Much has been written about lead generation, and while much of this advice is useful, there are just as many fallacies. Here, we look at what are possibly the five most dangerous lead generation myths.
Leads can be generated on demand
Lead generation is not something that can be turned on and off like a tap. It takes time and consistent communication to attract visitors and then convert them into qualified leads. A pause in your lead generation operations can mean losing the leads already in your sales funnel, a problem that can take much longer to fix than it took to create. To keep your leads engaged and your sales funnel flowing, you need to ensure that your messaging is consistent and relevant.
More leads equal more customers
It doesn’t matter how many leads you have if they won’t convert. To make sales, you need qualified leads who have a real need for your product or service. This goes for every lead generation campaign regardless of your approach. To find high-quality leads, you first need to figure out what kind of people have a need for your solution, and then take a targeted approach to your marketing. The more focused you make your messaging, the better your leads will be.
Lead generation is a task for only your marketing department
Although lead nurturing strategies are conceived in your marketing department, sales also play an important role in their creation and implementation. Your salespeople know your customers best, and they should be involved in both the creation of your buyer personas and the development of a lead scoring system. The whole point of lead generation is to deliver potential customers to your sales team. If your sales team doesn’t tell your marketing team what kind of leads it needs, neither department will be able to deliver.
A website will automatically generate leads
Your website is not a magic lead magnet. Visitors need to be given a reason to visit it. Most strategies that use a website as a central lead generation tool rely on content to attract and convert leads, but there are a variety of other mediums that can be used to draw the right traffic. A good conversion asset just has to be valuable and relevant to that target audience. Apps, videos, and paid advertising can all attract or drive traffic to the forms used to gather leads’ details if designed with your prospects in mind.
It’s too hard to combine lead generation channels
Some marketers believe that even the use of separate channels for lead generation is too complex and that by combining channels they’d only risk complicating things unnecessarily. In truth, channel integration is quite simple with modern marketing desktops, and many businesses are able to achieve even better ROI by leveraging the strengths of different media for a single strategy. To combine lead generation channels effectively, you just keep in mind which channels are best at what.
You need to attract, convert, and qualify leads before you can hand them over to sales, and the channels in an integrated strategy should be chosen according to how well they serve these tasks. This approach to lead generation is best seen in inbound marketing, where social media and blogs attract visitors to websites, and downloadable content converts them to leads. But there is a myriad of other opportunities for channel integration, and an innovative lead generation agency can combine media ranging from telemarketing to PPC.
To learn more about holistic lead generation and what it can do for business growth, you can download our guide here.
