What Would Happen If Brands Thought Like Lead Generators?

If your company uses a messaging app like Slack then you will understand there are - very broadly speaking - two types of messages. The first type of message you may receive requires an immediate response. “I need this doing now” or “What do you think of this?”

Generally, those type of messages require a real-time reaction.

But there is another type of message which is often used. This type of message is less a question or instruction, but rather an idea jotted in a notepad to be revisited at a later date. If you receive one of these messages you know it doesn’t demand your immediate attention, but you acknowledge it and let the idea sit somewhere in the back of your mind. There is an almost stream of consciousness to this type of Slack messaging, with ideas pouring out to be be picked up at a later point. Oftentimes they are missed. More than often they are noted but taken no further. But occasionally they are very interesting and worth looking at in more depth.

In the latest episode of the B2C Lead Generation Podcast Databowl Head of Marketing Daniel Hopewell revisits one of these messages with the sender, Databowl CEO Simon Delaney. It said the following:

Below are some of the key ideas discussed in the podcast, but be sure to check out the entire show at the bottom of the page.

We probably should edit this for public posting, but sticking with the theme of absolute transparency always, let’s just say it how it is. You messaged saying “Marketing for brands is fucked.” Why? Explain that further.

Simon: Who knows what mind frame I was in at the time… BUT, it was more around lead generation. There are a few points within that.

1. When they’re just generating leads for the sake of it to fill a database rather than actually building a relationship with prospects or driving sales. The problem is when it’s literally just an aim - we want a million leads or a million people’s data in our database.
2. The amount of budget spent on different types of marketing or advertising for brands - programmatic, television, radio. I’m sure a lot of that works and they get different things from it, but I do wonder how much of it is actually wasted. You only have to look at the whole Procter & Gamble thing when they pulled display ads and it made zero difference to their bottom line. And when we were talking with Callum Dudley from Neo Media Group and he was talking about how the budgets for lead gen sometimes, or actually most of the time, come from another area where they’ve either underspent or have got some cost-saving, and you start wondering why. Lead generation is a massive brand awareness channel as well, but that’s all totally free because that’s not really the aim of what you’re trying to do. But the more you can qualify leads, the more information you can give them, and the more transparent you are when they sign up, the more likely the are to engage with you and when you start thinking of it this way - because it also builds your database at the same time - you wonder why brands aren’t putting most of their budget into lead gen.
3. If you start thinking of the Cookie-less future lead generation is an antidote to this, right? Because brands have got to start conversing with people on a 1-1 level, there are other ways to potentially do this, but when you start to think of what the future could look like you want real relationships with real people built on transparency, right? Where does that come from? Lead gen.

What you’re essentially saying is, Brands need to start thinking more about lead gen and thinking like lead generators. What would happen if they did?

So I think brands would piss lead generation if they ran its like lead generators do. They’d just take off. Big time.

Imagine someone like Joe Williams from the first podcast going to work for a big brand. And they said “There’s a million pounds budget, what you going to do with it?” You just know he would smash it, because he’d use the brand. The great thing about a Brand is they have huge brand awareness already and they’ve got all the long tail stuff sorted out, and they if they go for the lead gen side and use the brand at the same time. And knowing what we know about how brand is the biggest multiplier of return on ad spend, of everything. It would just be great.

Wanna dive a little deeper? Check out the entire podcast on Apple, Spotify or Databowl’s YouTube Channel.