There is no doubt that broken lead generation workflow can end up causing issues at all stages of the sales funnel. A messy or broken workflow can cause you to lose leads and ultimately, sales. This will affect your customer retention.
Whether you are trying to start a new lead generation process on the right foot or you are trying to get an older workflow back into shape, it is crucial to invest time and effort into streamlining your processes. Trying to ‘wing it’ or throw each step together without thinking about the bigger picture, can be devastating for your business. In this guide, we share some tips on how you can get your workflow whipped into shape for maximum lead generation results.
Streamlining Your Lead Generation Workflow
From taking a good, hard look at your current workflow to testing on a regular basis, there are a number of things that you can do to streamline your lead generation processes. Here are some of the steps that will add the most value to your various lead nurturing campaigns and strategies.
Review your current workflow
First things first, you will need to review your current workflow. What has been working so far? You may find that your initial lead magnets and early sales funnel steps have been bringing in leads to your website, only to have the leads vanish rather than move along the funnel. You may find that you’re battling to get leads to make contact at all. You might be battling to even get your lead magnets in place. Or, you may find that your entire workflow needs streamlining.
Whatever the case, the first and most important step is to carefully review every single step within your workflow. Break down your actions and processes within each step in a way that you can see what you have been doing. Make notes where things are working and where they are not. Reviewing your workflow will allow you to single out any problems that may be present, which can then help you begin making improvements.
Map Out The Lead Generation Workflow
Once you have reviewed your overall efforts and workflow, you will need to begin mapping out your lead nurturing process. Some typical steps within a workflow or sales funnel could look a bit like this:
- Step 1: Lead is attracted to your website through some sort of offer or content
- Step 2: Lead completes a call to action that prompts them to make contact or take action
- Step 3: Lead enters contact information in exchange for an offer such as a lead magnet
- Step 4: Lead officially becomes a sales prospect, with each action assigned a score
- Step 5: Lead is moved to sales when they are deemed ready to proceed to purchase
Your steps and processes could look very different, depending on your goals and overall lead generation strategy. Using visuals and data, mapping out not just your full process but also each individual step will allow you to plan according to best practice. You can then look further into each step to see where improvements can be made.
Take a good look at your data
Another way that lead generation can go horribly wrong is poor data. This can happen in numerous ways. You may find that you have duplicate lead entries, leads may enter incorrect information when completing forms, sales teams may record incorrect info, you may have outdated info, and you may have missing information. Needless to say, dirty data can be very bad when it comes to lead nurturing. It can lead to issues such as leads receiving duplicate emails, instead of single emails. It can lead to leads not receiving anything at all. It can be incredibly frustrating for all involved – leads, marketing teams, and sales teams.
Doing a data clean up is something that you should look at doing at least once a year – not just to improve your processes but to make sure that your records are still up to date. Clean up your data and make sure that all contact information is correct. This should include email addresses, contact names and numbers (if relevant) and any other information you collect. Flag any inconsistencies as soon as you can to avoid running into issues. Make this a priority.
Fine-tune your buyer personas
You will also need to perfect your buyer personas. If you are not using these as part of your lead nurturing strategies, now is the time to get them into place. Personas are a great way to create highly personalised campaigns according to your primary customers. Rather than guesstimating who your customers are or relying on your own observations, invest in tools and strategies that enable you to identify your target market. The more information you can gather about your target customers, the better. Once you have all this data in place, you can begin creating and perfecting your buyer personas.
You could think of your personas as the leads you are tailoring your campaigns to at any given stage. You will need to take a number of things into account – demographics, behaviour patterns, motivations, and goals. What do your customers want? How do they interact with your brand? What can you do to attract them to your business? Think carefully about how you can get more from your personas and start using them for all of your email marketing, lead nurturing, mobile marketing, and even social media campaigns to target your ideal customer more efficiently.
Test and test again
Finally, another highly essential step that you cannot afford to overlook is testing. That means split testing all of your emails and messages so that you can determine which work and which do not deliver more clicks, opens or action. It also means testing your processes and strategies. For example, if you have started lead scoring or segmentation to go with your personas, you will need to test on a regular basis to check that lead scores are still up to date and that you are still segmenting in a way that delivers consistent results.
In the digital world, things change in the blink of an eye. Testing is the only way that you can be sure that your processes are still working well. It’s all very well to go through all of your strategies and make improvements, but if you are not following that up with regular testing and tweaking, it will all be for nothing. Invest in testing and make it part of your workflow. Without testing, you could easily miss important changes or make mistakes that are not noticed for weeks or months. You may end up with outdated personas, dirty data, and many other issues that put all of your hard work at risk, losing leads in the process.
Grow Your Sales And Profits With Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing can seem like a headache at times. It can also be confusing and frustrating. Rather than treating it as something that other businesses need to think about, start seeing it as something that has the potential to help you grow your sales and profits in the short and long run. Start putting more thought, time and effort into your strategies. Perfect your workflows and you will see your hard work begin to pay off as lead generation begins to become far simpler and more rewarding.
