Leads Aren’t the Issue – Your Marketing Is

In business, everyone wants to talk about leads, but leads are just a number. Worrying about generating more and more of them is a waste of time, my friends, because there isn’t a magic number you need to make a deal. It only takes one – one simple lead. That’s it.

But if it’s only one lead you need, where do the all-too-common statements regarding needing hundreds of leads per month come from?

Mathematically, we can measure from data that X number of leads should produce Y number of deals. This I get, but maybe we’re stuck thinking about business with yesterday's technology in mind. Things are a little different today. In short, leads are not the issue – your marketing is.

Back in the day, a bagel shop would have to buy an ad in a newspaper in order to gain awareness and traction for its product. It would pay one thousand dollars for that ad, have it run in four editions of that paper, and hope it would sell enough bagels to cover the cost. If they were creative, or if they were interested in measurable results, they would invest in a coupon with dotted lines around it to encourage people to cut it out, get in their car, bring it in and become a lasting customer. Back in the day, that made sense. Today is about new and improved tactics.

Take Facebook Offers, for instance. You can post an offer on your Facebook page for free, then target it to a specific audience through a small advertising buy through Boosted posts. Your costs as a bagel shop just decreased significantly. Woot!

I still see ads in the newspaper, which means one of two things: Either they still work or they are still not being measured.

Now, impressions do count. It will take a certain amount of times of me seeing that bagel shop’s ad claiming to be the best before I go there and make a purchase. There is a value in that. But, with today’s technology, you can make your marketing stick even more through digital solutions.

Take retargeting, which will follow you around the Internet after you initially land on a brand’s site, placing ads in strategic places to convince your brain the brand is worth buying into. Imagine if you were in your car, drove past that bagel shop, didn’t go in, and then saw an ad for that bagel shop in your mailbox when you got home. You walk outside and your neighbor tells you there is an incredible bagel shop in town. You see a bagel flier under your windshield wipers at the grocery store. Imagine how much that would all cost (including paying off your neighbor). Today, through retargeting, you can create those same moments for a fraction of the cost.

The point is, we didn’t know what worked back then - today we do. Smart marketing means putting an end to thinking the number of leads is all that matters. The overarching reality is that you better have great product and great service if you want to even have a shot at selling a lead, but as long as you do, you can now win at a cost-effective price point.

The scary thing is that not many brands are capitalizing on smart marketing. They are still buying ads in tired magazines that won’t produce leads. Why? Because they don’t know any better. It is very hard to teach old dogs new tricks because they have become accustomed to not believing the improbable. But, with an open mind and the right marketing, brands can learn the magic number of leads they need is just one.