Unknowingly Ignoring your Prospects

Fifty years ago, Peter Drucker said that “any business enterprise has two and only two basic functions: innovation and marketing.”

When it comes to marketing the cornerstones are Lead Generation and Lead Management. In fact, how successful a business is at lead generation and lead management may be the single component to your company’s growth and possible survival.

Marketing’s main focus should be lead generation and lead management. The changing dynamics of B2B customer buying habits demands that marketing’s focus be on lead generation and lead management. However, before your company can take advantage of increased demand generation techniques you must have your marketing house in order.

You must have your marketing fundamentals in place.

MarketBlazer’s “Seven Strategy Process” will assist you in developing a marketing process that allows you to communicate your clearly defined message to your focused target market at the time your prospects are looking for your products and services with specific messages that customers will seek out, not ignore.

Lead Generation:

In today’s Web 2.0 world, lead generation is not about instant gratification or the marketing idea-of-the-day; it requires a sustained effort over time.

We have all heard the saying “Companies don’t buy; people buy” and that statement has never been truer. Therefore the goal of an effective lead generation strategy is
one that creates a dialogue between your company and your prospects.

It is imperative to create a relationship with your prospects so that your company becomes viewed as the “trusted advisor” in the buying process. The goal in implementing MarketBlazer’s “Five Strategy Process” is to position your company as the company your prospects go to when they have a problem.

The three primary lead generation tactics, further detailed in MarketBlazer’s “Five Strategy Process”, are advertising, referrals and public relations. These are critical to your small business marketing success and if you don’t have all of these working in your favor, you’re treading on shaky ground.

When it comes to lead generation, learn to implement the three core tactics of advertising, referrals and public relations correctly and you’ll have more customers than you know what to do with.

But do it wrong and your cash registers will suddenly fall silent.

Lead Management:

The Internet has changed forever the way prospects find information about the products and services you and your competitors provide.

You are likely receiving leads from many sources such as from your website, advertising, email marketing, pay-per-click, articles, white papers, press releases, trade shows, etc. As a result, prospects are engaging with your company earlier in the sales process than ever before.

The problem with this is the vast majority of these potential leads are not “sales ready” leads. Giving these leads to sales too early can be as big a negative as giving them to sales too late.

According to recent research, of the total leads generated by a typical small business marketing campaign, 12.5 percent are quality leads and moved immediately to sales for follow-up.

Additionally, 17.5 percent are discarded because they don’t qualify, can’t be verified or don’t fit within company parameters.

The largest amount of leads from any lead generation campaign, the remaining 70 percent remain in a state of limbo; not qualifying for immediate sales follow-up but too much potential to discard.

Most companies never effectively follow-up with these leads, at least not in a timely manner.

These are the prospects you are unknowingly ignoring.

Find out how MarketBlazer’s “Seven Strategy Process” will help you develop a marketing process to unlock the potential of these lost prospects and increase your business revenue with a predictable and sustainable marketing methodology.