Five Reasons You’re Getting Lousy Marketing Leads
The leads you’re getting from your website are lousy. Your website traffic is good, and the number of leads coming in is impressive.
However, you’re noticing that the leads coming in are not resulting in the sales you want, and in fact the follow-up is wasting your time. What went wrong? More importantly, how can you get back on track?
Lousy Lead Generation Reason 1: Your Content is Attracting the Wrong People
Think about your last five blog posts and content offers. What kind of person would want to read them? Are they the people you want to work with? Can they afford your services? More importantly, are they the people who are influential in deciding who their company does business with?
This is extreme and you’d never do this, but let’s say you own a luxury resort in Los Cabos, and your content is all about saving money on travel to Florida. You’re way off – targeting budget travelers with a completely unrelated destination location in mind. These are people who not only cannot afford your product, they aren’t even interested in it!
Get Better Leads
Fix the disconnect. Think about what your buyers care about. Consider what potential and current customers ask when you, concierge, or your sales team get to speak with them. Do they want to know the best golf courses around? Maybe they are concerned with updates regarding safety. Perhaps they want to know where to keep their yacht during their stay. Give them what they want.
Lousy Lead Generation Reason 2: You Aren’t Qualifying Leads Right Away
If your luxury resort website looks like it was built in 1995, features photos you took on your cell phone, and talks about affordability, you’re still targeting the wrong people. Worse yet, you’re turning away the people who might actually want to come stay! Make sure your website and social profiles accurately represent your resort as THE destination for discriminating travelers.
Get Better Leads
Some businesses also choose to provide pricing or sample pricing as a way to exclude unqualified leads. You could also provide a “What we’re NOT” page that might, for instance, point out that there aren’t a lot of activities for young children. You have nothing to hide. For one thing, review websites will often reveal any real or perceived shortcomings. For another, you really DON’T want to attract customers who won’t enjoy their stay.
Lousy Lead Generation Reason 3: You’re Not Collecting the Right Information
Yes, people are wary of providing a lot of information. However, if you are planning to follow up on the leads you receive, you need to know more than just a name, number and email address. You need to find out enough to know if it is worth the time it will take to follow up in person.
Get Better Leads
Some armchair travelers enjoy getting free travel information, though they are in no position to actually follow up. So, as a luxury resort owner, before you provide that free eBook or even a printed travel guide, you might ask, “How many trips do you take a year?” “Which other resort locations have you visited?” or “What types of amenities are important to you?” This will allow you to see if 1. They can afford your resort and 2. if they’re likely to enjoy it once they get there. Now you know if you should reach out to them personally or just use lead nurturing automation to keep in touch “just in case”.
Lousy Lead Generation Reason 4: You’re Not Showing Up in the Right Places
Still trying to use Reddit to promote your resort? Since the demographic of the average Reddit user is overwhelmingly under 25 years of age with the majority of users reporting an income of under $25K, it’s time to move on.
Get Better Leads
What’s THE best way to find out where your best customers like to get their information? Ask them! Yes, you can send out polls via email or on social media, or just ASK them when they check in. You could even offer a free subscription to their choice of travel magazines and see if any trends emerge. Use the knowledge you gain to position yourself to be found by others like your best customers. From those platforms, direct people to your blog posts and content offers.
Lousy Lead Generation Reason 5: You’re Marketing in a Vacuum
Are you a one-person marketing, customer service, and sales force? I didn’t think so. Chances are, even if you wear many hats in your business, there are people you work with who have insights you need. Do you feel like your leads are great, but that sales is just not doing a good job following up? Do you think your content addresses common customer questions and concerns, but your customer service people get countless calls and inquiries NOT covered on the website or on your social platforms?
Get Better Leads
Make all your departments a part of the lead generation strategy for your company. Find out what sales doesn’t like about the current crop of incoming leads. Find out which questions concierge or customer service are fielding over and over again. Don’t just ask once. Make sure they know you want to be updated on a regular basis. And, because people get in to a routine and forget, schedule regular times to follow up with everyone.