Here’s why your B2B campaign isn’t converting traffic to leads

In the past seven years of leading B2B campaigns, I have had the opportunity to work very closely with enterprise clients and tech teams on developing campaign strategies, content, landing pages, banners, and eDMs with lead generation as the key objective. With the right strategy and assets, generating tonnes of traffic can be easily achieved, but converting traffic into qualified leads—then into opportunities and sales—remains a challenge for most B2B marketers. Here are some reasons:

Dead or wrong links from traffic drivers to landing page

An eDM is the most important and most commonly used source of traffic driver in any B2B campaign. It may seem like a no-brainer but it is imperative to check every single link on the campaign’s assets before going live. One of the worst nightmares of any marketer is an eDM that has been blasted out to thousands of prospects with a dead or wrong link leading to the wrong landing page.

Poor user experience

Having the right user experience can make or break your lead generation efforts. The journey from the landing page to the call-to-action (CTA) should be so meticulously designed and well thought out that the prospect has a clear path to clicking the CTA button. This means no unnecessary distractions such as secondary CTAs—it is key to focus on the offer and simplify the conversion process.

Some poorly optimised sites can take too long to load, resulting in users dropping off before even reaching the site. The opportunity cost can be immense.

Making prospects in your database fill up forms in every inbound lead-nurturing email marketing campaign might make sense to the marketer for the purpose of updating the database, but this process can irritate the prospect, especially if he or she has filled up the same form before.

Forms too long

When was the last time you were made to fill up a long form with more than five questions? Halfway through filling up the form, have you thought about whether the time spent filling up the fields is even worth the effort? Long forms asking for too much data before getting to the final destination can be extremely frustrating for potential leads, even more so on a mobile phone. Make sure to optimise the form on mobile, making it short, easy and comfortable for the prospect to fill up the fields. Start with asking basic qualifying questions with the option to opt in. With a proper CRM system in place, you can ask for more qualifying BANT questions at the deeper end of the sales funnel.

Lack of integration between marketing and sales teams

Marketing and sales teams should work almost, but not exactly, like a married couple. Marketers work to craft messages that resonate with prospects and customers, while sales staff know their customers best since they own the most face-to-face time with them and have the relevant input to contribute towards creating good marketing content. The synergy and cooperation between both teams leads to more predictable results of the lead generation effort. Both teams should agree on the messaging approach, the right target profile, the lead qualification criteria, and sync up on follow up actions. I’ve come across teams who’ve assumed that the other team has the same lead qualification criteria, resulting in many unqualified leads missing a place in the pipeline. Likewise, converting leads without a plan or bandwidth to follow up is a waste of marketing effort and resources. Pre-campaign briefings and discussions involving both teams must take place before launching a lead generation campaign to clearly understand outcomes and follow-ups.

Talk to us about your next lead generation campaign. We are happy to share more insights.