The biggest myth in marketing is that Leads and Sales determine marketing performance.

I've seen countless opportunities go to waste with this mindset.

But where do the missed opportunities go?

Competitors of course - not everyone misses the opportunity. If a competitor takes a lead away from you, it is worth twice as much to them - 1 for the sale and 1 for taking a sale away from you.

So, after many years as a marketer, here are 7 things it comes down to if you want to improve your marketing.

1. Check your Sales team's messaging, tone & communication style.

Sir George Bernard Shaw said that "The problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place".

Do you help your customers to buy something they aren't familiar with - or do you sell them something you think they want?

If every lead you receive is handled to perfection then you are awesome.

Do you always ask questions that reflect the buyer journey; such as,

• "Do you need finance?"
• "Would you like to come and see it (the product) today or tomorrow?"
• "Is there anything you haven't answered in your journey so far - can I help?"

Some retailers don't get many replies when they reply to an enquiry. That's not good - because many do.

How clear are you? How helpful are you really? Would you describe your customer service as award-worthy? Your reply ratio will tell you the truth, and your sales will be a byproduct.

• If your prospects aren't ready to speak to you on the phone, stop telling them to call you - communicate on their terms.
• If they gave you an email AND a phone number - the email is likely to be the best chance, they might be at work - don't email them and ask them to call you, answer their original question(s) and suggest a timed phone call.

2. Don't ask for too much all at once.

A good portion of the traffic to your website or your social media sites consists of people who are doing their research but aren't ready to purchase yet. These people return - in different ways. Organic search, more paid advertising - maybe a classified site too.

Many businesses focus on their immediate sales aims, but asking customers to buy before they are ready can be very intimidating to them - treating them as 'not worthy of the chase' makes them feel, well... not worthy.

• Help to guide them through their purchase journey.
• Provide educational resources and nurture the relationship.
• Offer valuable information to help them make their decision when they're ready.
• Remember: they will find a competitor who loves them if you don't.

3. Don't let Sales give up too quickly.

It's more important to look at the behaviour of your users than to look at the conversion to sale.

• Buyers pass through many touchpoints on the buying journey - you are building up trust through your channels to market.
• Cross-channel behaviour, online-to-offline tracking problems, and more prevent any possibility of clear & foolproof tracking - so don't make it your goal.
• Strong tracking can be very weak - e.g. Wife makes enquiries early in the journey, Husband calls up to complete the journey.
• Consideration stage purchasers will convert much later than the ones you pick up in the Intent stage.
• Your website analytics is the best place to learn a lot about your buyer journeys & preferred channels.

Do you track your user journeys' with advanced Call Tracking?

Call tracking can help you keep track of users passing through multiple sources of the purchase journey.

Driving more people who look like buyers will drive you more buyers.

- It's more important to look at the behaviour than at the conversion to sale.

How quick is 'too quick' to consider a Lead a Lost Sale?

People take time to make a purchasing decision. For example, in the automotive industry, shoppers take an average of 2.7 months to start and complete a New Car purchase and between 2-6 weeks to start and complete the purchase of a Used Car.

If these people enquire - it is a golden ticket opportunity! It means that they haven't purchased yet! That's what you wanted, right?

Work hard to nurture the lead that you just paid for.

• The best response time for following up with leads is within 10 minutes.
• Salespeople should make at least six follow-up calls to leads before moving on (and experience up to a 70% increase in contact rates).
• Know your buying cycle before closing a lead.
• Know the difference between calling and connecting with your lead.
• Call with purpose, stand out, be kind, be helpful.

It's not a good idea to make an assumption or determination about your lead quality if you haven't given it your best to reach your prospect.

Repeat - revise - repeat.

Make sure that your marketing continues to 'follow' those prospects who have enquired but not yet converted.

In the political arena, one of the key principles is that it takes a minimum of six touchpoints with a voter to motivate them to go vote, and often far more. That's why, during political campaign season, voters are bombarded with messages, over and over, through a variety of different channels.

Effective marketing requires repetition and consistency. You need to reach your target market repeatedly. And you need to do it through different channels - your website, social media platforms, email, direct mail, radio, etc.

4. Your brand isn't as attractive as it should be.

It's important that you build a brand that positions you as likeable and knowledgeable in your area of service - especially if you're working locally.

How long does it take to build trust; do you think?

One Email? A couple of calls?

• Trust grows with spend time - are you making your goal to stay in touch & to continue to offer genuine value? (not check if they've purchased yet).
• People look for reviews - do you have a consistent presence and marketing spend that demonstrates how great the experience will be with you?
• People buy locally - how effective is your local marketing & what metrics prove this?

Consider using blog entries and video content to strengthen your brand and build trust with your audience. 

Here're some examples that an automotive retailer could create to build trust & credibility:

• 5 pro-tips from an official franchised car dealer that will help you find the perfect car in <Town / City>.
• 3 reasons that selling ANY car you own to Fiat in <Town / City> & how you'll get maximum value with ZERO risks.
• Out top 3 roles to apply for at <Retailer Name> if you want a new career challenge in <Town / City>.

5. Don't mistake the right audience for the wrong one.

Sure, you can have the wrong audience - but remember: the wrong audience doesn't behave like the right audience.

It's worth paying for a good website traffic analyst to take a look at your traffic to determine:

• The quality of your existing, incoming website visitors.
• The quality of your advertising spend (determining any savings can often pay back your fees for the service).

The wrong audience is easy to spot.

It doesn't interact. Measure your interactions properly.

If your audience looks & behaves like buyers in your tracking, then they most likely are buyers.

Don't dismiss signs that your audience is behaving like buyers, just because it points at a problem with the lead handling.

Sure, you've got the greatest sales team - brilliant! But keep a very open mind. We can all learn a thing or two. Own it, embrace it. Conquer it.

Things that ALL new advertising sources will fail on in your organisation

- it's natural, don't fight it, work with it:

•  New lead perception
•  Lead handling
•  Cherry-picking

When we pump more leads into an existing process, we often keep the same resources but ask the team to do more - which is often a real challenge for them. It's natural for the people resources to navigate to what they know and rush what they don't - looking for easy wins. Go easy on new leads. Investigate, re-educate.

Get help & guidance if you need it.

You will get more value from learning why people didn't buy from you than anything else. Try hard to talk to them OFTEN.

6. Are you measuring the wrong things?

'Cost per lead' and 'Conversion to sale' only reveals one chapter of the story.

• Don't confuse 'high-quality leads' with 'sales' - seriously.
• People who enquire about your products or services can't be low quality, as they were the original objectives.
• Never suppress the leads always improve the lead handling process.
• If you're feeling confident - work on some LTV modelling.

Leaked Value.

Value others might not be aware of that paints the full value picture. The leaked value can mean that it's hard for the key stakeholders to make decisions - and I don't blame them - the internet is already complicated enough. 

Which one do you think provides the best insight to make a financial and data-driven decision? 

One - too little, too few.

• Advert cost: £1,500
• Website Visits: 1987

Two - effective ROI Sign Posts:  

• Advert cost: £1,500
• Website Visits: 1987
• Local Impressions: 33,450
• People who engaged with the adverts: 45,897
• Total interactions (Website activity, calls, emails, etc): 8,453
• Total cars for sale viewed on website 1987
• Avg. Time on site: 2.32
• Map views: 141
• Page prints: 32
• Email alert sign-ups: 14

Does it make sense that people would download or print a map to drive to see you (footfall), if you are advertising locally? If 9 out of 10 journeys begin online, and 9 out of 10 take place offline (Comscore, Yahoo, Google), isn't it a sensible conclusion that the more you advertise online, the more likely you will see people offline?

Don't confuse someone 'on the journey' -or- 'in the early stages of the journey as a 'low-quality lead.

People who aren't ready to buy will become ready to buy - will they remember and choose you -or- your competitors?

You're the expert - would it really be so bad to guide them through and fill in their missing gaps in knowledge? Can you make the journey simpler? Easier? Take some of the work off them? Invite them down to see you go through it all together?

Just look how busy automotive car buyers get -below- (very similar in other product verticals).

You can choose to be one part of 100s of interactions, or build a bond or a relationship that navigates as many interactions that will help you win a local customer for life.

7. Your conversion opportunity WILL need work (it always will).

The conversion rate varies from company to company. The level of opportunity to increase your conversions does not vary. There is no limit to what can be done to improve your overall buying experience and customer service.

You will never be short of things to do - but you might find things a lot easier if you use our marketing planning software

Things that affect conversion rate: 

• Inconsistent messaging.
• Poor UX and loading times.
• Thin content.
• Unappealing value offer.

Sometimes perfectly healthy levels of sales can go as cold as the North Pole, and if your mind is boggled... we feel your pain, we've been down almost every reporting rabbit hole going! Here's what we learned...

Things that can cause a drop in performance

• Governments talking negatively can affect the consumer behaviour of the nation.
• Holiday seasons can be prickly for some industries (not the holiday industry, obvs). 
• Sometimes big brands you represent spent money on advertising last year that's making this year's performance look poor, in comparison.
• Different (new) salespeople/teams can have different rhythms.
• Sometimes your competitors are really active in short bursts - you need to counter their approach.
• Last year traditional advertising doesn't appear in this year's stats so you can't verify properly - like performance, distribution, audience size, engagement, effect.
• Someone in your organisation eased off your advertising spend to save money.
• Someone in your organisation didn't pay enough attention to repetition and brand recall in places like; Google search.
• Sometimes companies are advertising too heavily for 2 or 3 products or services, but their revenue and activity comes from other products and services. (like, Used Cars Stock, New Car Offers, Service & MOT).
• Performance is being seen too short term and no predictions are being made or confirmed - bad decisions can be made here - it can be misleading to look at month on month (MOM), as the market has a very specific 'up/down' pattern, erratically and progressively dropping (with a few exceptions), until the big jump in January. 
• No one is considering metrics in their opinion of a performance drop (website enquiries using call tracking and analytics codes).
• There has not been enough consistent activity on brand recall or local, repetitive advertising.

Having a great marketing partner can guide you through anything that's been mentioned in this article.

If you're interested in getting Marketing Support for Leebot - go here.

If you want to talk about Armchair Marketing's award-winning approach to Marketing, we'd love to hear from you. Contact us anytime.