Three Higher-Level Issues Hindering Your Lead Generation Efforts

Lead generation is one of the toughest topics out there.

This task can never be considered as done, and there are so many factors in play that it is often hard to run isolated tests and identify what may have gone wrong.

Yet, there are common offenders that most sites suffer from. Removing the following obstacles is likely to make your lead generation efforts much more successful.

1. Not Paying Enough Attention to Your Lead Gen Forms

You can optimize and re-optimize each and every aspect of your lead generation page — however, it has been found that the highest conversion boost normally comes from tweaking your actual form.

There’s no single recipe to creating a well-performing lead generation form (that would make our jobs too easy, right?).

However, there’s an abundance of case studies for you to learn from and experiment with:

  • The fewer required fields in your form, the better. This case study shows that limiting the number of required fields has yielded a 30% conversion boost.
  • Love them or hate them, pop-ups work very well for lead generation (here’s only one of many case studies claiming that pop-ups have turned out to be the biggest lead drivers). We also know they are incredibly annoying, so the general advice is to serve one pop-up to each user once.
  • Multi-step lead generation forms may generate up to 300% more conversions. Here’s the case study proving and detailing the point. There may be a few reasons for that (e.g., people getting more curious with each subsequent step), but the major theory behind this is the so-called foot-in-the-door phenomenon — which also makes two-step opt-in such a powerful tactic. Once users go through the first step, they feel more committed to going until they are done.

Obviously, if something has worked for someone, don’t assume it will work for you, too. Every site has unique circumstances helping or hindering their lead generation efforts. So, whatever you do, closely monitor and measure results.

You can do that pretty easily with Google Analytics, which integrates with major lead generation plug-ins, but for better insight you may want to set up an additional engagement monitoring system.

Finteza will help you assess your form performance, and over time, when you have accumulated enough data, you can also use Finteza to serve more personalized results through its retargeting feature.

Step 1: Measure the form performance

Finteza allows you to build funnels visualizing your form performance and engagement losses at every step. You can compare desktop and mobile traffic engagement to assess possible issues and introduce quick fixes:

Step 2: Set up retargeting campaign to re-engage your returning visitors

Once you have enough data, you can identify some events that would help you re-engage your returning users with more personalized ads and forms:

2. Failure to Make Your Landing Pages Accessible

Web accessibility is sadly often ignored by lead generation experts for no good reason. In fact, according to CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) data, a quarter of the U.S. population has some type of disability.

This means 1 in 4 of your site visitors may be disabled.

Is your site catering to these people? Disabilities range from impairments to activity limitations, and every page of your site should accommodate all people with a wide range of needs.

For example, blind people should be able to navigate your site using assistive technology, and users with cognitive limitations should be able to understand your content and locate the solution.

Ignoring a quarter of your audience is not a smart business decision. Plus, inaccessible pages may result in legal actions and/or reputation crises.

When it comes to lead generation, inaccessible forms mean so many people may not even be able to complete them. This is a major conversion optimization mistake, so make sure your forms are accessible:

  • Set labels to point to each form field and identify it.
  • Ensure that your forms can be navigated with the keyword.
  • Build logical and clear forms that are easy to understand.
  • Make sure your forms are responsive and use large buttons.

Making your forms accessible makes it possible for people with disabilities to join your list or complete your survey:

  • Users with cognitive disabilities can better understand the form and instructions on how to complete it.
  • People who speak directions to an assistive technology can use the labels to complete the form via voice commands.
  • Users suffering dexterity issues are able to complete the forms due to large buttons and clear instructions.
  • Screen reader users can understand web form controls easily, thanks to descriptive labels and logical order.

If it seems like too much, you can use accessiBe, which automates web accessibility optimization and monitoring. All you need is to install its script and give it some time to crawl and optimize your site.

accessiBe is a multi-feature solution that will automatically find and optimize all your site elements, not just forms. With it you will make the entire site accessible, from images to navigation menus — so your disabled users will find it easier (or even possible) to navigate your site and opt in when they feel like:

3. Organizational Silos

There’s often an organizational disconnect between different teams that are involved in the lead generation process. For example, in many cases, salespeople are not aware of marketing efforts behind those acquired leads, and content marketers have no idea what the sales team is even doing.

If there are remote people involved, things can get absolutely disorganized. Your webinar host may be completely oblivious to your company’s lead generation tactics. Your freelance blogger may not know your company’s main selling point, etc.

The result: Lead generation efforts are scattered, irrelevant and ineffective.

Everyone in the company should be able to contribute their thoughts and participate in the overall marketing strategy process, while organizations should ensure everyone is motivated to chime in.

Collaboration makes marketing more integrated and effective. This includes more informed persona building, competitive analysis and storytelling tactics.

Using marketing collaboration platforms will improve cross-team communication and unite your whole company around one common goal — i.e., lead generation.

ContentCal is one of my favorite marketing collaboration tools, giving everyone in your company access to the brand’s marketing calendar and allowing everyone to create social media posts as well as contribute ideas to upcoming lead generation campaigns.

It also offers monitoring, analysis and content library features allowing you to organize your assets and keep everything under one roof.

There are more calendar apps that integrate into your WordPress dashboard if you want to explore more options.

Conclusion

Lead generation is your company’s ongoing effort. Even if you have all the three steps above under control, your job is not done. However, fixing the three mistakes above is likely to make that job easier and more productive.

Ann Smarty is the Brand and Community manager at InternetMarketingNinjas.com. Ann has been into Internet Marketing for more than 10 years, she is the former Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Journal and contributor to prominent search and social blogs including Small Biz Trends and Mashable. Ann is also the frequent speaker at Pubcon and the host of the regular Twitter chat #vcbuzz

Ready to Make Every Click Count?