Every marketer is concerned about one thing above all else: generating enough high quality leads. This is the concern that keeps marketers up at night. It is the eternal struggle.
Even marketers that are generating leads want to generate more. The sales team, the client, the management has an insatiable appetite. Give me leads!
Why Do So Many Marketers Fail at Lead Gen
1) They aren’t giving stuff away for free
Recently we did a webinar with a very respected guest. We ALWAYS record these webinars and post them in our webinar library. We do not require a form fill for visitors to the webinar library to listen and watch the recorded webinar.
Well, this guest didn’t like that.
He insisted that his content was too valuable to offer for free and forever on our site. He told us that we had to take it down after a few weeks. I refused and reminded him that he was a guest on our webinar series.
Eventually he relented.
My point is this: he didn’t want to give away 50 minutes of free marketing training content because he was worried it would hurt his business. He didn’t want to give away something of value for free.
This is an old-school attitude that doesn’t work anymore. In today’s world you have to give something to get something. We EXPECT to be given useful content for free. This is the definition of content marketing. I can promise you that doing this will not undermine your value prop.
So, if you aren’t generating enough leads part of the reason might be that you aren’t willing to give anything away.
2) They aren’t give away anything of value
Every blog post, every White Paper, every webinar, and every piece of material you produce shouldn’t simply be a sales pitch for your product or service. Instead it should be valuable.
And it should be interesting.
For example, no one is going to read your White Paper titled: 6 Steps to Successful Entreprise Collaboration Implmentation in the Modern World. That’s a real White Paper I saw advertised recently. I can only assume that almost no one downloaded it.
That’s a terrible title. I want to kill myself simply because I read the title.
3) They aren’t using the leads they have effectively
Why would the lead gods bless you with more leads when you can’t sell to the leads that you’ve got?
This might sound silly but there is some sort of kharmic quality about lead gen. If you start selling to current leads, you’ll get more leads. Don’t underestimate the ripple effect of selling on lead gen.
4) They get too cute
Marketers have seen one too many news story about some guerilla marketing tactic that worked, or some branding technique that seemed to be effective.
Forget all that crap and focus on lead gen.
Instead of spending $3,000 printing t-shirts for your company, or buying pens to hand out to customers, spend $3,000 and get 300 leads. Don’t get cute. Focus on lead gen.
5) They aren’t tracking the leads they get
Most marketers are actually generating more leads than they think. The problem is they aren’t tracking them all.
For example, if a B2B only tracks the number of people that fill out web forms as ‘leads’ and ignores phone calls, they’re likely missing out on about 10% of the total lead volume they could be ‘counting’ as leads. And, unfortunately, they’re missing out on the most valuable 10%. (Callers are 10x more likely to buy than web leads).
Or, if a local business only counts walk-in traffic each day and fails to count phone calls, they are likewise missing a massive lead source.
Long story short: if you want accurate lead numbers, you need to track all sources. Your lead count is likely higher than you think it is. Use call tracking.
6) Their product sucks
There is also a chance that you do everything else right and your product just sucks. That’s possible.
