5 Most Common Mistakes in B2B Lead Generation and How to Fix Them

Lead generation is one of the most significant aspects of the B2B marketing process. It is capable of bringing in quality traffic to a website and producing leads that convert into paying customers. Yet, at the same time, this marketing practice is considered as a key pain point for most businesses around the globe.

The abundance of online and continually increasing competition complicates the process of identifying, tracking, and engaging with potential clients.  However, things aren’t as disheartening as they might seem at first glance.

With proper B2B lead generation strategies, one can survive the challenges, fill the sales pipeline with the quality leads, and reap solid conversions more effectively. With this in mind, this article provides a closer look at B2B lead generation mistakes alongside its resolution.

Why Generating Quality Leads Is Challenging for B2B Companies

Image Source: HubSpot

The answer is simple – lead generation is crucial and challenging to execute. However, one can’t merely overlook this strategy because of its challenges. A business has to continually generate leads if it wishes to stay ahead of the competition. Here are the top three reasons that make acquiring quality leads uphill.

1. The time and effort

Lead generation does not produce the desired outcome in a single shot. It takes time and effort to generate quality leads for your business. On average, it consumes at least 30 minutes to research the company, another 30 minutes to write a follow-up, and over eight dials to get to a prospect. And in case your lead is not a good fit for your firm, all this time and effort will be of waste.

2. The cost

Most of the B2B companies fear lead generation consumes a lot of money. And, to tell you the truth, your assumption is right to a certain extent. To generate a good number of sales leads, you have to spend money in a particular area, be it your phone call or paid adverts. This expense, for the most part, differs from industry-to-industry.

According to Madison Logic, you may have to spend an average of $35 per contact to reach marketing people. Furthermore, in the medicinal services, the standard cost is $65 per lead.

Image Source: Madison Logic

3. The emotions

While it’s true that time and money are crucial in lead generation, it’s also true that emotion plays an equally important role. Consider getting rejected by your prospects over a phone call. It’s hard for even a strong-willed business representative to handle this rejection.

Sometimes, an experienced B2B professional may understand that some leads are not suitable for their business after interacting with them multiple times. This realization hurts their emotions, as well.

Common B2B lead generation mistakes and their solutions

Now we know that lead generation is tricky. We know it’s hard to identify good leads to begin the marketing process, and the procedure of converting them sometimes seems more like luck than anything. Apart from this, there are some more obstacles in lead generation that can hurt your revenue growth.

B2B companies commit a lot of B2B lead generation mistakes, further pulling themselves down the race. Fortunately, these problems can be fixed quickly. So, without any delay, let us face them head-on, discover the reasons behind them, and determine how to overcome them.

1. Sending Potential Leads to a Generic Page

You might have spent hours crafting a perfect ad or well-designed campaign message, but it doesn’t help your business if you direct potential leads to a web page with little interest for them.

If you did not know, as per MECLABS recent survey report, over 44% of clicks generated by B2B companies directed users to the homepage rather than any particular landing page, this problem results in the increased bounce rate.

Homepages are usually confusing for new visitors as most of them consist of an array of navigations for services and content, most of which are unhelpful to a specific ad or campaign.

Displaying the same standard content rather than presenting specific solutions to real problems is the quickest way to lose your leads to your competitors.

It will cost you that lead until the end of time. So, what’s the fix?

Solution:

Start designing a specific landing page for different products or services. Make sure these pages are optimized with tailored messages and the right call to action (CTA).

For example, if your ad promotes medical insurances for small business owners with the call to action ‘Click to find out more’, ensure you have the following things done right:

• The web page they land after clicking on the CTA must have all the necessary information about the insurances for small businesses.  
• It should have a tailored offer for this particular target group.
• A contact form or phone number to speak to someone for more details should be placed in the right position. If you are an e-commerce business, have a look at this free B2B Request for Proposal template. This makes for a very convenient method to generate leads.

You can also create the pages segmented for a different audience. So, the user directed to this page knows what to click next. Consider this landing page by HubSpot.  Here, rather than getting into greater detail for each segment, the company has created one short landing page that directs the target group into their personalized demo.

Image Source: HubSpot

2. Not Delivering Value with Your Content

Content keeps on presenting a challenge for B2B lead generation systems. Acing the specialty of creating profoundly applicable and engaging content is hard for marketers. And, this problem is consistent as user’s needs are ever-changing. Most of the businesses that rely on content make the mistake of not ensuring that it resonates well with the readers.

Most often, marketers fail to check their campaign’s performance before sending out a similar piece of content. Due to this sloppiness, imminent clients won’t ever try your brand, making leads drop out instead of moving ahead in the channel.

Solution:

A simple tweak to your existing content can bring in positive changes to lead conversion rates and actively progress the prospects towards the next step. Monitoring content regularly helps you identify weak-performing pages so you can optimize them or replace them with new content.

The two simplest ways to do this are:

• Use measuring tools that can be integrated directly into your pipeline process. With such tools, marketers can produce high-quality content that is more powerful at converting potential leads.
• Utilize programming tools that offer insight into your existing customer base. With this information, you can understand which content converts your reader, what pain-points have to be addressed, and what can entice them.

Image Source: BrightEdge

3. Ineffective Call to Action

Now you have excellent content and a landing page, but it takes you nowhere if you fail to include a compelling CTA. You are not the only one attempting to catch the eye of a possible lead, many organizations are competing for the same.  

Therefore, it’s crucial to include an appealing CTA along with your content, such as blog posts, paid advertising, newsletters, and landing pages. With this strategy, people don’t have to dance around the web to get in touch with you. An elegantly composed CTA tells the clients what action they need to take next, such as downloading an eBook or filling out the sign-up form.

However, according to Small Business Trends, almost 70% of B2B websites lack a strong call to action. This further pushes the potential buyers into the arms of a competitor.

Image Source: Small Business Trends

Solution:

It is pretty simple. Include a CTA button in every piece of content you create for your team. It’s also important to note that one can’t simply display a “click here” or “submit” button. CTAs need to be attractive and engaging.

Follow these rules to make hard-to-resist CTAs:

• Include an enticing copy to convince visitors to click. The words you include must create a sense of urgency, value, and trust. As per Unbounce data, using ‘submit’ as your CTA anchor text is proven to reduce conversion rate by 3%.

Image Source: Unbounce

• Personalize the CTA to outperform other campaigns. According to HubSpot, personalizing your CTA will convert your leads 202% better than different versions.

Image Source: HubSpot

HubSpot uses personalized CTAs on every blog post. In the above example, it categorizes the CTA into two types. If a visitor hasn’t yet interacted with any of the products but is interested in the solutions, they’ll be shown a CTA to HubSpot Academy, where one can learn about inbound marketing. For existing leads, it shows a separate CTA offering a free tool.

• Finally, place the CTA in the right position to increase the click-through rates. Perform A/B tests to determine this position.

4. Not Enough Brand Credibility

Trust is an essential thing for B2B buyers. Therefore, B2B companies should strike a balance between the lead generation process and brand credibility actions.  If not, you might scare off leads with your sales tactics or inadequate brand presence. It could be any company; if it’s unknown in the market and has a limited track record, it will undoubtedly have a hard time growing.

No buyer wants to be the first to invest in a product, so they generally wait for some credibility before their purchase.  

Solution:

B2B connections are often more long-term. Therefore, gaining customer trust and a positive reputation is essential for marketers. With this in mind, try combining your lead generation procedure with brand-building activities.

Too much lead generation without any brand-building tactics will result in a loss of money and time. The following are a few moves B2B experts must make to set up a reliable reputation in the market:

• Prioritize building business relationships. An email updating the user on products or services, or even a 5-minute call can keep the relationship strong and build a level of admiration, appreciation, and commitment.
• Be available to customers on every possible platform.  They need to know that you are accessible whenever a problem arises.
• Establish a sense of trust with other B2B companies around you. With this method, business owners and decision-makers will be drawn to your organization.

5. Inadequate Following Up

Most B2B companies fall into making this mistake. B2B marketers are regularly centered on acquiring new leads that they disregard the prospective clients who have already advanced through the pipeline. This inadequate or slow follow-up worked fine a decade ago. Responding to a lead in 3 or 4 days and taking a week to prepare a quote was acceptable earlier.

But those days are long gone. Today’s B2B companies are much more responsive. This has raised customer expectations. Consequently, even old-school B2B professionals have to evolve and start getting back to leads as soon as possible. Otherwise, they will lose qualified leads who were ready to convert.

Solution:

Train your team to follow-up on every lead consistently. Get in touch with the leads routinely to keep the line of communication open all through, and ensure your brand remains at the forefront of their minds. Marketing and sales tools can help automate follow-up reminders whenever leads move down the funnel for further actions. This way, you’ll never miss a potential sale.

Experts reveal that businesses following up within 5 minutes of receiving a lead are the most successful.

Image Source: Vendasta

Companies following this 5-minute approach have achieved:

• 9x shorter sales cycle
• 6x ROI growth in a year
• 500% growth in team

So, don’t delay what you have to say to your lead. Buyers will always want to work with businesses who are the first to add value.  

Fix these B2B lead generation mistakes today

Lead generation is too high a priority for B2B industries. It represents a significant chunk of their marketing budget for it to underperform. Unfortunately, the challenges are plenty in this area, but the companies can meet them head-on by following the best practices shown above. With this approach, you’ll watch the number of quality leads soar up and reap the rewards of high conversions.

Emily Johnson

Emily Johnson is a marketing consultant with 10 years of experience in the execution of marketing strategies. Currently, she heads the marketing department at Blue Mail Media, a renowned B2B data solution company based out of Irving, Texas. Connect with her on Twitter