In-House Lead Generation Mistakes

At this point, you must have read countless articles on how to do lead generation; what strategies work and which don’t. But what about the worst lead generation practices? If there is a right way of doing it, there is also a wrong way of doing it.

Many bigger and more established companies leave their lead generation activities to a lead generation company. It’s a much faster way of generating leads since you have a whole separate team solely focused on that while you can focus on running your company and improving your services. However, there are just as many startups and SMBs who don’t have the means to branch out into outsourcing just yet and have to do lead generation internally. So, we want to shed some light on what some of the most common mistakes in in-house lead generation are to spare you from committing these mistakes.

Email on Full Blast

We’re not saying that you shouldn’t generate leads using the email method. In fact, we highly recommend it. However, constantly blasting them with emails about your products is just a mere invitation for them to get annoyed by you. Instead of attracting or delighting your prospects, you shoo them away with content that is irrelevant and considered spam.

Stick to content that is going to be relevant to your potential clients. If your clients or prospects subscribed to your newsletter or email course, keep sending them those and sneak in a little sales talk here and there, but avoid sending them things they didn’t ask for.

Error: CTA Not Found

There have been one too many incidents where websites look cool, fun, and engaging yet the only most important thing is missing – Call-To-Action. It doesn’t matter how wonderful your website may look, if there is no CTA option, you are just merely sending your possible clients to a site without leading them through a sales process and that will make them feel as if their time has been wasted.

If you do have a CTA, make sure they’re not invisible. Make them clear and visible with simple “Next Step” or “Get Started” CTA buttons on your front page. Guide and tell them what it is that you want them to do so they won’t tap around in the dark.

Ditch Link Farms

It’s in human nature that we want everything in an instance; with just one click. It’s very easy to just go into Google and search for “buy bulk backlinks” and voila! Link Farms for days. You can submit your link into a directory and then have them parade your website address everywhere including websites that have absolutely nothing to do with your industry and are most likely unsafe websites as well. This can hurt your brand’s credibility because fewer people will trust a company that advertises itself on sites that have no relevance to its own services.

Another downside to using link farms is that Google won’t like it once they track down that you are part of multiple websites at once, and as a result, Google will rank your website lower instead. The best solution here is for you to make and develop relationships with other people who are in the same industry as you are and ask if maybe they could let you be featured as a guest blogger or let them include you into their content as a source or anchor text. This approach is a much safer, smarter, and more organic way of acquiring links.

All Post, No Talk

This is another common mistake that many companies do. They set up a social media page and just use it as a place where they can dump all their blogs and website links but do not initiate any interaction with their audiences. There should always be a good balance between promoting your business and talking with the people you want to get involved with your business.

The most effective way of using your social media platform is to spend 50% of your time interacting with others and the other 50% talking about your product or service. Don’t let them perceive you as untouchable. Like, share, re-tweet, comment on other’s posts and contents. The more they feel how engaged you are with them, the smoother and authentic your lead generation will be.

One vs. Many

Most of the time, it’s a no-brainer to target the decision-maker of the company when it comes to marketing your services and products. Makes sense, right? They’re the ones who either give the red or green light. This is a very common mistake because the correct way to approach this is to appeal to multiple people in the company. Now, with that, we don’t mean that you should just pick anybody in the company. Instead, try to find out who else is a core decision-maker. The CEO might be the one with the last say, but when it comes to the process, it is a collective of people within the company who consider the different points. While the CEO is more concerned with vendor relationships, the CFO might focus more on the pricing and a technical manager might be more concerned about product specifications.

It is best to look into account-based marketing because it can help you address and overcome everyone’s individual concerns. Account-based marketing also gives you multiple entry points into an organization as you connect with different contacts within the company, building up your credibility as a brand as well as your relationship with them.

There you have them. As crucial as lead generation is to every business, the how is also just as important. It’s important for us to be aware of the common lead generation mistakes so that we don’t make them ourselves.