By Sneha Mittal
There are millions of B2B businesses competing for business share in the same industry. As new entrepreneurs join the league, market pressure makes it difficult to generate new leads. Lead generation is the process of converting strangers into someone who has an interest in your company’s product or service. It is the most important activity for any entrepreneur trying to make a mark in the industry. Lead generation as a practice will only continue to become competitive as more and more businesses shift online. Entrepreneurs and marketers who fail to adapt to the changes in the industry and tailor their lead generation strategy will fall behind.
How do you know if your lead generation efforts are yielding results? How can you understand the root issues and roadblocks of your lead generation strategy? And once you identify the gaps in your lead generation strategy, what steps can you take to make sure your lead generation works? In this blog post, we urge you to ask yourself 3 important questions to identify if your lead generation efforts are effective. Once you identify the flaws and gaps in your strategy, you can adapt it to make sure your business stays profitable with the right lead generation methods.
#1 Question to Ask Yourself: Does my content attract leads or scare them away?
Your website content and provided resources define what your potential customers think about your company. Creating more content definitely attracts customers, but the quality of the content defines your impression on your customers. Here are the 3 steps you need to follow to identify if your content is attracting your leads or scaring them away:
Step 1: Revisit your Content
Start the process of introspection by revisiting your resources and educational assets like ebooks, case studies, blog posts and white papers. Ask yourself if this content is relevant and helpful to the customer or merely promotional in nature? Your content needs to deliver value to your customers without demanding too much effort from their end. Would you read a 20-page case study if you were in their position? Would you find the blog posts interesting if you were a customer? Would these posts add value to you? Would you be encouraged to know more about the business after reading the content? If your answer to any of the questions is no, then you need to remove such posts for your channels which may be resulting in loss of leads for your business. For further help, you can read this quick blog post from Hubspot on how to manage your content marketing efforts in just 30 minutes a day: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing-30-minutes-a-day.
Step 2: Monitor your Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate
In the second step, you should watch the bounce rate on your website and monitor the click-through and conversion rates closely. A high bounce rate and low conversion rate will tell you whether or not your customers find your content valuable. These metrics can put into plain terms what steps you should take to generate more leads. More specifically, it will encourage you to explore better ways to attract and engage your prospects. You need to strike a fine balance between quantity (of course, SEO is important!) and quality (non-valuable content=more junk+fewer customers). You can read this quick blog post from the famous marketer Neil Patel on 13 ways to reduce bounce rate and increase conversions.
Step 3: A/B Test New Content
A good practice to follow is to A/B test new content and see if it has any impact on the conversion rate and lead generation efforts. An A/B test allows some of your visitors to see the old version of your content, while the other half see the new content version. It is advisable to test new changes on your website every once in a while. This ensures that the content on your website stays fresh, updated and relevant. Simultaneously, it can help you optimize your conversion rate. If you’re new to A/B testing, then you don’t need to worry. Read this quick blog post to learn all about A/B testing.
#2 Question to Ask Yourself: Do my leads trust my business?
When it comes to buying, customers buy from businesses they trust. But you need to see if your leads trust your business. How can you build trust with people you have never even met? If you have a lot of visitors on your business website, but you’re struggling to convert these prospects into customers then there might be multiple reasons behind this issue.
Step 1: Website Design
Start by looking into your website structure and content. Are you leaving a poor impression on your visitors? First impressions are the lasting impressions, and your website acts as a face of your company. If your website is not well-designed and mobile-friendly, it’s possible that you may be losing a lot of customers due to poor website design. Ensure that your website is optimized for all devices, and it contains an effective value proposition for your customers. You can make your website more trustworthy with your success stories, credentials, testimonials, honors, awards and more – anything that demonstrates the true value you deliver to your audience. You can read this quick post to find out the 25 important features you need to incorporate in your website to make it more trustworthy.
Step 2: Be Accessible
There’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to connect to a business when you want to ask a question or know more about the product. Wouldn’t you want to spend more time with your leads and show them how your product/service can benefit them? If you’re waiting for them to uncover your email ID stuffed in a small corner of your website, then you’re losing a lot of great opportunities. Create your own personal schedule for free with a system like SuperSaaS online appointment scheduling system and integrate your schedule on your homepage. Encourage your prospects with the effective call to action buttons to book an appointment with you right away or simply add your appointment schedule to your website and allow them to book right away. This will build the trust of your customers and once they speak to you, they will feel more confident about buying from you.
Step 3: Personalize and Customize your communication with your leads
It’s never been tougher to win a customer’s attention on the internet. Therefore, you want to make sure all your communication with your customers is personalized and customized based on which stage of the sales funnel they’re in. If you’re still using generic language in your emails and texts, your messages are probably being ignored or lost in the crowd.
Personalized and targeted communication will help you build a long-lasting relationship with your customers and cut through the digital noise. Use a software like SuperSaaS that allows you to collect relevant customer information. 46% of marketers with well-planned lead management strategies have sales teams who follow up on more than 75% of leads. Make sure you follow up with your leads. If you’re worried about forgetting to send follow-up emails, you can use SuperSaaS which allows you to send automated reminders and follow-up messages after your appointments, personalize them with customer details and customize these messages based on dynamic conditions. Use automation to personalize your messages and connect your favorite software together to automate your work for you. For example, you can connect MailChimp and SuperSaaS together to send customized emails to your leads when they sign up for an appointment with you. This will not only help you build trust, but also gain customer loyalty.
#3 Question to Ask Yourself: Am I tracking the right metrics?
If you can measure it, you can improve it. This applies especially to your lead generation efforts. If you track the right metrics over time, you will have a clear picture of how your lead generation campaign is performing and you can take the right steps to improve your results. The best part about tracking metrics is that you can easily see if your efforts are improving results or not. Here are some important metrics you need to track:
Step 1: Performance Metrics
The performance metrics show you how your campaigns are performing. The key performance metrics include click-through rate, conversion rate, time to conversion and return on investment (ROI). Use these metrics to track specific landing pages or a particular ad/offer on your website.
i) Click-Through Rate: Click-through rate measures how many people are clicking on your call to actions. This metric can tell you if your call to action buttons are working effectively. You can experiment with another call to action text or new colors for your call to action buttons to see if your conversion rate is impacted by these small changes. You can read this blog post which gives you examples of call to action buttons you can experiment with.
ii) Conversion Rate: Conversion rate is one of the most important metrics to track, which tells you how your visitors are reacting to your offers and landing pages. Watch your conversion rates in different stages of the sales funnel to see which stage demands most of your attention.
iii) Time to Conversion: Sales conversion cycle is different for B2B & B2C products. If you have a longer sales cycle, time to conversion is a helpful metric to track. For example, if you schedule an appointment with the lead to explain to them about your product and follow-up for paid conversion then tracking “time to conversion” can help you measure your performance better. You should track the time to conversion for every stage of the sales funnel to get an accurate picture of your conversion cycle.
iv) Return on Investment (ROI): Return on investment is the most important metric to track in any campaign, and this is the most important metric for any business. This metric tells you how much profit you made with your investment. For example, if you spend $10 in capturing a lead and you know that you can make at least $15 per customer, then your ROI is 50% [($5/$10)*100].
Step 2: Cost Metrics
Cost metrics are pretty simple, they tell you about the costs associated with acquiring traffic and leads. If you’re working with paid advertisements, then you should track the costs you’re paying per impression, cost per click or cost per conversion depending on your advertisement goals. Your advertisement tools calculate these costs for you and you simply need to keep a track of these metrics to make sure you’re not spending more on acquiring your customers than you’re earning from each sale. Watch the customer lifetime value and see if the cost you spend in acquiring the customer is worth the spend.
Step 3: Channel & Sales Metrics
Channel metrics tell you which channel of marketing brings you better leads. In channel metrics, you should track the paid vs organic lead percentage, the closing rate per channel and the month-to-date goal for each channel. The month-to-date goals and closing rate per channel will tell you about the growth and progress of each channel vs your set goals. This will help you identify the most effective channels. Measuring the paid vs organic lead percentage will help you determine if your organic lead generation efforts are working well enough to reduce dependence on paid leads, thus reducing your advertising spend.
Sales metrics will help you identify if the leads are giving you enough sales to continue your marketing efforts. In your sales metrics, track closing rate (percentage of leads that converted to actual sales) and win rate (how many leads you will need to create actual clients).
You can refer to this quick checklist of important metrics to track in your lead conversion efforts. When you focus on improving your lead generation efforts, you will notice that the numbers all across your sales funnel will improve steadily.
Sneha Mittal is the Marketing and Customer Service Manager at SuperSaaS Online Appointment Scheduling System. Sneha enjoys reading, cooking and traveling in her leisure time and you can connect with her via LinkedIn or Twitter and you can view her blog at Mr&MrsSachdeva.
Lead generation stock image by astephan/Shutterstock
