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Lead Generation

Generating New Business Leads - What You're ACTUALLY Doing Right & Wrong

If you want to grow your business, DON'T miss out on this article about everything you should DO to generate new business leads.

7 mins read time
Kevin Dean
Kevin Dean

Dec 14, 2021

Plenty of marketing articles focus on exposure, brand awareness, and outreach. But if you want to see real, honest-to-goodness growth, then you need to spend more time focusing on quality lead generation.

Even if you're already working to generate new business leads, you might be making some critical mistakes without realizing it. To ensure you're using your time as efficiently as possible and securing the best leads for your brand, learn about the dos and don'ts of lead generation and — most importantly — why they matter.

 

Lead Generation Dos

Let's start out on a positive note: If you're doing any of these things as part of your lead generation efforts, then you're already doing something right.

 

Listening to Customer Feedback

Your brand is already successful to some degree, so it's clear that the product or service you're offering has value. But if you're not continuously iterating in order to meet customers' ever-evolving needs, then you won't be getting nearly as many new business leads as you could be.

So, it's essential to always listen to customer feedback and tweak your offerings accordingly. For instance, you could gauge customer sentiment via:

  • Feedback surveys
  • Reviews
  • Social listening
  • Customer service tickets
  • The links that are clicked on most

For example, let's say your Google Analytics reports reveal that a significant number of people are clicking on one of your brand's articles concerning a specific pain point.

By tailoring your product or service to better address that pain point (and emphasizing it more in your content), you can generate a greater number of new business leads who are ready to make a purchase in order to solve their problem.

 

Creating Buyer Personas

Having a general idea of who you're selling to is one thing, but having a detailed persona that encapsulates their personality, wants, and needs is another.

That's where buyer personas come in: With the detail and focus a well-rounded buyer persona can provide, you can more effectively hone in people who are most likely to become new business leads.

Already using buyer personas, but looking for a way to improve them? HubSpot's free templates, such as the one shown here, can help you identify new areas to expand upon:

 

hubspot-persona-template

 

Investing in High-Quality Content

If you want to give potential customers the extra push they need to choose your brand over a competitor's, then you need to devote time and money to high-quality content creation.

This can be more efficiently accomplished with a growth marketing content plan supported by well-defined goals, concrete data, and a solid content strategy.

But why does high-quality content matter so much? Simply put, because top-notch content tends to attract better-qualified leads. After all, someone who wants to read a well-written article addressing their unique needs is probably more prepared to convert than someone who simply wants to skim a fun listicle that's relatively unrelated to your brand's core offering.

 

Using a Robust CRM System

The term customer relationship management, or CRM for short, is fairly self-explanatory: It encompasses everything having to do with the relationships your brand shares with its customers.

CRM systems are the tools your brand can use to improve CRM, with some of the most widely used options being provided by HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho. Make sure the one you're using includes intuitive features, such as:

  • Support for the platforms and devices your team uses most
  • Multichannel data collection
  • Easily accessible analytics
  • Campaign tracking
  • Lead nurturing

With the right CRM system on your side, you'll be able to generate, keep track of, and nurture leads throughout the entire funnel. In other words, you'll not only be able to acquire more leads but also increase their chances of actually converting.

 

Lead Generation Don'ts

No lead generation strategy is 100 percent perfect, but there are some mistakes that are more common (and more damaging) than others. So when you're striving to create new leads, you'd be wise to avoid any and all of these tactics.

 

Ignoring Audience Insights

Chances are that you have access to a hefty amount of data about your audience, whether it's gathered from surveys, HTTP cookies, social media platforms, or any other source.

But if you're ignoring the insights that data contains, then you're leaving money on the table.

For example, perhaps your data reveals that a growing number of your site's visitors belong to a younger-than-expected age group. If you fail to capitalize on that, then you risk losing a number of new business leads from an entirely fresh audience.

 

Valuing Quantity Over Quality

There's no denying that search engines and social media networks alike value accounts that publish content on a regular basis. But that doesn't mean you should stop investing in quality content in favor of publishing as much content as possible.

And if you are valuing quantity over quality, then there's a good chance you're pushing away new business leads who are more likely to be sold on stellar content and genuine value than on five new blog posts per day.

 

Neglecting Automation

With so many easy-to-use tools on the market, there's no reason why you should rely on manual data entry and communications 100 percent of the time.

This is more liable to be the case if you have a sub-par CRM system, such as one that requires staff members to enter certain types of customer information by hand.

If you need to stop putting off automation and start generating new business leads, try implementing handy tools such as:

 

Failing to Cater to Mobile Users

If you're still putting mobile-friendliness on the back burner, then it's time to re-evaluate your priorities. After all, more than half of all web traffic is mobile as of Q1 2021:

 

web-traffic-mobile

 

Pair that with Google's mobile-first indexing and you have one undeniable truth: A great deal of your potential customers are on mobile, and so are Google's web crawlers. So if you want to capture as many new business leads as possible, then prioritizing mobile-friendliness is non-negotiable.

To get a clearer idea of where to start, try evaluating your site's current mobile-friendliness with Google's free test.

 

Overlooking CTAs

Remember that in order for a lead to convert — whether that means making a purchase or signing up for your newsletter — they need to take some sort of action.

To encourage them to do so, you need to master the art of calls to action (CTAs). So if it's been a while since you've overhauled your brand's CTAs and tested which are the most effective, it's time to change that ASAP.

Even small changes can make a difference. For instance, Black & Decker discovered through A/B testing that a CTA button reading "Buy Now" was a whopping 17 percent more successful than one reading "Shop Now."

At the end of the day, it's most critical to remember that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to lead gen. But as long as you keep evolving to meet the needs of your customers and show your brand in its best light, you'll be well on your way to generating new business leads and securing more sales.

 

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Kevin Dean

Kevin has 9 years of experience in digital marketing across various channels, and enjoys being a full-stack jack of all trades. In his free time he moonlights as a musician/songwriter.

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