Lead gen secrets from a savvy investor
Yesterday morning I was talking to a marketing leader about his strategy and he brought up some concerns he had about the economy and its potential impact on him and others. Can you blame him?
In years past, marketing has been favorite target for cuts by CFOs and CEOs as they look to conserve cash and reinforce their balance sheets for tough times. Trust me, I’ve experienced this first hand a couple of years back while working for a publicly traded telecom company who’s every move was motivated by their stock price. One day the stock was up and I had 5 new colleages, the next day the stock was down..and we were all out on the curb! (Note: that company, Verso Technologies (Nasdaq: VRSO), finally went bankrupt. I could only wonder if their stock-price driven marketing contributed?)
Nowadays, I’m less concerned about budget cuts and more interested in opportunities for B2B marketers who choose to bring focus to their marketing efforts. We have to remember that regardless of the economy, sales people are still expected to perform. I seldom find sales quotas are lowered to fit the news headlines or a stock price!
If you want to flourish regardless of the economic conditions, you need to look for ways to help your sales team execute and improve performance.
I’m convinced that one of the best ways to do that is to focus on lead generation. I recently read a Kate Maddox’s article in BtoB Magazine, “IDC: Tougher times for tech marketing,” which supports that other B2B marketers are doing just that.
Much like a savvy investor who buys when the market is down, smart marketers can capitalize on this opportunity (and beat competitors), by bringing focus and attention to their lead generation efforts.
Maddox’s article highlights IDC’s recent tech marketing barometer research. IDC showed that fewer tech marketers are increasing their budgets this year compared to last year. But I think the bigger story is how those dollars are being allocated. Maddox writes, “According to the [IDC] report. Lead generation is the top marketing priority for tech marketers this year…”
According to studies, the single biggest issue for contemporary business-to-business marketers is effective lead generation. Conversely, it has been pointed out that 80% of marketing expenditures on lead generation and collateral are wasted because the leads are ignored by sales people. This was the case with Verso Technologie, not just because of the bad management, but because of a very unfriendly CRM system that was a royal pain in the a$$–but that’s another whole topic to begin with!
In short, marketers should direct their budgets away from traditional awareness building campaigns that quickly eat up budget and instead expand and optimize lead generation programs that bring measurable results. Finding better tools and processes for managing the leads or inquires that they already have is also a good investment in a turbulent economy.
You will optimize lead generation immediately if you can honestly answer “yes” to all of the following questions:
• Do sales and marketing agree on what the word “lead” means?
• Are you tracking the conversion rates of leads to sales opportunities?
• Can you/Do you close-the-loop on all leads that are being passed to sales?
• Does your sales team pass back early stage leads for lead nurturing?
I am working on an upcoming post dealing with how you can build a lead-nurturing/lead gen ecosystem within your small business…one that’s easy to use, easy to extract data and one that incorporates e-marketing—all using low cost and open-source, off-the-shelf solutions. Stay tuned for that!
Filed under: Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing budgeting, lead acquisition, marketing, marketing budget, small business management tips
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