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Top 7 Worst Lead Generation Techniques

May 4, 2013 / by Travis Martin

lead generationLooking for a way to increase your lead generation through internet marketing? Well, you might be able to find a lot of blogs that have good advice on this topic, but today we want to give you a little insight into the 7 worst lead generation techniques you should always avoid. Let’s get right into it.

1.  Email Blast The Heck Out Of All Your Contacts

To correctly complete this stage, do the following. First, take all your email addresses from your personal account, all the email addresses from your blog subscribers and all the email addresses from every form submission on your site and throw them all into an automated email software and click, BLAST OFF!

Instead of helping lead generation for your business, this is a good way to annoy people with content that is irrelevant to them. Keep your email lists relevant to the recipient. If a customer signed up for a blog subscription, just keep sending them the blogs. Don’t give them something they didn’t ask for.

2.  Mail Out Flyers With No Web Address Or Phone Number On Them

    Have you ever mailed out a flyer or printed a poster and forgot to include a website or a phone number? This may seem like an old school lead generation technique, but it still has its purpose, so don’t let this happen to you! Make sure you add some sort of Call to Action (CTA) on all your outbound material. A piece of marketing criteria without a CTA is a road with a dead end. Don’t leave your customers without a map to get home.

    3.  Try Out The Invisible Front Page Website CTA

      To achieve this, design a beautiful home page for your website and place an invisible CTA on it above the fold. Now, does this sound like a good idea?

      You are sending a customer to a site without leading them along in the sales process. Make it clear what step you would like them to take next. A simple “Next Step” or “Start Here” CTA above the fold can drastically increase the flow of traffic around your site. Don’t leave them hangin’, tell them what you want them to do.

      4.  Forget To Keyword Your Content, Who Needs To Anyway?

      Are you ready to rank 0 pages on your website? Well, follow this tip. When writing a blog or web site content, write as if you’re talking to yourself and write it the way you think it should sound. Don’t bother using the Google Keyword tool.

      Content that isn’t keyworded is bound to sink to the bottom of the search results. Doing your homework by knowing what your customers are searching for and then writing to them in a relevant way that matches popular search queries will help you generate leads.

      5.  Get All Your Links From Link Farms

        This is easy. Go to Google and search “buy bulk backlinks.” What you will find are what’s called Link Farms. These are places that submit your link to a directory and then blast your website address out to thousands of sites and forums that have terrible Domain Authority (meaning the are weak sites and Google doesn't like them!) and have a good chance of having no relevant content specific to your industry.

        Here is a quick video explaining why you should avoid link farms.

        An alternative to this, and a much better lead generation technique, is link earning. Make relationships with people in your industry and ask to be featured as a guest blogger or see if you can manage to be placed into their content as an anchor text. This is a much safer and smarter way of acquiring links.

        6.  Don’t Worry About Interacting On Social Media

        This is a step that a lot of people miss. You spend your time setting up your social media accounts and push all your blogs and website content out to your different platforms but forget to interact with your fans.

        You should be spending about 50% of your time interacting with others on social media and the other 50% talking about your product or service. The way you get others to like you is to engage in their lives. Like, Share and Re-Tweet other’s content. If you show engagement they will do the same. What better way to generate leads than socializing with them first?

        7.  What’s A Blog?

          To top off your terrible lead generation techniques, just totally ignore that thing called a blog. Besides, who needs a blog with a bunch of content on it anyways? People are only looking for your product, not a bunch of writing about it, right?

          Wrong. People love to do research about products they buy or services they receive. Giving people the opportunity to learn about you is almost as important as the product itself. Plus, a blog done right can lead to thousands if not tens-of-thousands of website visitors a month. Posting regularly using keywords that people are searching for in your text can boost your search engine results and help people along in their buying process.

          By now, we hope you get the point of what not to do when it comes to lead generation. These 7 lead generation techniques are actually some of the most crucial aspects of turning prospects into leads. Leaving out just one of these could hurt your marketing efforts. Try your best to incorporate all 7 practices into your internet marketing strategy.  If you find it difficult to manage or find the bandwidth in your company to complete these techniques give us a call. We can help coach you through ideas of how to accomplish this or take it off your hands and manage it for you.

          Enjoy watching the leads roll in!

           

          Read our related article:

          Lead Generation Techniques - Seems Legit!?


          Topics: Internet marketing, Lead Generation

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