Lead generation is one of the best modern digital marketing strategies as it allows you to attract potential customers for a cost-effective price. This strategy can be very successful for your business if done right, but if not, you can find yourself wasting your budget. Therefore, setting up a campaign that will work right and help you collect valuable lead data is essential.
You can face several challenges when launching a lead generation campaign, and there is no better company to discuss these roadblocks than Activate Digital. Activate is a digital marketing agency in Liverpool and is one of the UK’s best lead generation specialists. They have worked on some of the largest campaigns, helping clients attain thousands of leads for everything from property investments to legal claims. Activate Digital has offered us some helpful information on lead generation and the main challenges you can face.
What Is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is essentially using tried-and-tested marketing tactics to acquire lead data from potential customers. Data will usually involve key contact information such as a name, email address and phone number. Campaigns can include anything from social media advertising to pay-per-click and email marketing.
Lead generation campaigns often target new people not already aware of your brand. By targeting people who may fit the profile of your customers, you can build a strong database of potential customers. Lead generation is the very first step of marketing to this audience. Campaigns are largely broad, offering more information or an immediate resource in exchange for providing contact information. The campaigns are not, at this stage, too heavily focused on selling a product or service.
When you have attained a lead, you can use their attention to take your marketing approach to a new level. This process typically involves using their contact information to get in touch, directly calling or emailing them to sell a product or service, or targeting the user with a new advert. Lead generation can be an effective marketing strategy as you have a decent chance of converting an interested person into a customer by following proven marketing funnels. It promises a hassle-free journey for you and your lead from the beginning.
The Main Lead Generation Challenges
So now you know the ins and outs of what lead generation involves, let’s jump into the more exciting stuff! In this section, we will discuss some key obstacles that can prevent you from achieving a successful lead generation campaign.
1. Not Knowing Your Audience
Rule number one of any digital marketing campaign is to know your audience right off the bat. You would be surprised how many companies decided to jump in before knowing precisely who they should be looking for. Before you begin, completing a customer profile document may be helpful. As a marketer, your job is to provide a solution to a customer’s problem, whether that be a product or service. You must consider various elements that make up your ideal customer, including their demographics, like age, gender, location and salary. Other attributes include their behaviour, goals and desires. Finally, ask yourself how does your customer usually decide on a purchase? Do they research the internet or ask friends for opinions? When you have this data at hand, you will better understand the type of person you’re seeking and where they can be found.
2. Choosing the Wrong Platform
You have many marketing platforms open to you when it comes to reaching your target audience, which presents more opportunities to fail. You might be asking what exactly constitutes the ‘wrong’ platform? The answer to this is simply the platform that delivers no leads or delivers leads over your target cost. Platforms include social media channels, direct email marketing, search engine platforms, and native advertising. Even with these options, you have other options to consider. LinkedIn, for example, is more expensive than Twitter and is better suited for B2B customers.
3. Failing to Follow Up Properly
As we have already touched on, lead generation is only the first step in capturing your ideal customers. The core of lead generation is not to sell but to attain data that can be used to push additional marketing campaigns. If you can’t transport your lead to the next stage, then you’ve failed the objective. Lead data is only valuable if it can be converted into sales. You will need to hire proven salespeople with the skills and knowledge required to convince leads to take the next step.
4. Tracking the Wrong Metrics
Marketing is a very data-driven industry, but with so much data to look at, it can be easy to get distracted. Your campaigns will require regular monitoring, and you will need to make adjustments based on the data. Your key metrics will depend on the platform you are using and your chosen campaign type. For example, you may decide to run an advert on Facebook that takes people to a landing page. With this example, you would be most interested in link clinks, cost per link click, impressions, spend and leads. If you find that you are spending a lot but aren’t achieving many leads, your audience isn’t relevant enough, or the landing page is not converting visitors into leads.
5. Refusing to Adapt Your Approach
Similar to the previous point, your lead campaigns will fail if you let them run without making changes. A stubborn personality isn’t a good fit for lead generation. This marketing strategy will take lots of trial and error before you find what works best. Even if your results are immediately positive, there may be room for improvement by attaining more leads at a lower cost. Try and adjust every element of your campaign, from the target audience to the bid, ad creatives and landing page content.
