“It does not matter what you sell. The only thing that matters is how you sell it.”
— Robert Kanaat
Businesses rely on leads. But not just any leads. We’re talking about qualified and engaged leads. Because, after all, if a lead isn’t first qualified, it’s useless. Meaning, if the lead can’t afford or isn’t the right fit for what you sell, why waste your time acquiring it?
So many entrepreneurs, coaches and agency owners struggle with qualified leads. I get messages every single day without fail asking me to help them increase their qualified lead flow. After all, I do do this for a living. And what I see people doing repeatedly is that they are making these same 7 major mistakes.
These mistakes are disrupting their ability to not only get qualified leads. But also to get qualified leads that are engaged. Because, after all, you don’t just want a qualified lead. You want a qualified lead that is interested in what you are selling (aka engaged), right?
The Law Of Reciprocity
I’m not sure how long you’ve been around this blog. Many have been here for years, reading and consuming content. All of which is free, by the way. Sure, there are some posts with links where I get paid if someone buys something. But most of the content does not contain those.
What I’m trying to say is that I give a lot of high quality, great content away for free. I teach people how to do things. And guess what happens when you do that? You build up a lot of goodwill through something called the Law of Reciprocity.
By understanding how reciprocity works, let me illustrate this for you further. Years ago, I started reaching out to very successful entrepreneurs. At the time, they were way above where I was in the success scale, if you will.
I reached out and offered to share their story across major publications like Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, Huffington Post, and other platforms I was contributing to. And guess what happens when you help others and deliver a lot of value? Yes, they feel indebted to you.
In fact, not only do they feel indebted, they will literally bend over backwards to help you. But something else happens when you do this. You become an authority. Now, you don’t need to write for a major publication to do this. All I’m trying to explain is the basis for how you can increase qualified leads.
How Does Reciprocity Work?
Reciprocity is a social construct. It’s a harmonious law that works without fail.
“Reciprocity means that in response to friendly actions, people are frequently much nicer and much more cooperative than predicted by the self-interest model; conversely, in response to hostile actions they are frequently much more nasty and even brutal.”
— Wikipedia
Meaning, that when you go out of your way to help others, it comes back around to you. This means that you have to find a way to provide value on the front end if you want to increase the amount of qualified leads you get.
However, most people don’t think like this. They think that everything is a monetary exchange when it’s not. Even when it comes down to crafting your offers, you have to give way more away than what someone is paying. Meaning, the value exchange has to be tilted in the customer’s favor.
Now, this part is the theory behind the whole lead generation machine. It doesn’t mean you have to give everything away for free. However, when you do give away the farm, so to speak, it sets you up as an authority.
If you share all your secrets, you can still sell the implementation. Yes, people love to learn how to do things. But they don’t want to implement it themselves. They still need someone to help them with implementation. But by giving value on the front end, you are leveraging the power of reciprocity to generate the highest, most qualified leads for your business.
Major Lead Generation Mistakes
Okay, now to the good stuff. If you’re struggling to generate qualified leads for your business, please listen up. Because you are likely making one of these seven mistakes. Again, I see these happening repeatedly across the board in every industry.
It literally doesn’t matter what you sell. Products. Services. Information. It does not matter. What matters is how you navigate these pitfalls in business to ensure that you set your business up for success. When you fail to do that, you’ll continue to struggle.
It also doesn’t matter whether you run paid ads, organic social content, SEO content, video ads, or anything else. What matters is how you approach the entire funnel process in the first place. This is not about the offer. This is about the bait.
Mistake #1 — Misunderstanding Your Target Audience
How well do you understand your target audience? Don’t just say that you understand them. How well do you really understand them? Because the better you understand them and what their problems are, the easier it will be to reel them in with the proper bait.
This is not just about knowing general customer demographics. It’s about painting an ideal avatar. And to know that avatar so implicitly that you even give him or her a name. When you ignore this step, your ability to generate more qualified leads effortlessly will fail.
Not only should you know your avatar, you have to identify all their problems. And I do mean all their problems. Not just some of them. And once you solve one problem, other problems appear. How well can you identify all the problems or pain points that your target audience has?
Mistake #2 — Poor Or Non-Existent Bait
By understanding your target audience, you can create effective bait. But most people don’t do this. They try to go straight for the jugular and make the sale. It doesn’t always work that way. And if you’re struggling to generate qualified leads at scale, this might be why.
What is bait? Some people call this a lead magnet. I call it bait. When you go fishing, you use bait, right? Well, you’re fishing for qualified leads, aren’t you? So you need to create the right bait. Not some poor excuse for bait.
Again, don’t be afraid to give away all of your secrets. Remember, people are willing to pay for implementation if they see you as an authority. And the more you spend here, and the more it costs you to create and deliver this bait, the higher-quality and more qualified your leads will be.
Mistake #3 — Poor Copywriting Skills
So many people overlook copywriting. But this one skill is probably the most important when it comes to generating highly qualified leads, and converting those leads into customers. Your copy should be authentic and well-written. It should convey a story that helps the prospect identify with you.
To do that, you need to write good copy. Not just on your landing pages. Also for your bait and your email sequences, upsells, and so on. But you’ll fail to get those high-quality leads in the first place if you don’t write drool-worthy copy that makes your prospect raise their hand.
This is not something you should try to do yourself if you’re not a writer. Find a good copywriter. And keep in mind that you will have to pay dearly for this. For example, I charge a minimum of $25,000 to write copy for a landing page.
That might sound like a lot to you. But that $25,000 can easily generate 100 times that in just a week of sending traffic to the page. So the return on investment for my clients is massive. This is really a place where you need to invest your money to get proper conversions.
Mistake #4 — Ignoring Content Marketing
You found this piece of content organically. We call that content marketing. And when you create content the right way, it becomes a highly-relevant qualified lead-getting machine. It sucks the leads like a vacuum. That’s the beauty of engineering content the right way.
However, most overlook the power of content marketing. The truth is, it does take time to rank content and ensure people find it relevantly on a search engine like Google. Now, if you’re not savvy with this or don’t have a marketing team, hire one.
The truth is that you need to compress time. You don’t need to go out there and learn how to do everything yourself. So if you want to get more qualified leads that engage with your content, and are the ideal avatar, you have to structure things the right way.
That’s why it’s important to understand your avatar implicitly before going out there to solve problems for them by building content that delivers value. But once you do understand who they are and all the problems they face, you can accelerate your leads and sales rapidly with the right approach.
Mistake #5 — Ignoring SEO Rules
No matter how big social media gets, SEO still plays a vital role in content discoverability. And if you’re ignoring SEO rules, you’re throwing away potentially very qualified leads for your business. Why? Because relevancy in search is incredibly high.
When you identify your prospects problems and build content that helps to solve it, that’s highly relevant to an individual. Wouldn’t you agree? Think of it this way. They’re searching for how to solve the problem you’ve identified with a very qualified lead. And then they find you.
The truth is that SEO provides highly relevant traffic. As long as you identify the pain points and problems and build content around that, you’re good to go. Now, there are tons of SEO rules. And as most of you know, I’ve written a lot about SEO. So if you don’t know what you’re doing, hire an expert.
Sure, it’s expensive to hire someone highly qualified in SEO. But it is worthwhile. Plus, when you hire cheap SEOs you’re doing more harm than good. Most have no idea what they’re doing so they’ll damage your site by building thin, spammy content and sending bad links to it.
Mistake #6 — Poor Lead Funnel
Your lead funnel is vital to the entire process. Sure, you need great copy, the proper bait, and so on. But once they discover you and move into your opt-in funnel, it has to be on point. For example, your lead funnel should be very basic.
All you need on a lead funnel landing page is:
- Headline
- Sub-headline
- Description about bait
- Call to action
That’s it. Keep it simple. The more you overcomplicate the actual landing page of your opt-in funnel, the worse your conversions will be. If you properly identified the pain point and built great content that is relevant to a qualified lead, you’re already several steps ahead. So don’t ruin it by overcomplicating your opt-in funnel.
If you have no idea what a sales funnel or opt-in funnel is, then it’s vital you learn. I would highly recommend you take this challenge if this is something you struggle with.
Mistake #7 — Not Utilizing Or Misusing Paid Ads
As much as I love organic marketing, it takes time. That’s likely why most people opt for paid ads. It’s instant. You can literally turn them on and have a steady flow of traffic. It’s like turning the faucet on in your bathroom. Traffic just gushes towards you.
But so many entrepreneurs and marketers make a huge mistake. They turn on paid ads without properly testing everything. Look, you need to make sure your marketing is on point before you turn on paid ads. Because, if you don’t, it’s an easy way to lose lots and lots of money.
Paid ads are not dead. Yes, it’s more costly to run paid ad campaigns. But they’re not dead. When you do it the right way, you can easily see ROIs of 5x to 10x and more. It just has to be setup properly. And you need to find a way to recoup some of the ad spend.
Paid ads is another realm where you need an expert. This is about compressing time. Sure, you can go out and learn all of these things, but it’s better that you focus on your primary money-making skill and outsource everything else.
As entrepreneurs, we find this difficult, right? We want to do everything ourselves. But that is not the way to grow and scale your business. Find and hire experts. Period. That’s how you grow.