The Three Biggest Lead Generation Mistakes Small Businesses Make… Part 2

What Marketing Is SUPPOSED To Do!

First, you MUST understand what marketing is supposed to do. Its purpose is actually three fold...

• Its first job is to capture the attention of your target market.
• Second, it must give them the hope that reading or listening to your marketing will give them enough information to help them make the best decision possible when buying whatever you sell. In other words, train and teach them how to recognize the true value of your product or service... and conclude that you... and you alone... offer the best value versus your competition.
• Marketing’s third job is to lower the risk of taking the next step in the buying process... and if necessary... continue to educate the prospect regarding the value you offer.

Marketing that accomplishes these three objectives will result in your prospects and customers coming to one single conclusion... that they would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you, regardless of price.

It’s estimated that as many as 96% of all small businesses fail within their first 5 years. The main reason for this tremendously high failure rate has to do with the lack of expertise when it comes to generating leads and making the phone ring. Most small businesses don’t know anything about those three things we just discussed that marketing is supposed to do. But there’s also an additional problem to consider.

Most Businesses Use A Tactical Marketing Approach Instead Of A Strategic Approach.

Running an ad in the local newspaper... sending out an email or direct mail letter... airing a radio or TV ad on a local media station are all examples of tactical marketing. Now don’t get me wrong... the newspaper, radio or direct mail can be successful marketing channels... IF your marketing message is powerful and compelling. But that’s the problem... the message is the strategic side of marketing... and yet, it’s the most neglected.

This distinction between strategic and tactical marketing is huge and one you need to be acutely aware of anytime you start talking about generating more leads. Many companies mistakenly assume that when you talk about lead generation, you’re automatically talking about tactical lead generation... placing ads, sending out mailers, joining a networking group, attending tradeshows, implementing a prospect follow up system and so on.

They fail to realize that the strategic side of the coin, what you say in your marketing and how you say it is almost always more important than the marketing medium where you say it. If you fail to make this distinction, then you risk becoming jaded towards certain forms of marketing and advertising that should be a part of your tactical plan, but you eliminate them from consideration because they haven’t worked for you in the past.

When lead generation results are less than optimal, small business owners tend to almost always blame the marketing medium... like the newspaper the ad ran in or the postcards they sent out. They blame the tactical part of the plan... without any regard for how good or how bad the strategic messaging in that marketing piece was. People often say things like, “we tried radio and it doesn’t work for our kind of business,” or “we sent out 50,000 pieces of direct mail and only generated 3 orders. It just doesn’t work.” Just because it didn’t work, don’t assume that it won’t work.

Most Business Owners Don’t Have The Evaluation Skills Or The Know-How

To Judge Whether Poor Marketing Results From Poor Strategy Or

Poor Tactical Execution.

This is where our step-by-step roadmap can generate more leads than your business can handle. For example:

This is where our step-by-step roadmap can generate more leads than your business can handle. For example, most small business owners rely heavily on platitudes in their marketing. They say things like...

we have the lowest prices the best service

we’re family owned and operated we offer convenient hours

and the best value

Look at your own marketing that I asked you about earlier. How many platitudes did you use in your own marketing?

By the way, this is NOT your fault.

Most, if not all small business owners have been conditioned to think this is the proper way to market their businesses... since most advertising follows this same pathetic marketing formula... including the Fortune 500 types.

As human beings, we’re all after just one thing when we buy something... the best deal! Unfortunately, when you use platitudes and jargon throughout your marketing, there’s absolutely no way to tell who is actually offering the best deal. Everyone says they have the lowest prices, the highest quality and the best rates. So who do you believe? There’s only one way to know... and that’s to research every single business that offers what you want to buy. How many of us have the time or patience to do that? So most of us just automatically assume that everyone is pretty much the same, and therefore we default to calling on the business that offers us the lowest price.

When You Can’t Communicate The True Value Your Business Offers, You’re Doomed To Forever Compete On Price

Our conversion equation will change all of that for you forever. It’s going to be the backbone of your strategic marketing plan. It’s the foundation on which everything else we build for you is based. Let me give you a quick overview and then spend some time going through it with you in detail.

Our conversion equation has four main components...

First, we must interrupt your prospect.

We must get your qualified prospect to pay attention to your lead generation marketing. Simple enough to say, but a lot more difficult to pull off in real life unless you understand what you’re about to learn here. The interrupt is done through your headline if your marketing is in print... or it’s the first thing you say if your marketing through radio or TV.

The second component is engage.

Once your prospect is interrupted, it’s critical we give your reader the promise that information is forthcoming that will help the prospect make the best buying decision possible. In other words, it must help facilitate their decision to pick you over anyone else. This is the job of our sub-headline.

The interrupt is our headline that highlights a specific problem that your prospects are looking for a solution to... and the engage is our sub-headline that promises them that you offer a solution to the problem we mentioned in our headline.

The third component we need to include is educate.

Once we’ve interrupted and engaged your prospect, we have to give information that allows them to logically understand how and why you solve the problem they’re facing. This is accomplished by giving detailed, quantifiable, specific and revealing information. This is typically done in the body copy of your ad. When we educate, we need to reveal to your prospects the important and relevant information they need to know when making a good decision, and that your business... and yours alone... provides it to them. The interrupt and engage hit the prospects emotional hot buttons. Educate is the logic they need to justify picking up the phone and calling you.

The fourth and final component of our conversion equation is your offer.

Now that we’ve interrupted your prospect based on problems that are important to them... engaged by a promise of the solution... and they’ve examined the educational information that makes your solution real and believable... the last step we need to take is to give them a low risk way to take the next step in your sales process. We do this by offering a free marketing tool, such as a report, brochure, seminar, audio, video or something that will continue to educate them. Your offer will allow your prospect to feel in control of their final decision to call and buy from you.

So our conversion equation is interrupt, engage, educate and offer and together they equal market domination.

Now here’s the problem. Most marketing today only contains two of these components. They interrupt by throwing something at you that’s either familiar like Tiger Woods... or unusual like a monkey or talking pets. Sometimes they like to use both, as in the case of the E*Trade baby. Then once they grab your attention, they make you some type of offer such as “call now for whatever.” They have left out the engage and the educate, and marketing seldom succeeds when that happens.

In fact, the only time this type of marketing does succeed is when you can afford to run the ad over and over nonstop for an extended period of time. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz... melts in your mouth, not in your hand... and things go better with Coke have literally been rammed down our throats by Fortune 500 types. After hearing these slogans thousands of times, of course we’re going to remember them. But how can a small business owner like you that doesn’t have a billion dollar marketing budget successfully market your business. The answer... you can’t... UNLESS you follow our entire conversion equation.