As a B2B salesperson, generating leads as well as converting qualified leads into paying customers, is your top priority. As the starting point for the journey that many buyers take before they reach you, your website needs to be working to feed you the right leads.

Not having a good, optimised website is a sure-fire way of missing out on leads. But there are other, related aspects that have an impact too.

Here are 8 pitfalls to avoid when reviewing your lead conversion strategy:

1. NOT BEING HOT ON LEADS

If you aren’t working in real time then you are wasting so much opportunity for lead conversion. With the amount of technology out there for marketers to be able to receive alerts when a new lead comes through, there’s no excuse not to be hot on their heels. Using such technology allows you to not only see patterns in buyer content consumption, but you can also assess how ready they are to buy which is so important if they are ready now!

2. TIME LAGS FOR LEAD TRANSFER TO THE SALES TEAM

As soon as a lead is sales-ready, all the relevant information should be communicated with sales. Any delay or lack of information gives an immediate competitive advantage to your opponents. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? But can you be sure that you get passed leads the instant they are spotted?

3. NO VALUABLE CONTENT FOR TARGET BUYERS

You can’t force people to be interested in your product or service especially when a buyer is at the initial stage of their buying process. It’s not the right time to solely focus on product-centric content – it’s not going to engage them in the right way at all when it comes to top-of-funnel content. Yes you might be itching to tell them all about how your product or service can solve all their problems but slow down….. There’ll be plenty of time for this further down the funnel.

At this primary stage in their buying journey, the best thing you can do is gain their trust and interest in your company and what you have to say. Creating high value content that resonates completely with their needs and answers their questions will warm them up nicely and then you can earn the right to have that product-centric conversation.

4. NO QUALITY TESTING OF LANDING PAGES

So you think you have the most perfect landing page but you are surprised you’re not getting the conversions you expected? Its good to test which elements of your landing page are working of you and which aren’t, use conversion rates or A/B testing to help you determine what’s going right or wrong then fix it. If you have lots of visits but no conversions then it could be a number of things – the offer might not be compelling enough, the copy isn’t quite right, the layout is wrong, the form isn’t doing enough…… With so many factors, if you don’t test each one then you will never know.

5. NO MARKETING AUTOMATION

Marketing automation is one of the few B2B marketing cheats that has great results. Use automated (yes AUTOMATED) lead nurturing campaigns to ensure a consistency of process and messaging for every contact/prospect you touch. Failing to do that runs the risk of losing prospects from the funnel.

6. NO SEGMENTATION

One size rarely fits all. And in the world of B2B sales, one campaign or one message rarely fits all. Don’t alienate individuals by sending generic, industry/job title matter. Get personal!

7. NO LEAD CAPTURE

Ok, this sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many contact forms are out there that don’t capture lead data. What is the point of having a form on your website in the first place if it isn’t going to effectively capture the right data for you to do something with? Your form is probably the most fundamental element of your landing page so if you don’t know what to ask your leads, you won’t be able to segment them and send them targeted campaigns. Getting the balance right is crucial: Don’t ask enough information and you can’t segment but ask too much and they’ll drop off. It really is a balancing act! And don’t forget, you can ask for more info later…..

8. NOT LEAD SCORING APPROPRIATELY

Lead scoring is a great way of saving time for both sales and marketing teams in order to filter through to the best leads presented to your company. So what qualifies as a sales-ready lead? If you can agree this among both the sales and marketing teams then only those that reach a certain score can be deemed “sales-ready”. You should base your scoring on two key elements; their demographic details and their on-site user behaviour. Again, marketing automation tools will help you do this effectively.

And DON’T FORGET to evaluate your B2B marketing plan regularly!

Increasing your conversion chances is a factor of the number and quality of leads in your pipeline. So to improve this, your lead generation strategy needs to be continually reviewed and improved. And that sales handover process may need to be refined.

As a HubSpot Partner, Intellegentia can help you define your inbound marketing strategy and run with it using this software - delivering leads and helping you achieve your sales-related business goals. We'll work with you to attract more website traffic, capture leads and nurture those opportunities over time, while using sophisticated testing and analytics to continuously improve your marketing performance. Click below to find out more about how you could benefit from HubSpot.