For marketing companies like ours and our clients, success is measured by the ability to generate, evaluate, nurture and close leads. And for the most part, that means digital leads.
The perceived success or failure of a lead generation strategy will often be attributed to the lead itself rather than to overall process. Because of this, it’s hard to judge a lead generation process if you make too quick of an assessment based only on the lead and not the process, something that is easy to do with the distraction of so many organizations out there touting they have the best leads.
For the most part, if there’s a company touting a single source or “silver bullet” for financial leads, I would ask them how many people have used them for multiple years and note their response. Or, better yet, you may have tried several platforms that sounded great but never seemed to work out the way they were marketed. In this case, you know not all lead generation strategies work the way they're sold.
After executing thousands of campaigns and working beside smart people, we can tell you the things to watch. If you’re mindful of the items below, you’ll see it in your results. Of course, it doesn’t mean you won’t see bad leads now and then (that’s all part of sales and marketing). But you will likely have a higher rate of success if you remember these points:
Connectivity
Is your current digital campaign connected to other complimentary platforms? Facebook is great, but it’s better if you have it connected to email nurtures, remarketing, a great landing page, etc. It’s a lot of work, but important to have a digital media mix.
Time
Are you giving your campaign the appropriate time to be effective? Remember adjustments and hands-on management need to be made along the way. We suggest three months for most campaigns.
Unrealistic Expectations
Consider the offer, the budget and the commensurate return. Also, know that as the campaign is optimized, the metrics should improve over time as you put in the work to adjust it. The expectations should be based on the number and the quality of the leads from the marketing entity. Remember, closing leads is on you.
Sales Ability
All sorts of marketing campaigns fail from the lack of sales capabilities and infrastructure at an organization. This is particularly dangerous when a firm appears to be closing a fair amount of business but could be closing a lot more. They then might get frustrated and blame the marketing campaign rather than their ability to close the leads the campaign presented to them. At the end of the day, making sales is a skill and should be nurtured because of this important fact: marketing shows your leads the door, but you must open it for them in your sales efforts and abilities.
The Lure of the Next Great Thing
Don’t get distracted from other types of campaigns and lose the will for your current campaign. There is constant pressure around jumping to the next great lead source ... while some of those leads might be great, you won't find sustained success if you don't follow the above points in your lead generation and sales-closing strategy.
Digital marketing, at every level and in every industry, is tricky and ever-changing. As a result, it’s wildly misunderstood, which makes it hard to engage with and hard to judge. But the truth is that we are in a digital world, and the better you know how to compete using concrete sales and marketing strategies, the better off you’ll be.
John Capuano is the co-founder of Lone Beacon