One of the myths of driving significant B2B new business is that it all starts with “leads”.
Marketing generate them – and then toss them over the wall to hungry sales people.
Big news “leads” aren’t the answer. Relationships are.
Recently, we came across a new marketing director in a large organisation who expressed horror that only 1% of the business’s B2B revenue came through digital channels and leads.
Unfortunately, the news for them only gets worse! It was 2017 when Forrester Research Forrester Research discovered that less than 1% of digital leads in B2B ever become customers – and in our view its only got worse in the last few years.
That means in today’s digital marketing world, if your B2B marketing team is still only focused on traditional digital email blasts, form completions, numbers of web site visitors and SEO/SEM, then you could be wasting up to 99% of your company’s time, energy and resources marketing to people who will never buy from you. It’s an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment. It was Henry Ford who said ‘Every CEO knows that 50% of their marketing budget is wasted – they don’t know which 50%” – perhaps he might find it easier to spot when 99% of activity is destined to produce not a cent more income.
Compare that to a considered Total Prospect Management (TPM) approach that regularly drives conversions of 1:3 and in magnitudes of millions of pounds, euros and dollars.
Many B2B outfits have fallen back on digital for lead generation as legacy channels like exhibitions, conferences and in house seminars have been unceremoniously been ripped out of marketing plans by Covid-19.
99 problems but getting a lead ain’t one – in the B2B space (and we’re talking complex, high value sales here) it’s never been a problem getting a “lead”. An ice bucket of business cards from a champagne draw at an exhibition…………….and much of 2020’s digital lead / demand gen actually are direct parallels. Many marketers herald their success on the “full ice bucket” – or the number of ‘delegates’ to their webinar for that instance. The thinking is the same – sloppy.
“Lead generation” has long been eschewed by tech companies who have mastered Account Based Marketing (ABM). It’s now been grabbed as a lifebuoy by marketers whose digital trousers have been pulled down, as the next new thing for their clients.
ABM is not about generating new business from new prospects – it’s about generating fresh income and increased wallet share from accounts you already know.
8 years ago, Total Prospect Management (TPM) was born – taking the founding principles of ABM but using them to find, develop and nurture prospects from no contact to win.
Over that time, we can show you the value of our marketing is defined by one thing – sales. TPM adds a cutting sales edge to a unified suite of bespoke marketing focussed on sales targets being hit – simple. Simple yes, but our results for clients are measured with 8 zeros at the end! Ask us how!
Contact Hilary Broadley hilarybroadley@broadley-speaking.com or call +44 (0) 1822 813042