“We just need more leads.”
It's a familiar response when sales are disappointing, growth has stalled or a business isn't achieving the results it expected. Marketing is often one of the first things to come under scrutiny, with the assumption that generating more enquiries will somehow solve the problem.
And sometimes it will. But before increasing the marketing budget, launching another campaign or changing agencies, isn't it worth asking whether a shortage of leads is actually the problem?
Because more leads don't automatically mean more business.
Are you solving the right problem?
Imagine a business that's investing in marketing and generating a reasonable number of enquiries, but sales are still falling short of expectations.
The immediate reaction might be to increase advertising or try a different campaign. Yet a closer look could reveal that enquiries aren't being followed up promptly, quotations are taking too long or the sales team is struggling to convert the opportunities already coming through.
More enquiries might simply mean more missed opportunities.
Then there's the question of whether the enquiries are coming from the right people in the first place. A campaign can generate impressive numbers, but if it predominantly attracts price-sensitive prospects who were never likely to become profitable customers, what has it really achieved?
On paper, the marketing might appear successful. Commercially, the results could tell a very different story.
Customer retention is another area that businesses can overlook. Many don't have a particularly clear picture of how many customers they're losing, why they're leaving or how much revenue is disappearing as a result.
When sales slow, the instinct is often to look for new customers rather than investigate what's happening to existing ones. But if customers are quietly drifting away because of service problems, changing requirements or better alternatives elsewhere, more lead generation may simply mean working harder to replace the business that's being lost.
And what about the business itself? Perhaps it doesn't have the capacity to fulfil additional orders, its pricing is no longer competitive or its processes make it unnecessarily difficult for customers to buy.
Marketing can help attract interest and generate demand, but it can't always compensate for what happens once that interest has been created.
Why does marketing get the blame?
Perhaps part of the problem is that marketing is relatively visible.
We can see the advertising, social media posts, websites, email campaigns and other activity. We know what we're spending, and when the results aren't what we hoped for, it's tempting to conclude that something needs to change.
Commissioning a new campaign or appointing a different agency feels proactive. There's a plan, a budget and something tangible to show for the decision.
But examining what happens elsewhere in the business can be more complicated, particularly if it means questioning established processes, responsibilities or decisions.
It's not always comfortable to discover that the problem lies in the way enquiries are handled, the service customers receive or the business's ability to deliver what it promises.
And it's certainly easier to ask marketing to generate another hundred leads than to confront the possibility that the business isn't making the most of the opportunities it already has.
Of course, marketing may genuinely be underperforming. The business could be targeting the wrong audience, communicating ineffectively or investing in activity that isn't producing worthwhile results. Those are legitimate reasons to review what's being done and make changes.
But they shouldn't be the automatic conclusion whenever commercial performance disappoints.
Before you spend more, look more closely
When sales aren't meeting expectations, the temptation to take action is understandable. But generating more enquiries, commissioning another campaign or changing agencies won't necessarily address what's going wrong.
Perhaps the business needs better marketing. Perhaps it needs to improve its sales processes, understand why customers are leaving or address operational problems. Quite possibly, several things need attention.
Marketing should be accountable for its contribution to business performance, but it shouldn't automatically be held responsible for every disappointing commercial result.
Because spending more on marketing won't necessarily solve the problem when marketing isn't the only problem.
