A lead is a potential customer that has the taken first step by:
- Providing his information
- Signing up for a trial
- Or, becoming your subscriber
Online businesses rely on leads.
They work hard to get traffic. If the traffic doesn’t convert to leads, they won’t get sales.
If you failed to generate leads through SEO, this is the page for you.
You are probably making a lead generation mistake if you are not getting enough leads even with good traffic.
Our team analyzed dozens of websites that complained about low conversion rate.
We came to find that all these websites were doing at least one of the 20 mistakes discussed in this article.
The results were incredible after we fixed these issues.
- The conversion rate of all websites increased up to 400% within one week.
- We got new happy clients that now love us.
Now I’m sharing our findings with you.
In this article, you will learn how to generate more leads by avoiding these 20 mistakes.
1. Little or No Information About Your Product
Many digital marketers underestimate the value of content.
Content is important. It’s the king.
It’s content that persuades your visitors.
A widespread lead generation mistake is not providing enough information about your product or service.
Why would someone buy your product if they don’t know anything about it?
Provide them every piece of information they would want to know, and they should know.
People research before they buy anything. You either provide them all information on your site or they will go to other sites for information.
Every product or service page must have an answer to these questions.
- What do you offer that others don’t?
- Detailed information about the product or service?
- Assure them you don’t have any hidden charges.
Remember: Everyone one hates hidden charges.
Display information as comprehensively as possible. If visitors feel like you are trying to hide something, they won’t trust you.
2. Using Irrelevant Keywords
Search engines, especially Google, are the biggest source of website traffic.
You get traffic against your target keywords. If your traffic isn’t converting, it means they are not interested in your product or services.
If they are not interested, they are not your audience.
You might be targeting irrelevant keywords that bring irrelevant traffic.
Here’s how you can solve this problem:
- Research your market
- Find the keywords that your audience would search
- Create killer content against those keywords
3. Not Targeting Local Audience
Where do you sell your product or services?
All around the world?
If NO, then you need to localize your online audience.
As a business website, your focus should be the quality of traffic instead of the quantity of traffic.
Rather than competing on an international level, limit your target area.
For example:
There is no need to bring traffic from all around the USA if you provide furniture only in California.
The traffic that comes only from California is more likely to convert. Visitors from other states are out of your market area.
To improve this issue:
- Target local keywords
- Set your geographical area in Google Search Console
- Create content for the local audience
4. Getting Traffic from Irrelevant Source
Any traffic from an irrelevant source is most likely useless for you because they won’t have an interest in your business.
An irrelevant source could be:
- A Backlink from irrelevant sites
- An unrelated social media page
5. Bad User Interface
User experience is the most important thing to run a website successfully.
A website with an unattractive design is repelling your potential customers away. It is one of the worst lead generation mistakes.
According to the research of Neilson Norman, it takes only about 10 seconds for a visitor to decide if he/she will stay or leave your website.
They won’t think twice if dealt with a bad interface. It also increases the bounce rate of your page.
You need to make your website as attractive and user-friendly as possible.
6. Creating Irrelevant Content
Your content attracts visitors.
If you create an article on a food recipe, you will have cooking enthusiast visit that page.
Create content that is relevant to your target market. Unrelated visitors won’t buy anything from you.
7. Content with Wrong Information
As I said before, we often underestimate content.
Content creates an impression on your visitors. Whether it’s bad or good depends on the quality of the content.
One fatal mistake is not proofreading and validating your content before you publish it.
If you add even one wrong or misleading statement, you will pay its price with many visitors who will never return.
Wrong information creates an impression that you don’t know your field. You just can’t expect leads when you create such an impression.
Proofreading is not just identifying grammatical mistakes or changing complex sentences.
It’s also about verifying that no statement is exaggerated, misleading, or without a source.
8. Outdated Content
Outdated content is another reason for an increased bounce rate and low conversion rate.
Your visitor might confuse old content with misleading information.
Google prefers recent content. It checks the number and magnitude of updates when ranking your page. Updating your content will also keep it in fight with new competitions.
You should keep updating your content especially when there is something new to add.
9. Content is not Compelling
SEO lead generation techniques include creating awesome content that is optimized for users and Google.
An article usually answers a query.
A visitor came to your page for an answer, but he didn’t get it. Would he be impressed?
My guess is, definitely NOT!
In other cases, your answer may not be convincing enough. It’s a huge content marketing failure.
Here’ the right way to do it.
- Create well-searched original content on topics that you know.
- Use natural language and a friendly tone to convey your message.
- Keep them engaged and ask to perform an action.
10. Few or No Lead Generation Form
A business website must be optimized for lead generation.
Visitors won’t become LEADS, you have to convert them.
A user doesn’t always visit your home page.
He may land on any page on your website. That page is called ‘Landing Page’.
Do you think he would go to the ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Home’ page just to get more information or show his interest?
Probably not.
That’s why you must make it easy for them to convert by providing a lead generation form on every landing page.
11. Unappealing No Call-to-Action
A call-to-action is a word or group of words that prompt a user to do something.
For example: ‘Join us Today’, ‘Get Your Free Copy Now’ etc.
One of the excellent lead generation ideas is to use a call-to-action with the lead generation form.
Old call-to-actions are not very effective anymore. You have to spice it up according to the new smart user.
For example ‘Sign Up’ should become something like:
- Get More and Easy Access
- Become One of Our Superstars
Make a call-to-action that is different, creative, page relevant, and according to the user requirements.
12. Website Not Optimized for Mobile Devices
You haven’t been informed of new requirements if your site still isn’t optimized for mobile devices.
Mobile user’s experience is a lot more important than desktop users.
After all, almost 60% of internet searches are now made from mobile devices.
Use of mobile web has escalated rapidly in the last 5 years. Here is Statista report of mobile web searches of US alone.
13. Your Website is Slow to Load
A slow website is a bad website.
Internet users are always in a hurry and looking for a reason to leave your website.
As I discussed above, it only takes 10 seconds to create an impression.
A slow loading page doesn’t look like a good impression to me. The user will definitely close your website.
You need to make your website as fast as possible while providing an attractive user interface.
The Google PageSpeed Insight tool will help you identify elements slowing down your website.
14. Nothing to Offer Back
Converting a visitor to lead usually requires some information like email.
Internet users are not very comfortable in providing such information.
So, you have to convince them by offering something worth it.
When you offer something that a user really wants, he won’t have a problem sharing his information or filling any form (as long as you don’t overdo it).
Digital Marketers use a content upgrade or lead magnet for this job.
You can also offer a free trial or free analysis.
15. No Customer Reviews on Your Website
Your business website is not complete if there are no customer reviews on it. Request your satisfied customers to write great reviews about your product or service.
Make sure these are visible to the general public.
A review or testimonial with the reviewer’s picture is looks more believable.
Here is how one of the leading digital marketers, Nathan Gotch, shows his customers testimonials.
16. Your Competitors Are Offering Something Better
If your competitors are offering better customer satisfaction, then you will barely generate leads through SEO.
In marketing, it is essential to always keep a check on your competitors.
You have to make sure that you offer everything they do.
Study the leading businesses of your field and learn:
- How did they get on top?
- And, how they have maintained that position?
If you are caught in such a position, conduct a Competitive Analysis. Learn their tactics then offer something better to your audience, and prove how you are better.
Search and add an example of competitive analysis or a good offer here
17. You Don’t Understand Your Audience
One major lead generation mistake is not understanding your audience.
If you have traffic and can’t get many leads, it might be because you don’t know their needs.
People are not always the same.
You must conduct Market Research before you take any big steps. Create a buyer persona of all your audience.
A buyer persona includes attributes of a type of your target audience.
Search and add a Buyer Persona example here
18. Unplanned Internal Linking
A potential customer may not be impressed with just one page of your website.
Lead your visitors deeper into it by linking to other pages.
The links that point to other pages of the same website are called Internal Links.
You can’t catch a visitor’s attention if you have randomly put internal links in your content.
Internal links are essential to use with SEO lead generation techniques. They engage your visitors by directing them to other useful pages.
Create an internal links strategy to assure visitors can reach the most in-depth page of your site within 3 clicks.
It increases the conversion rate and decreases bounce rate.
Design an attractive image like this
19. Not Building Your Email Subscribers
You might be more focused on your social media following than building your own subscribers.
It is one of the most common lead generation mistakes found in many websites.
Email subscribers are the followers of your website.
A person that has visited your website is probably interested in your niche.
Try to get his email and subscribe him to your news letters.
He may not purchase anything the first time, but the second, third, or maybe the fourth time he might find your services helpful.
Here’s what you should do:
- Increase your subscribers by offering something in return like the content upgrade.
- Send them occasional useful emails.
- Don’t annoy them.
20. Approaching Email Subscribers the Wrong Way
Your subscribers are the most relevant followers of your business.
They are more likely to read your article, convert, and make a purchase.
According to Nathan Berry from Convert Kit, email subscribers get you a better CTR and more sales compared to any social media site.
If you have email subscribers and still not getting any leads, chances are you are approaching them the wrong way.
- First, you must not annoy your subscribers – think of them as a sensitive person.
- Second, your emails suck.
Email writing is not just sending links. It’s about creating a relationship with your subscribers. Here are a few tips for writing a perfect email for your subscribers.
- Create catchy subjects
- Use figures and stats
- Generate curiosity
- Be formal
- Address the reader as a single person
- Make them feel special
Here see how one of the leading digital marketers, Neil Patel, writes an email to his subscribers.
Now You Should Practice A/B Testing
You have learned all 20 lead generation mistakes. Now it’s time to fix these issues and see which of the discussed lead generation ideas return best results.
For this, you will try A/B Testing (also called Split Testing).
You will create different variations of pages with different lead generation techniques and monitor how each of these variations performs.
In a nutshell, here’s what you will do:
- Target the most relevant audience and bring relevant traffic.
- Create lead generation forms with attractive call-to-action and a good interface.
- Optimize your site for mobile devices and increase its speed.
- Build email subscribers and offer something in return for their information.
- Improve these lead generation mistakes one by one and note the difference.
Now, you tell me.
Have you ever done any of these mistakes?
