One Deadly Lead Generation Myth Killing Your Business Right Now

Many businesses lose dozens, hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of leads every month due to a myth that keeps on killing profits one lead at a time.

The myth stems from the success of pay-per-click advertising, especially in the early days where it was easy to make a fortune with a simple website plastered with Adsense ads.

But the times are changing, quality is becoming more important than ever. Yet, many businesses are focusing on quantity rather than quality when it comes to leads. They lose money, and they wonder why.

So what is that one deadly lead generation myth killing your business right now?

More traffic means more leads

Ah, no. Let’s kill the myth once and for all. Just because you generate more traffic does not mean that you will automatically get more leads. You would think that, but you can’t bake an apple pie with just apples, no sir. You have a whole slew of ingredients that require mixing and cutting to become that wonderful piece of an apple pie that graces the inside of my stomach with its presence.

Throwing more apples at a pan will give you a pan with more apples, not an apple pie.

Throwing more unqualified traffic at your website will result in wasted time and resources, with no leads to show for.

For some reason, this myth is not going away. Partly because businesses are focusing on the wrong metrics, vanity metrics, that have nothing to do with their business.

More traffic is good for businesses that rely on advertising and sponsorships, like blogs and other online media websites. But businesses that rely on the sale of goods and services should not focus primarily on website traffic.

Sure, you might get 10k visitors per month to your website. But who gives a rats ass if you’re converting 100 visitors to leads, and 10 leads to paying customers. Really?

That’s a 1% website conversion rate (100/10k*100), and a 0.1% sales conversion rate (10/10k*100).

Try to sustain a profitable business on 0.1% conversion. That’s just plain wrong.

Now imagine, you throw more traffic and hit 30k visitors, and double your leads to 200, and miraculously double your sales to 20. We’re looking at a 0.67% lead conversion and a 0.067% sales conversion rate. You actually dropped your sales conversion rate, which is really what is important since leads don’t pay you, customers pay you.

What if your traffic dropped but the quality of your traffic increased? The visitors would be more qualified and ready to buy from you. What would that scenario look like?

5k visitors a month, 750 leads, and 500 sales. Do the math.

15% lead conversion rate. 10% sales conversion. OMG. But the traffic dropped?

It sure did. If you get quality traffic, instead of aiming for quantity, you will increase the quality and quantity of leads, successfully giving your sales team leads that are hanging down the sales cliff, no bulldozing necessary.

It’s VERY possible to increase lead quality.

Don’t waste money on increasing traffic, instead invest that money into valuable content relevant to YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMERS.

It comes back to the basics.

1. Know your target market.
2. Focus on quality, valuable content – blog posts and ebooks/white papers.

When you know your customer, you’ll know what content to create. This targeted, quality content is your filter for wasteful visitors and targeted leads. When a visitor follows a link to read your blog post or download an ebook, they pre-qualify themselves without doing much work for you. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll get waste here and there, but quality leads will outweigh occasional waste.

Here’s what you should do. Stop watching Google Analytics, or whatever analytics you use. Instead, begin creating customer profiles with likes and dislikes, what they are looking for, what their hobbies might be, what their jobs are, what their income is, what is the size of their family, do they have a secretary or do they have a dog or cat.

It’s like developing a character for a movie or a novel. Create several different characters to play in your business development and sales sitcom. Use those characters to begin crafting content that they need and want, content that helps them understand something, content that helps facilitate buying decisions, content that inspires them to become your brand ambassador, content that you’re proud to associate with your brand.

Don’t try to pass a turd for a chocolate cake, not that many people are that stupid. Make your mother proud and bake a real Dutch chocolate cake that customers will keep coming back for more.

Let’s see how many will come back for a turd.

You might disagree with me, but that’s your choice – I do ask you to leave a comment and initiate a dialog below, so we can talk about how you’re right and I’m wrong.