Every business aims to grow and grab market share from its competitors. Unless you have a magic wand or a secret tool, you will have to go through the prospecting box at one point or another to find new clients. But lead generation remains a complex marketing strategy, where it is easy to go wrong.
We will therefore see the errors to avoid in order to have a viable strategy, while identifying the attitudes to adopt for this task.
Overlooking the importance of targeting
When prospecting, it is just as important to take care of your targeting work. Indeed, your goal is to acquire new customers, but not just any customers. Keep in mind that not everyone will be interested in your good or service. Moreover, a basic principle in marketing is that “targeting everyone is the same as targeting no one”.
Therefore, you need to draw up the typical profile of prospects likely to be attracted to your products or services. There are 3 basic steps to go through.
The segmentation
Segmenting the market consists of dividing it according to criteria that you have chosen and that you consider relevant to respond to your offer. They can be physical (the center of interest, age, size of the company, sector of activity) or behavioral (the actions made by the prospect on your website, on your social networks, in relation to your emails).
Targeting
By asking yourself the right questions, you will be able to precisely target the people or entities who could become your customers. Among the criteria you have chosen, is there a typical profile that stands out from the others and that would need your products or services? Are you able to provide added value? This is how you can properly target your lead generation strategy and ensure that it has a good foundation for further operations.
The positioning
This step is often underestimated. Positioning refers to the image you want the consumer to remember about your company, brand or product. Clear and distinctive positioning can strengthen your appeal to your prospects.
Generalize lead processing
Generalizing your leads means not considering the position in which each prospect finds themselves in the purchasing decision-making process. Your communication will then become standardized, even if you think about including the person's name in your message in the case of e-mailings. So, what consequences will this laxity have on your conquest strategy?
First of all, you lose efficiency, because you will offer content and arguments that will not necessarily be adapted given that they are generalized. Then, you risk harming the image of your brand, since your prospects will feel attacked and harassed by things that do not concern them. Ultimately, it's just a waste of time and money.
Therefore, it will be necessary to make a distinction between the “hot” and “cold” leads. The first represent potential customers, those who are already convinced by the benefits they could get by buying from you. In this case, offering them a discount, even if only symbolic, could trigger the transaction. The second are those who are discovering, who may have already browsed all of your offers, but who are not yet convinced enough.
In this situation, the solution would be to support them to see with them the offer that best meets their needs. Obviously, you should not forget to argue about the advantages of your products and services compared to those on the market and to highlight the points that make them unique.
Neglecting the importance of human relationships in favor of automation
Advances in technology have made it possible to implement precise actions that will be implemented automatically, depending on the behavior of a prospect on your company's platforms (website, social networks, emails, etc.). Well mastered, it becomes, for example, possible to send reminders to leads who have abandoned their baskets, all using software. This craze for marketing automation considerably reduces the work of human resources, but we tend to forget the human side, which is the very basis of marketing.
Remember that your leads will always need human contact. If 67% of the customer journey in B to B is carried out online, the 33% will be done with old-fashioned commercial support. But that's not all. In the sales funnel, there will come a time when your prospects will have doubts to resolve or obstacles to purchasing. Only a good salesperson will be able to turn things around so that your prospecting is a success.
Have a fixed lead generation strategy
Marketing is not an exact science, so you might be wrong. Whether in terms of targeting, but also in terms of the channels used to reach prospects, you should not hesitate to rectify in the event of failure. The important thing is to know the reasons for your mistake and take appropriate action. Of course, these changes will inevitably involve expenses, but the main thing is to not lose sight of the reasons why you are prospecting. The important thing is to remain profitable in your approach.
Lack of communication between the marketing and sales department
Lead generation is nothing other than commercial conquest work to acquire new customers. If you have read this article carefully, you will have understood that it is necessary for the marketing department and the sales department to work in symbiosis, throughout lead generation, from the definition of the strategy to adopt, to going through its implementation, up to the analysis of the results obtained. For what ? Since it is the salespeople who will be in contact with your prospects. Marketers will constantly need their feedback for lead generation to be optimal.
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