This Might Be The Best Way to Fix Your Lead Generation

I’ve spoken with hundreds of owners and CEOs of small businesses over the years and the #1 pain point for many is lead generation.

Not that they can’t generate leads, it’s just a constant battle to keep the flow going.

That’s why I created an approach called “channel mastery” that will help you achieve more with the marketing resources you have and generate a better flow of leads.

Channel mastery allows business owners to find their primary marketing channel and go to work on mastering that channel. But that doesn’t mean identifying your marketing channel is easy.

3 Steps to Fix Your Lead Generation

Step #1: Determine Your Primary Marketing Channel

Trying to implement and execute every new marketing channel leads to frustration and wasted resources — particularly when many of marketing channels (SEO, social media, email newsletters, blogging, etc.) are a long-term play for achieving the immediate needs of most small businesses.

A far better approach is to set a goal of finding your primary marketing channel and go to work on mastering that channel.

One of my favorite ways to determine the primary marketing channel is to think through your top clients from the past 6–8 months. Simply making a list of your top 10 clients, then asking “how did they find me?” can cut through the confusion quickly!

For example, in working with the CEO of a midsize business, we discovered that they generate a significant portion of their business through sales efforts.

Over the years as this organization gained some traction, they ultimately hit a plateau and wanted to start branching out into other marketing channels in search of more business development and leads.

One of the problems of branching out into other marketing channels is running the risk of destroying the success you’ve already created with your primary channel.

As with this organization they kept at their sales efforts, but was frustrated and scattered trying to figure out how to generate leads with online marketing, content marketing, partnering and advertising.

Step #2: Master Your Primary Marketing Channel

Here’s the reason why:

Branching out into new marketing channels is a good way to scale. . . but it’s not the best way to scale.

• What if, instead of diving into content marketing, creating random content you looked at content marketing as a way to make your sales efforts more effective?
• What if you found places your sales team could contribute and share articles and content?
• What if your sales team jumped into the partnering channel with existing clients and vendors?
• What if your top sales rep joined the speaking circuit locally?

The point is that instead of looking ways to branch into more new marketing channels, find ways to master your primary marketing channel (what already works) with new channels.

This strategy of integration allows you to see immediate results in something that is already a proven winner.

I believe this shift in thinking has the power to change the current approach so prevalent today in business circles.

Step #3: Optimize For Scale

When you adopt a channel mastery approach, you’ll spend far less time trying to figure new channels and opportunities out and far more time working in ways to support your unique goals and objectives.

When it comes to scaling — less is much more.

Eventually, you’ll start to test and hypothesize inside of new marketing channels in ways that are focused on sales.

You’ll begin to obsess not over new shiny objects, but on things like conversion rates and sales.

This is a call to find your primary marketing channel, perfect your scaling efforts there, and then simply experiment with ways to master that success through the integration of other channels.