Willow here.

Firstly – can I say – the rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! I’m back in the chair and raring to go. Many thanks to all of you who sent their best wishes during my recent illness. The time away did give me the opportunity to pause, and document my thoughts on humanity and the meaning of life in general – I will be dispatching these thoughts in an upcoming version of Willow’s Words of Wisdom.

All of that said – we’re at the pointy end of the quarter and no doubt, depending on how we’re travelling against budget we’ll be reflecting on what we could be doing better on the sales and marketing fronts.

To help us here at Aria better understand how we can support you – and so you can see how your peers (competitors?) are travelling – we recently sent out a brief survey to understand your key sales and marketing challenges.

We’ll be sending out weekly blog posts, to discuss why we think each challenge is raising its head, and collectively what we can do about it.

In this installment, I’d like to present and comment on what you’ve all told us is your TOP marketing challenge:

Challenge #1 – Providing quality leads to Sales

Well – what a surprise – the perennial “getting more leads” comes in at #1 – well ahead of all other challenges!

I note that the second least challenge is finding good marketing staff – yet lead generation remains a problem.

Why is this the case?

In the modern digital and social world, it has never been easier or indeed cheaper to create leads.  Switched on small businesses can now take on the corporates – and win!

In my (less than!) humble opinion, I suspect the issues are:

1. We don’t know what we don’t know about lead generation in the modern age. Most websites are glorified brochures not attracting buyers, and we throw content out into the market without a strategy or plan.
2. We run campaigns and events, but don’t effectively follow-up. We leave leads on the table, begging to be nurtured.
3. We try and find people ready to buy now – rather than engaging with buyers early on their buying journey and nurturing them. They’ll buy when they’re ready – we need to make sure they can find us.
4. Some of us have been previously burned by “bad marketing!” I share your pain.  But “good marketing” does work.
5. We don’t spend the right amount on marketing. I defer to our marketing partner Carpe Diem Consulting, and urge you to review their white paper that summarises the research around how much a business should be spending on marketing.

I could go on, but the important thing is that Aria is here to help.  At the end of the next section is a link where you can register to receive a complimentary consultation from Aria experts on how you can generate quality leads that will close.

Coming up

In the next edition, we’ll review Challenge #2 – and I’ll provide my usual commentary.

We really are all in this together – let’s jointly understand and tackle these challenges – I’m anxious for your feedback on how we here at Aria can help.

To this end – if you’d like a complimentary consultation to come up with a concrete action plan to improve your marketing efforts – just enter your details here.