There's no discussion that lead generation is one of the biggest keys for growth for any B2B business.

However, sometimes a lead generation can go awry and end up with a negative ROI.

There are many reasons why this may happen: companies test too much and pick the wrong winners, they create bad landing page copy, they have irrelevant offers, and much more.

Whatever the reason may be, if you want to have a successful business, you need to be able to make the most of your lead generation campaigns and bring the highest ROI possible.

There are a few ways you can achieve that, and that's exactly what I'll show you in this article.

Get Better Leads

What's the one thing that makes a lead generation campaign work? Its leads.

The quality of your leads determines the quality of your ROI. Just like you need to put high-quality fuel into a car engine to make it work properly, you need to put high-quality leads to your lead generation campaigns to make the most out of them.

In other words, if you bring relevant people who are truly interested in what you have to sell to your landing pages, you will improve your ROI.

The question then becomes, how do you get better leads?

First, create relevant high-quality content. There's no discussion that the only way to improve your lead generation campaigns is by creating great content. Everybody knows that and works hard to do so. But let's stop for a second to understand what makes a piece of content relevant.

The relevancy of the content you offer depends on the stage of the lead's buying process. If a lead is in his first stage, when he's the most unaware of his problem nor your solution, offering an article that touches on his problem may be the best content you can give him. On the other hand, offering him a guide on all the reasons why he needs the kind of software you provide isn't something he might be interested in. If he ends up converting into a lead, it's likely it will be for all the wrong reasons.

Second, have a clean lead database. If your business has already done more than 10 lead generation campaigns for the past few years, it's likely you have old

leads in your database that are killing your ROI calculations. After all, why would a lead that you got 5 years ago still be interested in what you have to offer?

Your lead database should have only the most up-to-date and valid contact data possible. If your lead database is a few years old (or even a few months old), you need to contact each and every single lead you have and clean out the ones that aren't relevant anymore. The relevancy part is once again important: make sure that every lead you get is legitimate before you hand them to your salespeople.

Finally, acquire people from relevant sources. If you want to sell an enterprise B2B SaaS program, and for some reason, you got a lead from Instagram, there’s a likelihood that person isn’t truly an enterprise manager who is interested in your software. So make sure to bring people into your funnel from better sources.

Optimize Your Funnel

All lead generation campaigns have a funnel-like shape. Since you are subscribed to MarketingProfs Today, you probably know this already.

The problem isn't whether you have a funnel or not. The problem is whether you have a "leaky" funnel or not. What does "leaky" mean in this context? It means you aren’t converting enough people.

First of all, how do you “convert" people into leads? You do that by following a few simple psychological principles that the psychologist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini Robert Cialdini explains in his famous book Influence. These principles, which bias people into doing things they may not be totally rational for them to do, are:

·         Reciprocity

·         Commitment and Consistency

·         Social proof

·         Scarcity

·         Authority

(For those marketing nerds, you probably know I missed the "Liking" principle. I did that on purpose, as it isn't relevant for our case).

How do you optimize your funnel using these psychological principles? A few ideas that can help you:

1.       Give without asking. Creating content that's not only relevant but also that gives value without asking anything in return is a good way to use the reciprocity principle. As the saying goes, "Give, and you shall receive". That can be something as simple as a tip, or as complicated as an ebook.

2.      Make them say "yes” to just one simple request. Before sending them to your landing page, make them say “yes” to your request to visit your landing page. This simple act triggers the commitment and consistency principle.

3.      Show them you are an expert in your industry. By showing yourself as an expert (which you should be anyway), you will touch on the authority and social proof principles. Showing awards won, conferences in which you have participated, clients, you have worked for, and professional certifications help to achieve this goal.

4.      Make your offer scarce. Make your offers time-sensitive or limited to a certain amount of seats or downloads. That will trigger the scarcity principle, which is one of the most powerful ones I've personally encountered.

Analyze and Act

You can do everything right, but if you don’t know the results of what you are doing, your lead generation campaigns aren't worth much. Once you start getting results from your lead gen campaign, you need to analyze your results and act on them.

Start this process with an analysis of the deals that your company has closed. How did these closed deals enter the system? Take a look at your analytics and ask your salespeople or marketing managers for more information.

To make this process easier, there are a few pieces of data you want to record for each acquisition channel and campaign:

·         Number of leads you got

·         Number of deals won

·         Percentage of deals won

·         Cost of campaign

·         Cost per lead

·         Cost per deal

·         Total revenue

·         Average deal size

(You may want to add a few more attributes that are unique to your company as well.)

With all this information, break down your results by marketing tactic used, and analyze:

·         Total lead volume: How many leads does each tactic generate?

·         Total deal volume: How many deals you have gotten from each tactic?

·         Qualified lead volume: How many of these can you consider as "qualified leads"? That is, how many of your leads were still interested when your sales team contacted them?

·         Percentage of qualified leads per marketing channel: Use the previous numbers to come up with this data.