15 Uncomfortable Truths About Lead Generation

Lead generation is the primary concern of marketing professionals and managers – according to themselves.

When asked about their goals for the year in the “State of Marketing” survey (HubSpot), the most common response, agreed upon by around 35% of respondents, was that the priority is generating qualified leads.

Generating qualified leads is crucial for sales results, and here on the blog, we already have several articles on the topic.

Today, we’ll discuss some details about this process that not everyone tells you because they’re not exactly what you’d like to hear.

So gather all your courage and continue reading this article!

What is Lead Generation?

Generating new leads is directly related to generating business and expanding opportunities for the marketing and sales areas of your company.

Lead generation allows companies to acquire personal information about potential customers. And the best part is that this data is provided by the consumer themselves, creating a bond of trust and relationship between the person and the brand.

How to Generate Leads?

When someone shares their contact information with your company, it shows interest in something you’re offering. But that doesn’t always mean the consumer is ready to make a purchase.

That’s why it’s necessary to create hooks and lead generation offers for different stages of the marketing and sales funnel, so that consumers at various levels of purchase maturity are interested in providing their contact details.

Lead generation can be done through many tools, such as landing pages, forms, e-books, webinars, podcasts, conversational marketing tools, surveys, free trials, special offers, and more.

Let’s cover some of these tools next.

What are the Main Lead Generation Tools?

Website Builders / Landing Pages

A landing page is a page designed to offer a specific purpose to the visitor. According to a Marketo study, 68% of companies develop lead generation strategies through landing pages.

Also known as capture pages, they can be used to offer rich materials like e-books, infographics, webinars, courses, demos, and more. The possibilities are endless – and your brand captures the lead’s data in exchange for this valuable delivery.

Additionally, we can also mention complementary features like static forms and pop-ups, which are another way to generate leads using the same dynamic.

Website builders or landing page builders are tools that allow your company to develop a strategy through these channels, customizing layout and content according to the brand’s needs and objectives.

Email Automation Tools

If you already have a contact database, you can generate and qualify leads from it.

To nurture the leads you’ve captured, you need to build a strategy and consider the journey the lead should follow from the first contact with your brand to the point of purchase or contract closure.

Post-sale actions should also be planned to maintain a relationship with customers and retain them for future acquisitions.

In this planning, you must also think about the ideal formats and channels for each phase.

You can use specific marketing automation platforms to make the entire process much more practical.

Online Chat / WhatsApp Button / Call Now

A more interesting and modern way than using static forms is to offer quick and personalized service: this is what today’s consumers expect.

Thus, tools like online chat, WhatsApp buttons, and call options can be effective for generating leads.

However, it’s important to remember that these tools only work during business hours, unless you have a company employee available to assist.

This could create frustration for some potential customers who won’t follow the standard business hours.

Conversational Marketing Tools

An alternative to the tools mentioned earlier, which doesn’t necessarily depend on human assistance, is conversational marketing.

This type of tool is also an alternative to static forms, providing a more dynamic and personalized contact with visitors.

In fact, the chances of a lead converting increase nine times when they receive a response within five minutes (source: InsideSales.com). Automated communication can help in this regard.

Conversational marketing encompasses actions and tools related to conversations and is one of the most modern and scalable ways to assist in real-time when it comes to lead generation for sales and marketing.

It can be explored using technologies like chatbots and virtual assistants.

Advertising Platforms

In addition to using ads to direct visitors to your website and landing pages, you can now use the ad platforms themselves to generate leads without them leaving the channel they’re browsing.

The most widely used advertising platforms already allow you to create lead generation campaigns, through features like Facebook Lead Ads, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, and Google Ads Lead Form Extension.

Online Events

Especially for the B2B sector, offline events continue to be an effective way to generate leads. A 2018 Marketing Charts study showed that events are the primary lead generation source for this sector.

With 2021 still marked by pandemic restrictions, another option for lead generation is hosting online events that require registration to participate, such as webinars and conferences.

This strategy saw a boom during the social isolation period.

Social Media

In addition to ads on social media, you can also create organic posts that direct to pages of interest, generating traffic from those who already follow these channels and have some level of contact with your brand.

According to the “State of Marketing” survey (HubSpot, 2021), social media was the primary channel used in marketing strategies this year.

And not just for relationship building: many companies are generating qualified leads through these channels. According to the same HubSpot study, these were the channels that generated the highest ROI for businesses:

Okay, but we’re sure you’ve already heard and read a lot about lead generation and tips on how to do it. However, there are some points that few articles address on the topic. Do you know what they are?

We’ll answer that question by presenting some truths about lead generation that you may not like to hear.

But believe us, keeping these in mind is crucial to acquiring quality leads that will truly deliver the results you expect for your company.

1. You’ll Have to Invest (a lot) of Money Before Seeing any Return

You might think generating new contacts isn’t that complex.

Indeed, there are many ways to generate leads. But generating qualified leads that will actually result in sales isn’t that simple, and it does require a high initial investment.

In fact, 53% of marketing managers spend at least half of their budget on lead generation (source: BrightTALK).

Don’t fall for the promises of tools or companies that claim to generate leads with a minimal investment. You’ll end up with purchased mailing lists that won’t help you at all.

To get a return on lead generation, invest properly: in qualified professionals, time, services, and robust tools.

2. More Leads Doesn’t Necessarily Mean More Sales

This truth may be disappointing, but you need to understand that generating a large number of leads doesn’t necessarily correlate with increased sales.

There’s a huge difference between generating leads and generating qualified leads – those who are actually part of the target audience, have the purchasing power for your solution, and are at the right stage to make a purchase.

Your brand might generate many contacts that will never result in a purchase or contract. And this number could reach up to 79% of your base (Next Leap Strategy).

In fact, the trend is that the more leads you generate, the lower your conversion rates will become. Therefore, it’s essential to invest in nurturing your contacts.

3. Testing is Essential — and it Requires Time and Investment

Lead generation does not follow a ready-made formula.

Many factors interfere with what works or doesn’t: your market, your audience’s consumption habits, the chosen channels, the type of offer used as a conversion hook, among many other aspects.

Additionally, in such a rapidly changing market, a strategy that works today will likely not work in the same way in 2 years.

That’s why one of the most important things in lead generation is to always keep moving, testing new strategies, monitoring your audience closely, analyzing results…

And of course, this requires time and investment.

4. Regardless of Media Investment, if the Website is Not Good, Leads will not Convert

You’ve figured out what works for your audience, tested the best ad options, and brought qualified traffic to your site – but conversion rates are still low.

The problem could be your website.

A poor website, one that’s unattractive, unclear about your brand’s value proposition, or with unconvincing conversion hooks, won’t encourage visitors to take the next step.

Invest in user experience on your site, make it easy for visitors to find the information they’re interested in, be clear about the benefits they’ll find, showcase social proof, and simplify the conversion process.

5. With Incorrect Campaign Targeting, you will Bring Many Leads, but you Won’t Generate any Sales

It could also be that you’ve nailed your ad campaigns, with the right copy and visuals, and you’re generating leads like never before!

But if you’re attracting the wrong audience to your page, even if they become leads, they won’t continue down the marketing funnel toward the purchase stage.

Or they’ll soon become a problem for your company, generating the dreaded churn.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that your nurturing and qualification strategy needs to change. It might just be that the leads aren’t the right ones.

Qualified lead generation begins when attracting the right audience as traffic. For example, let’s say your company offers a local service with operations only in your city.

If you don’t target the campaign correctly, you’ll end up generating leads from outside the area you’re targeting. That’s why correctly segmenting your paid media campaigns is essential.

6. Weekly meetings with your sales team are essential (even if you don’t like it)

Some marketing and sales teams are somewhat resistant to working together, or even if that resistance doesn’t exist, each team ends up focusing on its own results.

In reality, the integration between the teams and marketing and sales strategies is essential, as the final goal is the same: bringing new customers and revenue to the company.

7. If you Don’t Have a Nurturing Strategy, You’ll end up with Hundreds of Leads Stuck in your Database

Did you generate qualified traffic and interesting leads for your business strategy? This is just the first part of the battle.

Don’t think that magically, they’ll close a deal with you. Similarly, approaching them in a sales-driven way right from the start might have the opposite effect and push potential customers away.

You need to get them ready for the purchase moment, and this can be done through lead nurturing.

Nurtured leads represent 20% more sales opportunities and spend on average 47% more than those who are not nurtured. Are these numbers convincing enough?

8. Email Marketing is a Science, but it’s Not an Exact Science

“This last email I sent had great results – I’ll follow this formula and always get great results, right…?”

Actually, no. 😶

Even if you run an email marketing campaign that generates great results, using the same strategy over and over again won’t guarantee those same results.

Let’s imagine you ran a middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu) nurturing email strategy, and it really worked, strengthening relationships with leads and pushing them through to the next stages.

So far, so good, but will that same campaign model, changing only a few details, work for top and bottom-of-funnel users? Probably not.

I’m not saying that every campaign is used just once and discarded; you can indeed reuse insights and even copy fragments, but remember: each campaign is unique, and experimentation is the key to a successful email marketing campaign.

9. Producing Many Articles on your Blog Doesn’t Guarantee Many Leads

Quantity doesn’t equal quality.

Posting dozens of articles on your blog without research and planning behind them won’t help. In fact, you’ll just end up wasting time and effort on actions that won’t bring results.

Think about it – if your market segment is highly competitive, other blogs have likely been producing content for years and already have authority on the topic.

It’s more beneficial to produce content with better structure and sources, as well as delve deeper and explore resources and topics others haven’t yet covered.

And of course, you need to conduct proper keyword research to find terms that don’t have too much competition but still have a good search volume.

🔎Read also: Blog for Lead Generation: 10 Essential Strategies

10. What Works Today Might not Work Tomorrow. Lead Generation has to be Diversified

We know things are constantly changing, especially in the digital age.

Examples of this are the Google updates that have already changed the lives of many blogs and content producers for months, and recovery has been slow.

Now, we also have the end of third-party cookies, which will further complicate companies’ ability to provide personalized user experiences.

That’s why, in addition to staying alert to changes, you need to spread your lead generation efforts across various fronts.

11. There’s a Formal A/B Testing Method that Few People Follow

Perseverance and experimentation are key when we talk about this 11th truth. All of this effort can be seen through A/B testing.

Only through tests can you know what’s working and what isn’t on your lead capture pages.

There are some essential – proven – elements that should be tested. These include:

Images
Copy
Pop-ups
Headline
CTA
Page traffic
Page design
Page load speed
Emails

If you’re just starting with A/B testing, use Google Optimize. With it, you can create tests quickly, simply, and efficiently.

But hurry, because this tool’s days are numbered – here’s another Google change. Starting September 2023, Google Optimize will be shutting down.

12. Any Content at the Top of the Funnel Without Keyword Research Relies on Luck to Generate Leads

Top-of-the-funnel content is the hook for your business.

But it’s challenging on its own: the competition is high, and due to the informational nature of the materials, there’s still a long way to go down the marketing funnel before these readers turn into customers.

Therefore, a top-of-the-funnel content strategy should be planned with solid keyword research, especially if you’re in a competitive segment with experienced companies.

The job is simple: first, think of topics – questions that are potential doubts for your customers. Then, type these topics into keyword research tools, like Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, or SemRush.

These tools will return the number of searches your topics have. Those are your keywords!

13. Each Audience has Specific Preferences in Materials that Lead to Conversion

You’re not like everyone else, and neither is your audience.

Not everyone will engage with the old blog + ebook + infographic combo.

The trend now is engineering marketing – real tools that make a difference in the lives of your leads.

For example: you’re a digital marketing agency and weekly, you share a spreadsheet with tested email subject lines and good open rates.

Or, you share a pack of reels scripts not approved by clients that will be discarded anyway.

The important thing in this concept is to create real tools that your leads will actually use. This converts much more than the good old e-books.

🔎Read also: ICP, Persona, and Target Audience: Don’t Confuse These 3 Concepts

14. You Need to be Prepared for a Sudden Increase in Lead Generation

You could go “viral” at any moment 🤯

By viral, I mean that you could experience a sudden boom in lead generation. Are you prepared for that?

We know that lead generation is the result of continuous work, but sudden increases happen quite frequently.

Maybe a particular piece of content starts performing better, some articles begin to rank well on Google, or even a YouTube video gets a lot of views. Boom: you’ve just generated 5x more leads from one month to the next.

And the reasons are numerous: maybe someone said something on a soap opera, and people went searching for it. Maybe during this time of year, people search more about the topic. And so on.

As great as it is to capture more leads, you need to have a plan for what and how to handle all that traffic.

Are your automations and nurturing flows working? Do you have emails ready for the persona that’s converting? Are the articles generating leads up to date? Is your sales team prepared for the increased demand?

These are just a few questions you need to ask yourself. The answer to all of them should be a resounding yes!

15. New Tools can Transform your Lead Generation Overnight

There are some tools that can quickly transform lead generation – some overnight.

But, to avoid leaving you frustrated with all these inconvenient truths that might be a thorn in your side, I’ve brought a tool that will transform your lead generation, increasing your conversion by up to 3 times!

I’m talking about Leadster’s conversational marketing platform, which, through a sales and marketing chatbot, offers personalized calls that capture the user’s attention, collects their data, and automates the qualification process.

In other words, when the contact reaches your sales team, you’ll already know what to do with each lead.

Try it now!

Conclusion

We know some truths can hurt, but they’re much more useful in building a solid lead generation strategy than the “comfortable lies.”

Want to share other inconvenient truths you’ve discovered along the way? Leave a comment!