They say make mistakes, learn from them, and move on. But since mistakes cost money, it’s also to prevent them when possible considering that not every company has the budget for it. This is exactly what this article is aiming to do – help you prevent making major B2B lead generation mistakes.
Whether you’re a new company that is just starting out or an existing one looking to revamp its B2B lead generation strategy, the 4 major mistakes presented below are worth knowing and going over to evaluate whether your efforts truly avoid these mistakes.
Mistake No. 1: Content That Lacks Value
It’s no secret that in order to connect with potential prospects over the web, you need to produce content that provides value. This might seem like a very basic definition, but it’s useful to keep this in mind when creating your content strategy.
Valuable content is a piece of content that provides the reader value in a form of knowledge that meets their specific need or provides a solution to their problem.
Since content marketing has become one of the most popular marketing tools on the internet many companies now aim to offer their readers the above-mentioned valuable content. But many fail. Mainly because they don’t put enough effort to differentiate their content from the competition that provides almost exactly the same content they do.
Don’t just create content to check the box, and don’t just write about topics just because the competition has covered it. Ask yourself, what can I do differently? What value can I add to this topic that isn’t already there? Is there a better way to deliver this content?
An effective content strategy is not only designed to assist your prospect throughout their buyer journey but does the assisting with content that is based on your genuine expertise and aims to help them guide to solving their problem rather than sell. Content that is based on a Google search and ends up being a rephrased version of your competitors’ content will not build the thought leadership you are aiming for.
Mistake No. 2: Unconvincing Landing Pages
The success of converting prospects into leads, and then ultimately into customers on the web, directly depends on your landing page experience. It needs to shine visually so that even at a glance your landing page looks competent to the current industry standards, but most importantly your it should feature content that does a great job at describing what it is you offer in a way that is easy to grasp immediately and why the prospect should choose your company.
This might sound like an obvious and basic definition of what a landing page should do, but still, many companies get this wrong. The reason may vary, sometimes it doesn’t have to do with the page design so much as it has to do with the confusing product lineup.
If your B2B lead generation isn’t working out, having unconvincing landing pages might be one of the key reasons for the lack of success. So it’s a good idea to look there and reevaluate their effectiveness. To do so, you can set up a test audience and brainstorm with your team. In order to make data-based decisions, you can rely on data from platforms like Google Analytics and heat map software. The data you need the most to understand the effectiveness of a page is bounce rate, time spent on a page, etc. As to heatmap software, they can help you understand visitor behavior on the page better.
Mistake No. 3: Complicated Contacting Method
If it’s not immediately clear for prospects how to reach out to you, they might bounce off to a competitor. So make sure it’s the “Contact Us” button is in clear sight. But it doesn’t just stop there.
Make sure that only the most necessary fields are required in your forms for submitting it. Complex and long forms that take too much time to fill out run the risk of never being completed or submitted. You need to hit the right balance of fields in your forms to get the necessary info to have a general idea of how you can help them when getting back to them.
Another common mistake in this area is to start the conversation with the prospect with a question. By design, your form is there for you to get an idea of what the prospect is interested in, so getting back to them with a question like “How can we help you?” is simply not effective. Instead, start the conversation by jumping right into the solutions you can provide that are relevant to the prospects.
Mistake No. 4: Investing in the Wrong Promotional Channels
Another widespread b2b lead generation mistake: using promotional channels that are irrelevant to your business. Your company doesn’t need to be on every social media platform, period! Instead, concentrate your efforts on the platforms that are most effective for B2B lead generation.
Usually, LinkedIn is the best promotional channel for B2B businesses. It’s of course a good idea to experiment with different platforms, but don’t sacrifice your main promotional channels to be able to just have a presence on other platforms.
The same goes for all the other promotional channels. Let’s say you usually advertise on LinkedIn Ads but want to also try out Google Ads and Bing Ads. Set up an experimentation budget for trying out the new ones, and if possible, don’t subtract it from the main budget for promotions on LinkedIn.
Trying out as many platforms as possible by having a small investment in each is not an effective lead generation strategy. Prioritize the most important promotional channels for your brand and consistently stick with them. Try out new channels one at a time, and add them to your strategy only after they passed the “trial period.”
Need help with eradicating these B2B lead generation mistakes?
If you need personalized help with understanding how to improve b2b lead generation, feel free to contact us at PMG360 for a free consultation. We provide a customized approach to each distinct customer we collaborate with to ensure the generation of high-quality leads.
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