Where are your leads coming from?

It’s pretty important to practice what you preach….. a fitness coach who is a couch potato, a dentist with poor teeth, a signwriter with an unbranded van – would you take advice from these people? That’s why I spent last weekend updating our sources of leads tracker, since we are always stressing the importance of this activity to our clients!

I was delighted to see that we are still have in place several lead generation pipelines that are delivering new opportunities to my team and I every week. The findings looked like this:

• Website 30%
• Referrals: 24% (thank you everyone!!!!)
• Strategic Alliances: 22%
• Tradeshows: 12%
• Social Media 5%
• Networking 7%

Ok, that’s the top level of information, but what conclusions can we draw and what action should we take? This is an exercise every business owner should be on top of each and every week.

Delve a little deeper

At a top level glance, you might assume that the last three lead sources should be seen as a low priority because of their small contributions. But delve a little deeper and you may be surprised to discover that although the number of leads delivered by tradeshows, for example, was percentage wise lower than say, strategic alliances or our website, the quality of these leads were excellent, with a higher spend by each client that we engaged with in that way. Thus, our marketing budget and calendar for 2011/12 definitely has two tradeshows firmly booked in.

Turning our attention to networking, what’s the big picture here? Yes, it may only account for 7% of total leads in a 12 month period, but two new clients we met through a commitment to networking have since turned into Referrers for us….

Our website is still our primary source of leads and we can exert significant influence over the success of this marketing tool. I mentioned in our latest newsletter that the Google Page Rank Tool has mapped our growth from a two to a five and that’s a direct result of implementing consistent SEO principles including:

• Ensuring we have a unique page description for every page of our site
• Adding fresh, optimised content to the site each week through our blog (usually! Sometimes the weeks are a little hectic :-)
• Listing our site on all major online directories (paid and unpaid) to connect incoming links to our site

And we recently embarked on our first Google Adwords campaign (as Pete, our resident Google Expert is a new addition to our Ideas Team) and are already seeing a steady increase in our visits through tracking in Google Analytics. Even though our site is performing pretty well, we are also investing in a new updated design with new client benefits that we’ll be unveiling in the next coming months as we do we believe all brands should evolve over time…

But enough about us, what can you do with this information?

1. Be rigorous about tracking your lead sources – ask every single prospect and client how they heard about you and record this information.
2. Follow this through by tracking your conversion rates and the value of the business each client generates. Also note the reasons why a sale did not eventuate – you may uncover valuable information that leads you to change your approaches, your pricing model or other aspects of your business.
3. Ensure you examine your lead generation pipelines – a successful business needs 4-6 unique avenues to bring new business to your door. It’s dangerous to rely on just one or two. If they become clogged for any reason, you may be left struggling for new business leads.

And of course, don’t forget the opportunities within your own existing client base.

• Create a simple matrix with key clients down one side and your service mix down the other. Are there any clients who are not aware of some of your services?  This simple exercise will reveal the gaps that you can capitalise on with cross service selling.
• And finally, don’t forget to actively request referrals! Many business owners assume that their clients know they are keen for referrals, but this isn’t always the case… best to let them know and then thank them profusely when they do refer!