With economic uncertainty still continuing in the market, lead generation has become even more important. Marketers are now focusing on weeding out lead gen challenges and addressing its pain points first.
This blog talks about the various challenges of lead generation and how marketers can weed out some of the obstacles that are stopping them from achieving success.
Before you adopt new techniques, it’s important to identify the major obstacles in lead generation-
- Understanding your target audience really well
- Deciding and implementing on a strategy that works in favor of attracting new leads
- Having skilled personnel who can bring leads home
- Building response teams to respond and follow up with leads
- Tracking leads and monitoring the lead gen activities
- Partnering with other firms for collaborative lead gen activities
- Budgeting lead gen activities and parallel activities to speed up conversion
- Acquiring leads that convert easily or quickly
- Generating demand that attracts good leads
- Agreeing internally on which strategies to undertake for accelerating lead gen processes
- Actual implementation of lead gen campaigns with the decided road map
- Having sales and marketing teams to collaborate and be on the same page
- Having seamless communication between functions that are involved in lead gen directly or indirectly
- Creating and providing valuable and unique content assets to prospects and partners
- Tracking and measuring lead gen results for better performance in the future
It’s surprising that the above long list of obstacles in lead generation still exists and that weeding out these challenges is still an uphill task. However, the good news is that, one can not only let go of these challenges permanently, but can also achieve incredible results by understanding certain factors that really cause these problems.
Let us look at some of the best methods to overcome these challenges-
Understating target audience really well
The number one obstacle in getting those leads or generating demand is the lack of knowledge about your target audience!
One must have the urge and willingness to put in efforts to look beyond just the basic profile of the customer that is based on firmographics and demographics.
To understand the target audience really well is to acquire thorough knowledge about their likes and dislikes, their buying decisions, their buying history, their preferences or chosen companies, time taken to make those decisions, other influences and influencers on their buying decisions etc.
Talking to some of your best clients can reveal a lot about their deep rooted business challenges and which factors affect their buying decisions. It will also reveal why they chose you over your competitors allowing you to implement similar solutions for your prospects.
Getting to know your existing clients can help you get a clearer picture of what could be your prospects’ current challenges and how to address them with the right solution. It will then help you chart out a more specific strategy and then offer solutions from case to case. It will help you create personalized messaging that will attract, delight and engage your new prospects for better conversion.
Allocate right resources for right roles-
Often companies fumble when it comes to choosing right resources for the right job and even in clearly defining roles. This can create a huge dent when it comes to performance and results.
Often, people are less qualified or they are even over-qualified for a certain role and it starts reflecting on their performance with time.
Lead generation is a specialized activity and it is the lifeline of b2b companies. Therefore, only skilled personnel who look at lead gen as an activity that goes beyond just numbers can make a big difference in the results.
People, who like to understand what is going on beyond the basics of decision making of a prospect, can understand their target audience really well.
Also, lead generation resources should be working exclusively on generating and converting leads. This will allow them to dedicate their time and efforts solely on lead gen activities, rather than using that time up in other sales activities.
Conclusion-
Challenges are plenty, but solutions are not too far away if you look in the right direction.
Smart marketers have now started looking at lead gen as a relationship building activity than just some activity that is done only to acquire leads. This shift is slowly reflecting on the various lead gen practices and strategies that are now being adopted by lead gen companies and vendors for better business outputs.