Here is a frightening statistics for you: 79% of your leads will not convert. That is more than three quarters of your potential revenue! You will be spending a great deal of time, money and effort into generating leads, but most of that work is done for nothing. This demonstrates very clearly that we need to think again about lead generation and how to make sure that every lead (or at least most leads) actually convert into sales.
Generating leads is actually quite easy to do. You can but leads, petition for signatures, attend trade shows, syndicate your contact, go through search campaigns and more. The question becomes what you should do with those leads once you have collected them.
“That 79 percent of non-converting leads often gets stuck in the ether between generation and the hand off to the sales team. That post-generation period is extremely crucial because, just like a car depreciates in value the second you drive it off the lot, leads depreciate in value every second they go unattended. Even if you use marketing automation tools, leads can fail to progress through the funnel.”
So what do you do? There is no way to actually guarantee that a lead becomes a sale. If there was, then we would all be finished working by now. However, there are plenty of things you can do to reduce that hideous 79% figure.
Getting Your Leads Down the Funnel
The sales funnel is reasonably easy to understand. Shaped like a funnel, it demonstrates quite clearly how lots of people can get it at the top, where there is loads of space, but that going down the funnel becomes increasingly difficult because there is less and less space. The worrying part is that sometimes leads actually get stuck in that funnel, thereby stopping others from coming through as well. Avoiding this is all about nurturing your leads.
“To prevent this from happening, good lead generation marketers will invest in lead nurturing and other Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) techniques to build relationships and trust-earning the lead’s business once he or she is finally ready to buy. Engage these leads through relevant content and make sure that you get your timing right.”
Marketeers need to have a full and holistic strategy, one that looks at the top, middle and bottom of the funnel. It is about making sure that a lead actually becomes a sale, which is what all your efforts are about. The playing field is changing, and we must change with it if we are to keep up.
Doing Your Research
You must make sure that you do your research. As the world of marketing changes, you need to make sure you change with it. However, this also means you have to be aware of changes actually taking place. Learn, for instance, what other businesses and your competition in particular, is spending their money on. Budgets are very important because they tell you exactly where the marketing focus is going to be. We know that the majority of businesses will increase how much money they spend on email marketing and marketing technology. Most will also greatly increase their budgets in order to spend on website optimization, SEO and social media.
In terms of marketing priorities, the main priority seems to be to see a bigger return on investment for marketers. Secondly, they want to make sure their sales funnel is optimized. The third main priority is to better understand their audience. These three things should be your focus as well if you want to beat your competition. Looking at your sales funnel and your audience properly should have as a consequence that your return on investment is improved. Hence, focus on the relevance of your content at every stage of your funnel.
“Relevance. As we all know, that is the magic word for marketing and content. […] Of course, with digital marketing, we no longer have the luxury of mass media newspaper ads that happen to hit a very small section of a very broad audience at just the right time. Digital marketing has become narrowcasting, sending micro-messages to niche audiences.”
What your customers want is a conversation. They want to know that they are special and valued at every stage of the operation. This can only be achieved by making sure that there is something relevant that speaks to them wherever they turn. This starts by researching your audience and ends with seeing greater sales results. Hopefully, you will be able to bring down that hideous 79%!