Often times we come across businesses with a lot of potential which unfortunately doesn’t get fully realized. Although they seem promising not all business ideas translate into success.
Although there can be many reasons why a business can’t make a profit and why your leads aren’t converting. If in the initial stages there’s a drop or no customers the first thing we often look into is their strategy. Marketing strategy often comes under scrutiny during this evaluation.
Often, it’s the marketing that wasn’t done right. In a small or medium business, a marketing team’s goal is to provide a bridge between the idea (aka value of your product or service to the customer) and customers (the goal).
If you are on this blog it’s because you are concerned your business isn’t generating leads or your marketing isn’t creating the leads you would like it to.! Which is a valid concern for many small and medium businesses in the GTA.
The problem lies in the ways you market and that’s exactly what this blog will help you understand. Read on.
Top reasons your marketing isn’t generating leads.
1.You don’t do Passive Marketing
What’s passive marketing you ask? Glad you did! Passive marketing is a constant effort to be seen as a brand. Remember those billboards or radio ads? For starters, that’s what it is but over the years this has evolved in social media and active efforts to spread brand awareness.
Although this makes it easy for a small business to enter a market, the market is saturated and that’s where our next point plays in.
2. Is your website generating leads?
We have observed a lot of SMBs missing out on lead generating opportunities through their website. Consider your website as part of your sales team and invest time and budget as you would on your sales resources. One of the common mistake businesses make is by undermining the potential of their website just because they may not have generated any leads from their website in past. There could be multiple reasons behind this and in most cases, it is simply down to lack of clarity on the purpose of the website in first place. If you consider your website to be a lead generating tool then you must invest time to review the content, keep it up to date, and more importantly present your brand the way you would when you are in front of a client. Your website should tell your brand’s story and include information about your business, product/services, and why should they consider your company. If your service/product can be sold or subscribed virtually then make that facility available with eCommerce capability.
Most of your website visitors are anonymous and as part of your lead generation measures, you must make efforts to identify them:
- Direct your website visitors to a concrete next step by adding Call-To-Action buttons through-out your website
- Add resources and materials such as eBooks, Infographs, Product Brochure for visitors to download
- Add Chat feature to instantly connect with you
- Create easy forms for visitors to submit
- Analyse website traffic to monitor performance of each webpage and content
- Make sure your website is mobile friendly and easy to navigate, and more.
3. What is your nurture strategy?
Not all leads in your pipeline will convert. Some leads may become cold over a period of time What are you doing about those leads? Nurturing leads is as important as generating new ones. You should maintain a lead funnel and closely monitor the progress of your leads. Many of your leads may not be actively in the market and that is OK. It is your responsibility to keep nurturing them to maturity. Here are some common ways to nurture your leads:
- Send them monthly emails with new updates, offers, resources, etc.
- Set a reminder to drop them a call periodically
- Send them personalized mailers if and when possible, for instance during the holiday season
- Try to connect with them on social media so that they can view your posts
4. You haven’t started generating leads through passive marketing techniques
One of the greatest gifts of digital marketing in today’s day and age is the gift of social media ads! Targeted ads that use Sophisticated tech and algorithms that would cost us a fortune are available at our fingertips for free. Condition you invest a bit in them and use them the right way. Now you may be wondering how do I generate leads with social media ads? We’ll answer that, you can run ads with:
A/B testing– this lets you run two separate ads and gather results based on your target audience preference. All you have to do is run two ads you think will work and see which fares.
Lead generation objective– platforms like Facebook and Google will run specific campaigns. These ads come in different categories, from ads to get more leads to ads aimed at getting more attention to your page. Let’s say you choose lead generation as your target for running an ad. The algorithm will then direct your ads at the users it determines will be best suited for this purpose creating more sign-ups or visibility on those users’ profiles.
5. You haven’t targeted the right persona
Marketing online is not about targeting the entire 2 billion people online but targeting a niche that relates to your brand and its product. This helps you create leads easier. Simply put, targeting a persona among your audience and aligning a similar brand persona to match it helps the audience relate to your brand and create your own orbit in which you can engage and generate leads for your business. An easy example could be new moms, based on their searches and active groups or following your business can attract new moms with offers that they may be interested in. Offering services that align with their needs and marketing strategies that attract them towards your product or services.
6. You aren’t active on social platforms
Having a presence is very important when it comes to creating leads. Not only offline but even online customers look for businesses they feel are genuine. When they visit your page or look you up your business should showcase active presence digitally. This helps a customer trust the fact that you are an active business that will provide to their needs. Regular social media posting, updated blogs and websites help create this with minimal effort yet promise valuable lead generation.
7. You don’t strategize lead generation activities
Online presence in itself can’t offer 100% lead gen. Your marketing strategy has to involve a conscious effort to generate leads and there are a number of ways to go about it.
Our main picks:
Ad campaigns– running ads as we mentioned generates interest among your niche audience and helps them convert to active customers. Running ads on different platforms or for starters even on Facebook alone can create a huge buzz as Facebook uses its AI and algorithm to pick among its users who will most likely opt for your product or service.
LinkedIn campaigns– a growing number of small businesses especially B2B generate a good amount of their leads through LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator helps you target business owners and directly pitch your services/ product to them be it for a vertical or lateral line of connections.
E-mail campaigns– are a good way to nurture the current leads to remind them of your business and those who are warm or cold leads without having to cold call. Most marketers agree email campaigns still generate leads on par with social media and offline efforts and in fact are still a very valuable resource and cost-effective for a small business.
8. Maintain and build relationships
A business needs its clients at every stage of its cycle. This is why building and maintaining relationships become so much more important. Social media gives you easy access to stay connected, and so does email. You don’t always have to have a product on sale but offering discounts or sending newsletters on what your business is currently doing helps build trust and a personal relationship with its customers. This creates a human bond between the business and its customers which is the most important factor here. Empathy and making them realize their connection are valued helps customers build brand loyalty in the long run.
9. Your page isn’t showing up on the search engine
Customers search for a brand, it’s reviews and website. SEO, as we mentioned above helps get your page a higher ranking on search engines. Irrespective of whether the customer is looking for your brand in specific or just typing in their requirements. Having the keywords and blogs/ content that match their search will help search engines show your business as one of the options. However, with so many competitors online, ranking on the first page is very important. We have dedicated an entire blog on how to get your website SEO friendly to be sure to read that if you need more insight on this point.
10. Add videos.
The last point we would like to address is videos. With the audience being subjected to a host of information online it’s no surprise that the general audience’s attention has been said to be around a few seconds. These few seconds will determine whether they turn into leads or ignore your product. Add short videos to help get your customer’s attention!
What these do in general is give your brand a voice and give all the necessary information about what it is that your business does without the audience having to spend more than a few seconds to make that vital decision of whether they buy from you or not.
To conclude, it doesn’t matter how big or small your business is, creating a brand image and a strong brand presence is critical to your lead generation measures. Some of these activities are passive and may not directly lead to generating opportunities, however, they are crucial in complimenting your sales campaign.
