The Lead Generation MEASLE Contagion

I regularly speak to business owners who express their frustrations in not being able to consistently drive lead generation. All too often I find marketers engage in regular and repetitive strategic activities, but there is no consistent endeavour to maintain their sales leads. Ultimately, they are unable to forecast lead generation results or evaluate the effectiveness of their activities

I remember contracting measles as a young boy and my mother locking me in my bedroom to prevent the spread of the contagion...

...now I guess you're thinking, what is this crack pot on about, what has the measles got to do with lead generation?

The 6 Key contagious issues facing marketers these days can by recalled with the anagram MEASLE :

Marketing Automation:

Warning! This may sound alien coming from an Hubspot Partner - There can sometimes be an over reliance on marketing automation, landing pages and email workflows, while neglecting legacy business data and missing out on important insights from existing prospect data analysis.

Experts:

It's typical to find way too many “experts” within businesses today looking to direct marketing strategy. As soon as a lead generation campaign begins to take traction, a so called "top-dog" chooses to pull rank and adjusts everything. Any business opportunities in motion are then wasted and sales have to begin again.

Attention:

Within larger marketing establishments, it’s not uncommon to find too many people getting involved in too many operations, sales leads begin to dilute and previously engaged prospects discover other suppliers who give them the necessary attention.

SLA:

Success demands a solid alignment of Sales & Marketing. Companies that fail to have a structured agreement between Sales & Marketing are more inclined to experience less internal harmony, resulting in quality leads fall through the cracks.

List Building:

Most organisations lack effective list hygiene and list building techniques. List building basics... work, clean, iterate and maintain existing data, then exploit a structured lead generation strategy with closed-loop analysis and reporting

Employee Turnover:

Organisations that are unsuccessful at establishing consistent training practices and personnel development projects will experience repeated staff turnover. Consequently, these organisations suffer a loss of customer confidence and qualified prospects lose interest as they feel they're dealing with a new people too frequently.

How Should Marketers Optimise Their Lead Generation Initiatives?

B2B marketers really want to connect with prospects on a one to one basis, tailoring their offer in the most effective way possible. Social media provides remarkable opportunity to customise and engage with prospects and existing customers, so long as it is employed as one element of a multi channel integrated marketing strategy. Committing all your marketing resources to social media will not generate the best results and you might wind up wasting time and money.

6 Simple tips to help optimise your lead generation process:

Establish your goals and objectives, then explain your vision & approach to your team, asking for their input to win team buy in.
Profiling (Buyer Personas) must be a deliberate and collaborative effort with specified roles and accountability for the team.
Streamline your lead scoring units so it becomes easy for sales reps and consultants to stay on track.
Think like the tortoise not the hare, it takes time. Provide your team and any partners with comprehensive resources and training to play the long game. Brief blasts of activity may produce surges in interest but it will never maintain prolonged success and lead generation effectiveness.
Don't over cripple your business with over analysis. While regular and consistent metric analysis is important, remember to use your marketing automation platform to report on the numbers to concentrate your efforts and guide your lead generation playbook.
If you only do one thing, make sure you create a list of the 5 essential criteria:
Ideal Customer Demographic
Ideal Customer Knowledge/Experience
Genuine Pain Point
Reasonable Decision Timeline
Desire to Engage