Are you throwing away half of the money you spend on marketing? Probably. And, I am not talking about leads that go to sales only to find their way into a black hole. That happens, but is a problem for another time. What I am talking about is wasted spending on marketing programs that can be fixed.

Here are some analogous examples:

• Go to the store, by a dozen donuts, eat six of them and throw the rest away.
• Pay to enjoy a movie, watch the first half of it, and then walk out of the theater.
• Buy a 3,000 square foot house, then furnish and live in 1,500 square feet.

The problem is that much of, if not most, marketing dollars are spent on projects that are one and done. You call out to the prospect universe, get a 5% response rate, send the leads to sales and ignore the value of all of the other outcomes that marketing event generated.

The following is a simplistic example of what I mean:

Traditional Marketing Program

Optimized Marketing Program

See below for disposition key*

A complete year (60,000 dispositions or completed company contact) resulted in the following outcomes:

*Key (note that it does not add to 100% due to a small percent of “Bad” and “Other” disposition types):

• Pipeline – Specific, scheduled next step for PointClear
• Nurture – Qualified company, decision-maker or strong decision influencer reached, not immediate interest
• Not Qualified – Wrong size, wrong vertical, subsidiary (non-decision-making location)
• No Response – Touch cycle (for example, ten touches over ten days) exhausted without a conversation

Pipeline, Nurture, Not Qualified and No Response outcomes are valuable, so each and every touch is valuable:

30% of the leads you generate should be as the result of an email or call back from a prospect. So, it’s important to carefully create, deliver and track the responses to every voicemail and email delivered.

A non-lead outcome is important because you have weeded out the Not Qualified suspects (improving your pool of prospects by 20% plus) and you have identified Pipeline and Nurture accounts for future contact. Plus, after re-segmenting and tailoring your messaging to No Response suspects, you will find the lead response rates on future follow-up to be substantially higher than the next cold name.

This is based on what you learned from results of the first round of activity and applying segmentation to the No Response names. It's also based on the environment information you picked up on the first cycle of contact that will help customize future contact cycles.

About the Author

Dan McDade is President and CEO of PointClear, LLC, a prospect development firm that helps B2B companies drive revenue by nurturing leads, engaging contacts and developing prospects until they're ready to purchase.

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