I don’t know about you but I’m getting bored of all the bad news over the years. COVID this, cost of living that, and now a recession. It’s been a tough couple of years for the UK economy, and it doesn’t look like it will end any time soon.
This is now the third recession I’ve worked through as a Managing Director, and I’ve constantly been asked “Is Lead Generation worth it in a recession?”
Many B2B organisations might be skeptical to commit funds to a Lead Generation campaign as financial pressures are increasing. The reality is, there is no better time to do it.
So B2B Lead Generation is not only relevant during a recession it is crucial.
However, it can a lot harder to generate a return on your Lead Generation during a recession. Below are my three key areas to focus on over the next six months to make your Lead Generation even more effective – regardless of what the economy does.
3 things every business should be achieving
Focus on what works
In a recession, your marketing needs to work smarter not harder.
Keep your marketing consistent and relevant, it’s important to be using your marketing campaigns to not only sell to new clients but analyse old campaigns to understand and recreate past success.
Monitor what your first contact was with a successful customer, how did their journey progress from that first touchpoint, understand how this was different to other methodologies used. All of these aspects will help identify where your success comes from.
Once you’ve found out where your success is coming from, you need to adapt this process to fit all other channels. It could be a certain message, call-to-action, offering or method of capture. Whatever it may be, utilising it across your different campaigns will improve your chances of success and develop a better understanding of techniques and processes.
You cannot underestimate what you can learn from your internal research - identifying opportunities to reframe your services, and processes to meet your market’s needs and drive your future growth.
Be very targeted
Now is the time to get a better understanding of your current clients. Where do they sit in their respective markets, did they all have similar pains before working with you. Getting this closer understanding of your clients allows you to sharpen your targeting, prioritisng prospects in similar situations where you have a track record of success.
This kind of targeting is always useful, but in a recession we need to be efficient. We need to know what our sweet spots are and where we’re going to find our quick wins.
You need to understand that your customer's situation is going to fluctuate constantly throughout a recession. Drivers and pains will change daily, the information they absorb and interact with will change with their situation and finally, the goals they want to achieve will move in line with economic turbulence. As an organisation you need to make sure you’re aware of these changes otherwise your outreach is at risk of falling flat.
It cannot be stressed enough that information gathering is crucial to devising an effective communication strategy.
Your sales pipeline is about to become crucial for your organisation. Deals that were about to close now may not, so we need to be prepared. By properly nurturing and managing leads in your pipeline you have a far greater chance at closing and winning deals going into a recession.
MQLs are the backbone of any sales pipeline and by nurturing marketing-qualified leads properly you can ensure more opportunities driving efficiency to maximise your ROI.
Sales teams will rightly focus most of their effort on winning immediate business in these challenging times, but I cannot stress the importance that they maintain control of all leads in your pipeline as well. If not, your pipe could dry up, at the worst possible time.
Around 60% of buyers will go with the first company that contacts them when they’re ready to buy because a certain degree of confidence is built by the active response to their interest. Therefore it’s important to align your sales and marketing processes maximizing marketing efforts and opportunities with quick contact.
Acting efficiently and following up on MQLs, means you can take full advantage of all your marketing efforts and opportunities, making sure you’re not wasting time and resources, especially when times are tough, and you want to squeeze the most out of what you already have.
