The LeadGen.com Blog

Patience Is a Waste of Time

I’m sorry, but the situation with Marketing just keeps getting dumber and dumber.

People are always coming to us complaining that they ran some marketing program, maybe an email drip, or a pay-per-click thing.

And when they didn’t get an instant payback, they complained to the vendor – who usually came back with, “Well, such-and-such a method just takes time.”

Or, “you have to leverage the repetition effect.”

Or some other such nonsense to keep them buying.

And then they still don’t get a payback, and that why they’re calling us. But, of course, they don't have any money left.

So today I was checking one of the absolute worst offenders, a networking site that sounds like a-shmine-able.

And there was a discussion about podcast sponsorships, and how important the repetition effect is.

One guy says, “Patience is the biggest piece of any entrepreneurial journey.”

And another says, “Brand awareness is a marathon, not a sprint.”

So, let me tell you about the repetition effect.

There’s no question that it exists. But it only works if the underlying message gets at a real need or pain point.

If the need is current, then the repetition effect is actually a misnomer for insuring coverage.

And if the need is latent, then the repetition effect doesn’t work because of the repetition, it works if, and only if, you can find a way to rip off the scab.

Jeez, guys, when are you going to stop milking this old cow?

Telling Ain't Selling

So yesterday I had a call with a gentleman who, evidently, wanted to tell me about his firm’s retirement planning services.

I’m not really in the market right now, but I learn a lot from listening to other people, particularly their approach to sales, so…

After the opening niceties, where he told me about:

• his background,
• his business successes, and
• some typical health challenges,

he started explaining to me how business owners often make mistakes when they set up their retirement programs.

Evidently there are all sorts of pre-tax things you can do, and plans you can set up to defer, and even avoid, taxes, as well as to make sure you don’t outlive your money.

So, having gone to Customer School, I listened. And after around twenty minutes or so, while he was catching his breath, I complemented him on how terrific his service sounded.

And then I asked him, by the way, what was the purpose of the call.

So he then tells me that he has all these leads, but he doesn’t understand why people aren’t jumping at the chance to reduce their taxes, make their money last longer, and otherwise take advantage of his services.

Can you guess my answer?

Just Get Me in the Door

Beware of Sales candidates who brag that they can close anyone, but who condition it on someone else getting them in the door.

What they're telling you is that they can't do the hardest part of the job.

Even worse is that the problem isn't that they can't close.

The problem is that they're making an excuse for when they later fail. Because If they didn't get the sale it must have been because they really weren't in the door - not because they couldn't close.

Next candidate!

Free Advertising Agency!

OK, so yesterday I saw the absolute dumbest post ever from a guy who says he’s starting up a new advertising agency.

Anyway, this guy gets on and announces that he’s starting up an advertising agency where you don’t have to pay for anything up front. You don’t pay for campaign planning. You don’t pay for copywriting. He’ll even front you the media.

And you only pay if he brings you paying customers.

Now we all know that the glut of so-called Marketing Experts has forced a lot of people to work on a pay-per-lead basis – which is a lose-lose in its own right.

But this guy is willing to trust not only that he can produce good leads, but that you, the client, can close them. And that you’ll pay him when you do.

Look, we get about 50 requests a day from companies that want us to work on the back end. So it’s not like there’s no demand for this kind of “free lunch.”

And so it’s not like this guy just re-invented the wheel.

But you have to ask yourself, it he’s so good at Marketing, why is he investing his talents in such a risky venture?

Go Birds!

The Fifth P

We had an interesting discussion in one of our groups the other day, this time about the 4Ps of Marketing, and whether or not “positioning” is the 5th P.

I argued that Positioning was just another go-to-market tool, based on Kotler’s subsequent correction; but my counterpart argued that the 4Ps are about tactics, while positioning was part of your “strategy”.

And he asserted, correctly, that there are a bunch of articles on the topic, and research, and lots of big companies that subscribe to that theory.

Look, if you’re working for a Fortune 100 company, I get it. Some high-level brain trust decides on how they want to position the company and its products in the market, and then the Marketing weenies get to play with the marketing mix, pricing, channels and promotions.

But for the rest of us, and, frankly even for 90% of the divisions of those Fortune 100 companies, especially orphan divisions, positioning is just as fungible as everything else. And, in fact, it may be more-so.

In other words, you may be locked into your product mix. You may have invested heavily in your channels and can’t swap them out. Your ad buys may be committed for a year. And your pricing may be – in fact, is probably – controlled by your competition.

And the ONLY thing you may have to work with on a day-to-day basis is your positioning.

But hey, don’t worry about it. When your strategy fails, being positioned wrong in the market gives you the perfect excuse for blaming someone else for the failure.

Jump-Starting Your Sales

The material in the Learning Center includes content, tools, services, and access to coaching for business owners, and Sales and Marketing professionals, who want to increase their sales, their market share and their profitability based on the book "The Lead Generation Paradigm" - to which this site is an adjunct.

It is highly recommended that you read the book, watch the videos, or listen to the podcast before trying to use any of the tools on this site, as they probably won't make much sense without the context provided by the book.

Trust Me!

Some people can't help themselves. And some people actually believe what they're saying.

Like when your Marketing Director tells you that all you have to do is re-build your Web site, create and publish content, buy some Google AdWords, connect with Decision Makers, and send out several million emails - and the leads will just come flooding in.

Or when your salesperson tells you that all you have to do is get them in the door and they'll be able to close anyone.

But when it doesn't happen, where does that leave you?

Marketing 2.0 - The Crime of the Century

Who among us hasn't heard that "57% of the decision process is completed before a sales person is ever contacted by the prospect"?

And who among us hasn't been told, time and again, that "if you build it, they will come," and then invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in websites, content, blogs, posts, and all manner of digital detritus - none of which will anyone ever see, read or respond to?

And who among us hasn't read about the historically high failure rate of new businesses, upwards of 70% of PE-funded companies in 2021?

You may not want to hear it but, for most businesses, Marketing 2.0 is a scam. It's a paradigm designed to separate business owners and investors from their money, and put it in the pockets of the platforms, the solution providers, and the so-called Marketing professionals hired to manage them - who then move on to their next gig when it all goes south.

Why else would turnover among Marketing professionals be nearly 40% per year?

But, hey, at least you got a great Web site out of it.

The End of the Universe

The comedian Lewis Black tells a joke about the time he saw a Starbucks, in a Houston-area shopping center, and it was right across the parking lot from another Starbucks.

He declared that this was the end of the universe - where parallel lines converge. And the only people who don't see the problem have Alzheimers.

Now we have a major social media platform announcing that it had discovered hundreds of fake accounts, with many connecting to other fake accounts on the site.

We have to wonder, are the people who are managing these accounts working from a Starbucks in Houston?

Doing Things Right vs Doing the Right Things

After you drank a full pitcher of Marketing 2.0 Kool-Aid, and did everything the experts told you to do, you're ready for the sales to start rolling in.

And yet you're not getting the results you need.

What's going on???

The sad fact is that virtually the entire Marketing 2.0 approach is a scam. It's a game you can't win.

It's a misdirection designed to make it look easy, to get you to waste your time, and to spend your money, and then move on when the money runs out.

At least you can comfort yourself knowing that it's not you; it's them.

The New Marketing Matrix

As anyone who studied Marketing in college has learned, Ansoff's Marketing Matrix describes the different strategies for growth, depending on whether the products and markets are old or new.

But the world has changed.

And we now have a New Marketing Matrix:

Obsolescence

Today, if you try to sell your old products into your old markets, you quickly find that your product is obsolete - displaced by faster, better and cheaper competitors.

Your best strategy is to appeal to nostalgia.

Irrelevance

If you try to sell your old product into a new market, you quickly find out that your product is irrelevant.

Your best strategy is to beg for an appointment.

Commoditization

If you try to sell your new product into an old market, you quickly find that the cost-of-change is too high.

Your best strategy is to lower your price.

Scamification

If you try to sell your new product into a new market, you quickly find that Google and the other platforms are running a scam.

Your best strategy is to wait until your funding runs out, and then get a new job.

Why Are MQLs and SQLs Even a Thing?

As the digital marketing train wreck grew over the last few years, it became more and more obvious that, for most companies, the investment was wasted. Most programs just produced junk leads.

So what did they do? They did what any good marketer would do:

They re-branded their junk as a "Marketing Qualified Lead".

Get it through your heads people: There is no such thing as a Marketing Qualified Lead. If Sales doesn't want it, it's junk.

With that out of the way, we can now talk about what you ought to be doing, and how to do it.

Buyer Liar

By now, everyone has heard about the so-called "study" proving that 57% of the buyer's decision is made before they ever engage with a sales rep.

The statistic has been used to justify spending billions of dollars on Inbound Marketing.

But did you know it's completely bogus?

It turns out that they never actually did a study - which I found out by talking to a secretary at the originating company. It was a made-up number from a casual conversation. But they threw it in their pitch deck, and it eventually went viral. And here we are.

But here's how you know it's nonsense:

If it were true, how would anyone ever sell something where the buyer hadn't previously been aware of their need????

Putting the Cart Before the Horse

Deciding on what promotional tactics to use before you've really worked out an effective marketing strategy is one of the leading causes of business failure.

We see it all the time: A business has a great idea for a new product or service. They invest in building it. And then they put together - often with the help of a so-called "marketing expert" - a plan to promote it.

And then it fails to get traction.

What happened?

Companies often become enamored with the latest-and-greatest marketing tool or technique. When they combine that with their enthusiasm for their product, they become blinded to the real challenges of the market: How to break through the clutter and get people's attention, how to stimulate their interest, and how to get prospects to actually want to talk to you. It's a recipe for disaster.

One thing is clear: A good marketing strategy isn't just a bunch of marketing tactics strung together. Developing the strategy comes first, and it often requires doing market research, and classic market planning. But it's a whole separate exercise. And it's often the critical step on the path to success.