The enigma of the unqualified lead

A few years back, we were working with a small company that, whilst having had a great reputation for quality products, it had been such a long time since they had done any marketing at all that the sales figures were spiralling downward. Clearly not an ideal situation for them, so they enlisted our help. Every review we secured, press release printed, advertisement placed, tweet posted all seemed to yield no response whatsoever and quite typically for a smallish business who was stumping up each month, decided no longer to retain us. Marketing, the proprietor said, doesn’t work. Then he looked at his sales figures, and reappointed us again shortly afterwards.

This, I’m afraid, is the nature of the beast; human nature means, generally, once we have decided to buy something, we seldom go to the vendor saying that we’d seen his advertisement on the telly at half time during Corry, and were so impressed with his offering, felt compelled to buy the product. As marketers, we wish it were the case, but it most certainly isn’t.

Marketing does work, but in the absence of any tangible evidence, some business people find it hard to justify, and we understand that. But, dear reader, let me put this to you. Be completely honest with yourself: what you drive, where you shop, what you eat, where you take your holidays, what you wear and, for Pete’s sake, what you smell like, are all in large part based on decisions you made in response to marketing. So to say that marketing doesn’t work is clearly a fallacy; it just has to be done right.