Is your lead generation pool leaking? How do you even know there is a problem in the first place, let alone how to fix it?
A lead generation pool is worth its weight in the revenue it generates. If your system is not generating the ROI you expected, you may have a problem. But you are not alone. Generating high-quality leads that result in sales is the biggest challenge for 61% of marketers.
This article, will highlight the most important indicators to help you identify the problem and save your lead generation pool.
1. Identify the problem
Many marketers are obsessed with vanity metrics, such as traffic, impressions, bounce rate, followers, shares, comments, views, time spent on site, and leads. But they are called vanity metrics for a reason: They aren't worth much in revenue generation or conversion rates.
Because those numbers are easily manipulated—either intentionally or unintentionally—they can be misleading, and they imply success without achieving tangible results.
Relevant KPIs to focus on:
- Qualified leads are the right people with the right problem. Leads may express their problem by downloading a specific resource, or by letting you know about the problem in a form they submit.
- Landing page conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who land on a page and then take action. Your landing pages should typically have a 4% conversion rate. The lower it is, the less compelling your landing page is—or the wrong people are visiting.
- Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) are qualified leads who want to speak with you. They are the most significant metric of your lead generation efforts.
- Qualified leads to MQL conversion rate
- Cost per lead (CPL) measures the effectiveness of your revenue generation efforts and your return on investment (ROI).
KPIs related to customer acquisition are important because they determine where to invest more money and how effective marketing budgets are over time.
To save your shrinking lead generation pool, you need to find the leaks.
One way to do so is to analyze the following:
- Strategy. Your strategy is the foundation on which you build your processes. A solid lead gen strategy lies in a properly researched target audience with effective buyer personas and the right channels to reach them.
- Process. The next step is to engage and nurture your potential prospects until they are ready to make a purchase. This step aims to cultivate a relationship with your potential customers, and it mainly involves your interacting with them (via email or social media channels) until they trust you enough to do business with you.
- Conversion. Creating the ideal system and processes is just the beginning. Many factors can derail your campaigns' potential and reduce conversion: not looking credible enough, lacking personalization, and failing to deliver the promised value. Working on resolving those issues before the campaign gets off the ground is essential.
2. Align your lead and sales strategies
An effective lead generation campaign involves targeting and nurturing qualified leads with well-defined processes. Those processes start with the aligning of the sales and lead gen teams. Both departments must have the same definitions and the same goals. That way, your sales team can win more deals by focusing on ready-to-close qualified leads.
Here are ways to achieve alignment.
Collaborate as a team on sales enablement
When your teams share information and offer feedback, sales enablement is much easier. Your B2B lead gen team can provide valuable feedback that can boost sales.
Lead generation and sales teams need to share their findings with each other; otherwise,research can go to waste, resulting in lost revenue and wasted budgets.
To maximize ROI, you should create a collaborative environment where information sharing is encouraged and input is welcomed.
Identify your B2B sales and lead gen teams' tech needs
The right technology can help you successfully align your lead and sales strategies. For example, when you implement a single tech stack, your teams can collaborate while viewing your customers through the same portal.
When you take the time to sit down and understand each team's needs, you can develop a tech stack that keeps workplace satisfaction high while boosting productivity and efficiency.
As your teams become more familiar with each other's processes, stronger bonds will develop, and a sense of competition will be less likely.
3. Use ABM
By focusing on a single account, your teams will be able to grow your revenue as a united team.
Account-based marketing (ABM) requires a close working relationship and a willingness to share information and insights to achieve established goals.
To create personalized content and communication channels, everyone will need to understand their customers' motivations and needs. Together, they can determine the best strategy to engage the account at the right time to turn the selected prospect into a customer.
Collaboration can be rewarding when your teams feel a sense of group achievement.
3. Streamline processes with automation
Lead generation, like all things in marketing, is about timing. Push for a sale too early, and you risk alienating your prospects. And if you are too slow, your competitors will nab the lead.
Automation and technology enable you to remove the bottlenecks and inefficiencies that slow you down. You can create workflows and triggers for your nurturing campaigns. Those triggers can immediately qualify prospects based on their actions on your site or specific criteria that you set.
Along with timing considerations, automation has other benefits. For 80% of completed sales, for example, it takes up to five follow-ups. Automating your drip campaigns and email marketing campaigns makes the follow-up process faster and more efficient.
Cold Outreach
Use automation tools to reach out to new leads at scale and build relationships with them. A day-long outreach to hundreds of people may appear robot-like and impersonal, but it's quite the opposite.
Here are some tips for nailing automated cold email outreach for your B2B lead generation:
- Personalize your outreach copy: Include your prospect's name, company information, and other personal details to avoid seeming generic and robotic.
- Target and segment your audience: Ensure you are reaching out to the right leads.
- Use a multichannel approach: Use email, social media, and other channels to reach out to prospects online so no one slips through the cracks.
- Invest in a sales prospecting tool: A sales prospecting tool can help automate cold outreach by providing you with a list of new leads based on your ideal customer profile and other criteria.
Automated Ad Campaigns
Using automated ad campaigns, you can attract new prospects and retain current customers at a lower cost than traditional lead generation methods.
To drive conversions, you need to understand your target audience and create compelling ad copy. Keep in mind your customers' pain points, the benefits of your product, and other features you can offer.
Implement effective targeting and segmentation strategies. Not all your potential leads have the same problems; differentiate and personalize your ads accordingly.
After you've mastered the basics, you can start automating ad campaigns across multiple channels.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound is one of the most effective lead generation strategies because it provides value in exchange for the leads' contact information. It helps you attract, convert, close, and delight customers by providing them valuable content they actually want.
Consider the following forms of inbound marketing:
- Blog posts. A blog is one of the most powerful inbound tools for lead generation. It allows you to create high-quality content that attracts your target audience and helps you establish yourself as a trustworthy expert in your industry.
- Social media. Social media is an excellent platform for engaging with your target audience and generating leads. Use social media ads, sponsored content, and other ads to expand your reach in your target market.
- Website SEO. By optimizing your website for relevant keywords and phrases, you can rank higher on search engine results pages. The higher your website ranks, the more traffic it will generate and the higher its conversion rate will be.
- Online events. An event can be a powerful way to attract new leads, engage your audience, and generate leads. Depending on your goals, you can host webinars, one-to-one sessions, or other types of events.
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The future of lead generation will be shaped by factors such as technology, data, and customer behavior, all of which will continue to evolve rapidly in the years to come. To stay ahead, marketers need to address those factors at all points along the funnel and continue testing and measuring their effectiveness to boost results and grow their lead generation pool.
More Resources on Improving Lead Generation
How B2B Leaders Can Improve Lead Generation in Their Organizations
Six Lead Generation Tools to Improve ROI on Your B2B Marketing Funnel
How to Increase Leads: Effective Entry Points for Lead Magnet Signups
