Cut Marketing Costs Part 2

2. Make fewer mistakes

Another way to say this is: turn to people who know what they're doing.
Marketing - which has never been exactly simple - has changed a lot in the past few years. Customers and prospects are in charge now, and they're looking for you online. If you're not on the internet, you're not in the game.

While I admire business owners who try to figure marketing out for themselves, it wastes a lot of time and it leads to mistakes that could be avoided with some experience.
You may not need a proven marketing pro on staff, but if you don't have one somewhere on your team you're probably wasting money.

3. Nurture what you've got

Successful lead generation programs bring in people in different stages of the buying process. Some are ready to commit more to you than others are. Some are ready to talk to a sales person and some aren't.

Think of any lead generation activity you've ever done: search marketing, email, advertising, telemarketing, networking, trade shows - it doesn't matter. Were all of the people who responded ready to schedule a two-hour demo of your product? Of course not.
But that doesn't make those people any less likely to buy from you in the future as long as you maintain a relationship with them.

If you're one of those businesses that has a bunch of inactive prospects sitting in a database (or on your desk), you may be better off nurturing those people than paying to find new ones. And nurturing leads can be a lot less expensive than generating them in the first place.