Why is my lead generation campaign failing?

It’s amazing how often I talk to businesses who say that they tried a lead generation agency, or ran a campaign themselves, but it failed.

In my experience, the reason behind the perceived failure is usually one of the following reasons:

The top 3 responses to “Why is my lead generation campaign failing?”

• Audience – are you targeting the right audience?
• Messaging – are you focussing on ‘what’s in it for the buyer’ rather than just broadcasting a bunch of features?
• Follow-up content – have you created content designed to take the recipient through the key buying stages. Do you have the content and processes to nurture a lead through to purchase?

Audience

Are you targeting the right buyer?

Are you marketing to to the right people within the decision making process? What work have you done prior to commencing your lead generation campaign to identify and determine who you want to reach out to?

I’ve written in detail about what makes a great sales lead in another post. But the key to all of this is making sure that you are targeting the right job function for the product or service that you are selling. The common mistake is to assume that you need to target the CEO/MD or another C-suite job title.

Yes, in many organisations the final purchase decision might come from the CxO. But they will more than likely have staff who are focussed on improving the area of the organisation that your shiny widget / process works wonders for. Start by engaging with these people. Get them to help you identify who else is involved in the purchase process. Now you can use your contact as leverage into these influencers.

How accurate and up to date is your data?

A while ago I was working with a client who proudly boasted that they had a marketing database of over 28,000 contacts and they had all the data they needed. When I sat down and reviewed that data I wasn’t surprised to discover the following issues:

1. Some of the data was over 10 years old. The chances of those people still being that in that role at the company were virtually non-existent
2. Data duplication. Thousands of records were duplicated due to variations in company name, job title etc

When we implemented the new CRM and marketing automation platform (yes they are two different disciplines) we only imported approximately 3,000 records. As a consequence, the KPIs improved dramatically because we were measuring the right data. Over the following 2.5 years the revenue more than doubled after being stagnant for years. This was because the company was finally able to address the right people. With the right messages – instead of wasting time trying to drum up sales meetings from people that just didn’t exist.

Messaging

Make sure you focus on ‘what’s in it for the buyer’. Do not fall into the trap of just broadcasting a bunch of features?

Before you start your lead generation campaign, there are two elements that you need to you identify. You need to know who your buyer is, and you need to know what issues (pain points) they have.

When you have identified these two key critical pieces, you can start on creating the right messaging that will gain their attention.

Follow Up Content

Businesses still seem to rely on just sending out a brochure as a follow up.

This is not good enough in today’s market.

Before you kick off your lead generation efforts, make sure that you have developed key pieces of content that address the five stages of the buying cycle:

1) Awareness

2) Consideration

3) Intent

4) Purchase

5) Re-purchase

Content formats include buyer guides, webinars, explainer videos, case studies, data sheets etc

You should also make sure that you can track how your sales lead interacts with this content. A good marketing automation and CRM system will help you with this.

These are the three key areas that I focus on one when someone asks me “Why is my lead generation campaign failing?”

If you are asking yourself that same question, why not get in touch – let’s see how I can help you get back on track.