New leads are the lifeblood of every business, and in today’s increasingly digital world, inbound leads generated through content marketing are a critical area of focus for any business.
However, not every business is experiencing wild success from their inbound lead generation efforts. If you haven’t seen incredibly positive results from your lead generation efforts, you’re not alone. Many businesses are still struggling to produce ROI from their inbound lead generation efforts.
However, the question to answer is why are so many brands struggling to generate leads from their lead generation efforts? Here are three common culprits that hinder lead generation.
1. The Marketing Team & Sales Team Haven’t Agreed Upon an Ideal Persona.
Does it ever seem like the content you create falls on deaf ears, or that the quality of leads you’re generating isn’t worth following up with for a sales conversation? Many times, it’s because marketing and sales aren’t working together to define an ideal persona for prospective clients.
Who is your ideal client? It isn’t good enough to simply identify their tile or demographic information. You need to develop a persona that includes their needs, challenges, concerns, interests, and what they’re trying to achieve for their business or by buying from yours.
2. You Haven’t Created Content for Each Step of the Buyer’s Journey.
While it’s important to have inbound marketing content that generates new leads by effectively educating people and increasing trust and loyalty with your brand, your content creation efforts shouldn’t stop there. You need to create content that nurtures people through the buyer’s journey and answers the key questions they have at each step of the process.
3. You’re Not Measuring the Right Metrics.
Many B2B marketers are making this critical error because they’re not tracking and measuring the relative lead-generating effectiveness of each form of content they produce.
For example, your sales team might think that having a new brochure to promote a product is absolutely essential. However, a recent study found that only 9% of marketers said brochures are a valuable form of content. Without measuring how effective each lead generation tactic actually is, you’re just guessing about what will work.
If your lead generation efforts aren’t leading to any new business, take time to evaluate your efforts. Determine if one of these common mistakes might be preventing you from experiencing success and identify ways you can overcome your current obstacles to start producing a positive ROI on your investment.
