she does the task,

information sharing should be open and all updates

should be directly communicated in a timely

manner.

3 Common Mistakes for Technology Companies

3Hiring a call center to do cold calling

Call centers rely on scripts and predictable

requests. Technology companies are in a highly

dynamic market where communication by a pre-

defined scenario is useless.

For successful lead generation, the process must

be ensured by readily available technology

expertise and deep product knowledge.

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

4Not defining your

Ideal Customer

This is the critical root cause of most (if not all)

failures of lead generation initiatives. The lack of a

developed customer profile leads to unclear

messaging and completely wrong targeting.

“It’s never too early to create an ideal customer hypothesis

and start testing against that rather than throwing a bunch

of random stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks”.

Customer Success Evangelist, Lincoln Murphy

Influencer says:

“Lead gen’s pretty hard anyway, but if you’re targeting the wrong people, you’re not going to get anywhere.

Make sure you know exactly who your ideal prospect is.”

Jake Peters, the influencer and CEO at Contentacle

Influencer says:

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

5Lack of content

strategy

74% of B2B marketers use content marketing

to generate leads. No strategy — all your

efforts are in vain.

Marketers focus heavily on creating a great

content and assuming leads will magically

appear and convert into paying customers

without managing the process “behind the

curtains”.

Failing to read the customer data and inability

to align it with the content strategy leads to

releasing the content irrelevant to a target

audience.

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

6Landing page with product features

instead of benefits

Nobody wants to read about how cool your

product is if it does not offer benefits that suit

customers’ needs.

There are so many websites that still focus on how

cool their products are, forgetting about what is in

there for potential customers. Often that mistake is

due to not knowing your customer.

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

7Many Calls-to-Action

on a single landing page

Putting a few links or call-to-action buttons on one

landing page confuses the visitor and will distract

them from converting. Usually such landing pages

do not convert at all and are useless for marketers.

Landing pages should have only ONE main focus.

That means removing navigation or header bars

from your page and keeping it simple to maximize

conversions.

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

8No Call-to-Action on

a landing page

Every page of your website should have a call-to-

action in order to increase the possibility to

capture your lead while he/she is on your website.

If landing page is not a specifically crafted

(promoting a webinar, eBook etc.), the call-to-

action can be as simple as Subscribe, Contact, Let’s

talk, or Ask us more, etc.

Example of hidden or non existent Call-to-Action

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

9Long and tedious lead

capture form

Time-consuming and over-complicated forms kill

conversions. Use asterisks to show visitors which

fields you require and eliminate every field you do

not desperately need at the start of your

relationship.

Some experts advise keeping forms up to five

fields, but I say that three is enough.

And since now everyone has a social media

account, it is good to add a social login option to

your regular form.

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

10Ignoring the specifics

of a channel

Every channel serves different needs specific to the

channel:

• LinkedIn is the best for B2B marketing and

growing professional networking.

• Facebook is best for building a loyal brand

community.

• Twitter for creating brand awareness and

gaining followers.

To run a successful lead generation campaign,

marketers should craft their messages and tone

specific to the channel.

“The biggest mistake I had to deal with was the thinking that the channel does not work for a business instead of

adjusting the approach to the channel and testing again.”

Benji Hyam, Director of Growth Marketing at Everwise

Influencer says:

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

11Forgetting mobile

users

Today not having a landing page mobile responsive

greatly decreases the chances for the visitors to

convert.

Pay attention to content optimization for mobile

users, create very simple forms and call-to-action

and make their phone number clickable.

Example of mobile responsive landing page

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

12Making assumptions

about your target audience

Assuming that we know our target audience just

because we may be one of them is a dead wrong

approach. Instead, marketers better reach out and

talk to their customers and prospects.

Ask your audience what they like or dislike, get into

open discussions with them. The more you talk,

the more insight about them you get.

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

13Running for quantity

vs quality

Unless your product is a universal thing that fits

everybody on the planet, your biggest mistake

would be chasing the quantity of leads while

ignoring their quality.

Quality leads are the ones that fit into the

description of your ideal buyer profile and have a

much higher chance of being converted into a

customer.

“The biggest mistake I’ve made is encouraging clients to go for more leads instead of better-quality leads.

I’ve run split-tests on lead generation pages in which we experimented with the number of form fields to complete… and our success metric

was form completions. So we’d choose a winner based on the number of leads, not how those leads did or did not convert. That’s

problematic…”

Joanna Wiebe, a Founder of CopyHackers

Influencer says:

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

14Neglect using a CRM

system

If you are just starting your lead generation and

nurturing campaign and only have up to 20

contacts, it is okay not to invest in complex CRM

systems.

When your Excel spread sheet has over 50 contacts

and increasing, your lead communication programs

tend to get hectic. Even the simplest CRM systems

out there offer enough automaton and planning

tools that help in doing effective lead generation

and nurturing.

Serious Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

15Not automating

Any marketing manual work turns into a

routine that inevitably leads to decreasing

efficiency of marketing efforts. That is why you

need to start automating. There are many

marketing automation tools out there:

HubSpot, BuzzSumo, Buffer, Hootsuite.

You can collect user’s data and all kinds of

useful analytics, track a user’s behaviour on

various channels and nurture your leads in the

funnel using email marketing tactics that often

are recommended by the software.

“I think a lot of businesses and people either don’t know where to start, or they worry that their list just simply won’t grow. But there are a ton of

awesome, cost-effective tools available now that can help with optimizing the entire lead generation process. If you can provide enough value on your blog and in your emails, people will sign up — but you have to be organized, you have to have a strategy, you have to be consistent

and you have to start capturing emails now”.

Sujan Patel, Co-founder of ContentMarketer.io

Main Mistake: Loosing time

Alternative to Lead Generation

Buy Your Leads

No time for tedious leads generation? Buy them.

But be very careful about that. Big listings tend to have a large percentage of contacts that are invalid or do not meet your ideal buyer criteria.

However, you can benefit from services that offer targeted leads specifically for your product

(e.g. 1000leads.com)

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