As marketers we know generating leads is a big component indicating success. When it all comes down to it, the content we create is to grow an audience of potential customers. We love seeing the numbers of leads grow. We set goals and aim high. Bosses love seeing a 100x growth on lead count. And why wouldn’t they? More leads means more potential sales.
Or does it? Lead quantity is a valuable metric to track and work towards achieving, but it’s not the only measurement for lead analysis. Where lead quantity ensures you are gaining a reading audience, lead quality is ensuring those leads are potential customers. You want leads who have a high potential of buying from you. Flip the switch and change your marketing focus from high quantity to generating high quality leads. This will mean a shift from a wealth of dedicated readers to dedicated customers.
Setting goals around qualified leads (think sales leads) should be an important part of your marketing strategy. The more you move away from trying to produce volume only and balance that with lead quality, the more successful your marketing program will be. Having 10000 leads is exciting, but if none of them are going to buy from you you’ll be going down the road of heartache and low business growth.
Remember that buyer persona research you did a while back? This is where lead quality comes into play. Writing content that supports the needs and interests of your buyer personas attracts these quality leads and reflects in your marketing success. The content you create are for the readers that have downloaded your content and are in a buying mindset. It’s less of a numbers game when you are gearing your marketing towards persona dedicated educational content. You're talking about real challenges your potential customers are having that you can actually solve.
Don’t get me wrong, setting lead quantity goals is important and needs to be part of your marketing strategy. You can’t hope to just write the perfect piece of content that will land a million dollar deal of one customer, that’s too lofty (and too risky). But having content that supports lead growth is only part of the game and should not be the only metric defining success. Focus your marketing efforts on qualified leads with educational content over high quantity leads with paid media. This provides balance to your program, supports business growth, and generate sales.