Your Marketing Team Probably Doesn't Have a Lead Problem

"We need more leads."

It's probably one of the most common requests marketing teams hear from sales. The pipeline is looking light, there aren't enough opportunities coming through and marketing is asked to increase lead generation.

So the usual things start happening. More campaigns, more paid media, more content, more webinars and bigger targets for the marketing team.

Sometimes that's exactly what you need. If there aren't enough potential customers coming into the business, you need to fix that.

But I've seen plenty of companies where the number of leads isn't really the problem. They're getting website traffic, people are downloading content, enquiries are coming in and sales are booking meetings. The problem is that too many of those people disappear somewhere along the way.

That's when I'd start looking at what happens after someone shows an interest in the company.

Buyers are doing a lot of the research themselves

The way people research B2B companies has changed. Most buyers don't need to speak to a salesperson just to find out what a company does.

They can look at your website, compare competitors, read reviews, check your LinkedIn and ask people they know for recommendations. They can spend quite a lot of time doing this before they ever fill in a form.

By the time someone contacts you, they may already have a pretty good idea of what you do. They may also have decided that you're not right for them.

That's why the website matters so much.

A lot of B2B websites are good at talking about the company. There are pages about the team's experience, company values, its approach and all the things that make it different.

What can be harder to find is the information a potential customer actually needs.

How does the product work?

Who is it designed for?

What does implementation involve?

How long does it take?

What kind of results have other customers seen?

What happens once you sign?

These are the things people are trying to work out while they're researching you.

If they can't find the answers, they'll probably look somewhere else.

Your sales team can tell you where the gaps are

If you're struggling to come up with useful content, I'd spend less time sitting around trying to think of ideas and more time talking to sales.

Ask them what comes up on calls.

What do prospects keep asking about? What takes the most explaining? Which objections come up repeatedly? Where do deals tend to slow down?

You'll usually get some very obvious answers.

If sales is explaining the implementation process on nearly every call, your website could probably do a better job of explaining it.

If prospects keep asking how you compare with a particular competitor, that's something worth addressing publicly.

If people aren't sure whether your product is suitable for their business, show them the types of companies you work with and give some real examples.

That doesn't mean everything needs to become a blog post. A short video might work better. A comparison page might make more sense. Maybe you need a better case study or a more useful product page.

The format isn't really the important part. It's the information.

Don't make people book a call just to get basic answers

This is something I think a lot of B2B companies get wrong.

I understand why businesses want people to book a demo. A sales conversation gives you the chance to understand what someone needs, explain the product properly and work out whether there's a fit.

But if someone is still researching their options, they might not be ready for that.

If the only way to find out how your product works is to speak to sales, some people will simply move on to another company.

The same goes for pricing. I appreciate that not every B2B company can put a fixed price on its website. Some products are too complicated for that.

But there are other ways of being useful. You can explain how pricing works, what affects the cost, what an average project involves or what a customer should expect from the process.

Give people enough information to work out whether they should keep looking at you.

That usually makes the sales conversation better too. You're talking to someone who already understands the basics rather than spending the first part of the call explaining them.

Look beyond the number of leads

Lead numbers are easy to report.

You generated 500 leads this month.

The campaign produced 120 demo requests.

Cost per lead came down by 15%.

All useful numbers, but they don't tell you why people are buying or why they're not.

I'd want to know what happened after those leads came in.

How many became genuine opportunities? How many made it through to a proposal? Where did people stop responding? What questions were they asking before they disappeared? How many chose a competitor?

Those answers can tell you a lot about where the problem actually sits.

If 100 people come into your funnel and 80 of them go nowhere, getting another 100 probably isn't the first thing I'd work on.

I'd want to understand the 80.

Maybe the leads weren't qualified in the first place. Maybe the website made the product sound more complicated than it is. Maybe prospects couldn't find enough evidence that you could deliver. Maybe the sales process was too slow.

You won't know until you look at what happened.

Give people something useful to work with

The marketing I find most useful is usually pretty straightforward.

It answers the questions a potential customer is already asking before they get on the phone with sales.

What does this actually do?

Will it work for a business like mine?

What does implementation look like?

How much work will we have to put in?

Has it worked for other companies like ours?

What happens if we decide to go ahead?

None of these questions are particularly exciting. They're just the things people want to know before they spend money.

If your marketing can answer them clearly, you've already made the sales process easier.

And you don't need to answer all of them with a hundred-page guide. Sometimes a good case study, a clear product page or a five-minute video is enough.

So, do you actually need more leads?

Maybe.

But I'd check what's happening to the leads you're already getting first.

Talk to sales. Look at the questions prospects are asking. Go through your website without looking at it as someone who works for the company. Ask a few customers what they wanted to know before they bought from you.

You might find some obvious gaps.

And if you do, fixing those could be more valuable than another campaign designed to put even more people into the same process.

Because if the buying experience isn't working properly, more leads just give you more people going through it.