Attract Better Leads: What You're Doing Wrong and How to Fix It [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 45]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

Marcus Sheridan
0:00:00
Alex, the one thing that you can do right now to generate immediate leads that nobody is doing is...

Alex Winter
0:00:14
Welcome back to Endless Customers. My name is Alex Winter and today we are joined by

Alex Winter
0:00:17
the one and only Marcus Sheridan, author, keynote speaker, partner here at Impact. Welcome back to the show.

Marcus Sheridan
0:00:27
All right, dude. Ready for this.

Alex Winter
0:00:29
Ready. We have something really important to talk about today. We're talking about leads, but specifically we're talking about if your leads have been down. So if you've been trying to drum up that leads funnel,

Alex Winter
0:00:39
get more leads in, get better potential customers, but it's not working, what the heck should businesses do? And what happens in those situations to try to turn the needle in the other direction

Marcus Sheridan
0:00:50
Yeah

Marcus Sheridan
0:00:50
Let me say that there's a lot of companies that are down right now a lot of industries that are down right now Just across the board right the good thing about that is there's some pain and pain usually means innovation It usually means we're doing things that otherwise we might not be doing and you know with with My job my career I get to go around to these different industries and I get to speak to these different companies. I'm seeing what's going on. And let me give you some examples of just some things that I know are working in certain

Marcus Sheridan
0:01:23
industries and they very well could work in yours too. And as you're listening to this, be just really careful not to immediately say, that won't work in our space because that's easy to do and it's also very lazy. The great ones are always saying, how could I apply this principle to you know to me into my business? Yeah, so let me give you a perfect case in point we recently had a

Marcus Sheridan
0:01:45
concrete pool builder in Arizona who is historically a really large company and they they Came to us and they said hey industries down here in Arizona we want to get more leads and we like they ask you answer, but we need more leads like right now because we've got this little window where we sell a ton of pools each year. It's like you know window of like

Alex Winter
0:02:13
busyness. That is how it works in the swimming pool space. That's an interesting point too because they ask you answer does take a little time to get traction. That's right. And it's worth the investment, but if you need to make moves right now, yeah.

Marcus Sheridan
0:02:26
Well, we gotta be careful though, Alex, because they ask you answer in the producing of content. Yes, that takes time. But we have to remember that they ask you answer goes beyond that to, it's not just what are they asking and what are they thinking, searching, feeling, saying,

Marcus Sheridan
0:02:44
it's like, what's their behavior, right? What do they want to do? So in the case of this company, I was talking with them and I said, so we need to generate these leads like right now. Okay. And looked at their stuff. I'm like, okay, it's obvious to me what you need to do. You need a pricing calculator. And this is just not something that you see in the, in that gunite concrete pool, plaster pool space. You don't

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:09
really see it. You certainly don't see it in Arizona. And so they said, all right, let's send it. Let's just do it. And to make a long story short, this is a really, really wonderful company. I love this company called Shasta Pools. They've got this tremendous pricing calculator that they

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:27
had built. We helped them build this, of course. But they essentially doubled their leads year over year. And that's a time when the industry is down. So like in one month, they doubled their leads. In one month, doubled their leads. Yeah, from, yeah.

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:41
So, you know, last May versus this May, we had twice as many leads. Sales team's super excited. I went and I spoke with them and that's just great to see. I love that, I love this company. I mean, I just believe in them so much.

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:54
But that takes visionary leadership, right? Because in order to get more than you've got, you've got to become more than you are. Totally. So, like, in the context of Shasta, they said, we need to meet the buyers where they are. The behavior is, as a buyer, I would like to be able to build and price my swimming pool to a degree to where I'm able to at least feel like I know if I'm in the game or not.

Marcus Sheridan
0:04:28
So pricing calculators and just self-service tools in general. One of the easiest ways that you as a business right now can generate leads off of your own website and off of the traffic you're getting right now, whether it's paid traffic or whether it's organic traffic, is by pricing tools or self-selection tools as we call them, assessment tools, all these are like self-service where traditionally what would have had to have been done

Marcus Sheridan
0:04:58
by a human interaction can now be done with an interaction that's on your website. It's so stinkin' powerful. It's no different than, like if you went to the Riverpool's website right now, you could take this, essentially it's an assessment tool that allows you to figure out, okay,

Marcus Sheridan
0:05:17
is a vinyl liner, a concrete, or a fiberglass pool the best choice for me? But this doesn't just apply to like swimming pools. Like let's say I was HubSpot. I had a SAS product like HubSpot. So HubSpot's got a few different tiers by which they, you know, offer their solution. Well, they should have a tool on there that helps someone figure out, well, what's the right level of HubSpot for me? Now, they don't have that. They really, really should. Come on, HubSpot. Let's go. And what do they got? They've got what most SaaS companies have, which is like this good, better, best, like visual that shows you here's what are...

Marcus Sheridan
0:05:55
Here are the different features and all that means. It's very, very overwhelming, which is what leads to talking to a salesperson. But a lot of us don't want to talk to a salesperson until we feel like we're not going to make a mistake, until we feel like we're good and ready. This is one of the number one ways right now that you can generate leads and get tremendous returns.

Marcus Sheridan
0:06:22
Almost nobody is doing it. Self-service tools, we built a bunch of them. It's very, very powerful. I actually built one for blue-collar businesses. It's a pricing calculator tool. It's really, really rad. It's the fastest AI-based pricing estimator that you can put on your website in the world right now. You can do it. You can put it on your website in less than 30 minutes.

Marcus Sheridan
0:06:50
Anybody listen to this? And what it does is it's got a bunch of pre-populated industries with questions that you would ask someone to ultimately be able to give them a price for your product or service.

Alex Winter
0:07:02
Sure.

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:03
You can even go in there, if that industry is not pre-populated, you can go in, you can put in your industry, and then it's going to say, okay, so based on AI, right, here's some of the questions that you might ask someone so as to be able to give them a price range, a price estimate.

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:20
And so you can go in, you can customize the questions, you can do all these things, and now all of a sudden, boom, it pops out like this great little tool that you can immediately embed on your site that you start getting leads in 30 minutes. Imagine like getting leads you weren't getting a minute ago

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:35
like within 30 minutes with this brand new tool on your site that visitors love. And they're like, it's amazing somebody's willing to do this for me. Like any company doing this now could use that. It's called priceguide.ai.

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:50
And if you're listening to this too, like I've never showed you this tool, Alex. I don't even know if you like know that I built this tool.

Alex Winter
0:07:56
No, this is the first I've heard of it.

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:57
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I worked with this like development team and everything. So again, it's priceguide.ai. And if you put in a code MARKIS60, you get 60 days for free. I don't even ask you for a credit card.

Marcus Sheridan
0:08:07
Like, you don't give me your credit card information. There's no opt-in. You just build the tool. Like, no hoops, dude. It's the ultimate user experience. That's amazing.

Marcus Sheridan
0:08:17
And for those that want to use it, it's $67 a month.

Alex Winter
0:08:19
Okay.

Marcus Sheridan
0:08:20
Right? And MARKIS60 for the promo code. Yeah, MARKIS60. You get it, like, 60 days, you don't do anything. You just get to play with it. If you like it, you keep using it and you know at $67

Marcus Sheridan
0:08:29
It's like the it's like the most cost-effective lead magnet that you're probably ever gonna have or use in your life as a business And here's the thing with these things like pricing calculators and whatnot estimators, right? Remember it's an estimator It's not necessarily you're not giving them an exact price. This isn't the don't get caught up in that. Yeah. Oh, geez We're gonna be we're gonna be stuck to this and burden to it. We're not signing on the bottom line. You're not putting yourself in the corner. So you can be the first in your industry to do this.

Marcus Sheridan
0:08:57
The first. For many of the folks that are listening to this right now, that's really, really amazing. So I think that's number one. I mean, that's where you should start and ask yourself, could I have some type of self-service tool on my website? Self-pricing, self-selection, self-assessment, self-configuration, something like that that allows them to figure this out. B2B, B2C,

Marcus Sheridan
0:09:17
this is a really, really huge opportunity for everybody.

Alex Winter
0:09:21
There's beauty in the simplicity of it too. There really is and it's effective, clearly. So it's almost a no-brainer at this point. I don't know why anyone that's owning a business wouldn't even try this or at least experiment with it.

Marcus Sheridan
0:09:31
Yeah, yeah. It's stunning how few just catch the vision of this, but it's going to happen in your industry. And when it happens in your industry like if you're watching this When this happens in your industry You're gonna say oh No, and then you're gonna be in reactive mode Which isn't a good place to be when it comes to sales and marketing okay?

Marcus Sheridan
0:09:51
So that's that's where I would that's where I would start now another thing that people have to understand is Paid advertising still works, and it actually works really well. Like, if you need leads right now, you should be doing some type of paid campaign. You just should. Whether it's on Google, whether it's on social,

Marcus Sheridan
0:10:12
make sure, like, now, you might say, well, we don't have the money for that. Well, if you don't have the money for that, you don't have the money for that. But if you're saying, we're not getting enough leads right now,

Marcus Sheridan
0:10:24
there's few things that are more effective in terms of just like immediacy than turning in on a campaign, testing that campaign, and then, of course, optimizing it, right, testing it, optimizing it, and then watching the conversions come in. Once again, at Impact, we've got a team that does this.

Marcus Sheridan
0:10:45
If you look at content promotion and distribution, like the idea that we should just wait for Google or AI or our own means to distribute it, it doesn't always pay the bills. After all these years, Riverpool still does pay. Why? Because we track it, we know how much revenue it generates, and it makes way more money than it loses.

Marcus Sheridan
0:11:11
So why would I stop doing that? that. So I can do they ask you answer, I can do paid as well, and that generates revenue. So we've got, you know, we've got that in the bag, we do that. It works. It works.

Alex Winter
0:11:24
How often do you find business owners or businesses that are spending money on like maybe traditional advertising techniques and are like, we don't have the money to do paid and in reality, they do and they probably need to make a shift towards more effective ways of leveraging their

Marcus Sheridan
0:11:36
their budget. This is actually very surprising to a lot of folks. Let me give an example. I was speaking at an event that was home exterior refinishers, essentially painters but also like high-end coating companies. Okay, cool. The amount of people that were doing TV in that room was disturbing. It was a bunch of people doing TV and not low budgets. I mean a lot. Okay. That to me is a big time tragedy. That's one thing that, you know,

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:06
that form of traditional TV, I would not be rolling with that right now if I was you. But I'll tell you what does work in home improvement. Direct mail. Direct mail right now can still slay for you. No kidding.

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:21
Direct mail today oftentimes costs less than it did 10 years ago, which is hard to believe, but it was really, really competitive. Like they had a lot of leverage 10, 15 years ago.

Alex Winter
0:12:32
It was very saturated 10, 15 years ago.

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:33
Yeah, it was one of those things, a lot of these companies hadn't figured out internet marketing yet. There wasn't a lot of competition. Everything was outbound marketing. And so it was a lot cheaper per se than radio or TV

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:44
or the yellow pages. So a lot of people wanted to do direct mail. It did work, but it was just way, way expensive. Now it's actually less. You get even less than you spent, you know, 15, 20 years ago, but you can get really great returns because the other side to this is mailboxes are actually pretty empty today. People don't get much mail anymore, all right, for the most part, unless it's an Amazon package,

Marcus Sheridan
0:13:05
right? And so because of that, we actually tend to look at our mail, whereas before it's like we're just, you know, throwing it to the side. So I've seen direct mail really, really effective when it comes to anything to do with home improvement. That's good, or just some of these general B2C things, like car washes, things like that. I mean, those things are effective and they work.

Marcus Sheridan
0:13:27
Sorry, I'm just talking about things that you can do right now, right? Because there's a lot of things that you can do that plant the seed that you nourish and eventually you have crops. But sometimes you just need to go to the grocery store

Marcus Sheridan
0:13:41
and buy yourself some food. You know what I'm saying? I hear that, yes. And that means we're either gonna do something like a self-service tool, which can be immediate. We might do paid, which can be immediate.

Marcus Sheridan
0:13:53
We might do outbound, but smart outbound, which can be immediate. All these things, they can produce immediate fruit for those that are just like, we need, we've got this window and we've got to take advantage of this window.

Alex Winter
0:14:05
Sure.

Alex Winter
0:14:06
Sure, and it makes sense too for me on the scale of when you're implementing the ask your answer and when we're talking about endless customers because you can have short-term wins with this strategy while also leveraging a longer-term strategy to really change your content and your marketing and unifying your sales and all that. So that's a really cool point that I think a lot of business owners can entertain. Another question that I have for you that I think is top of mind

Alex Winter
0:14:26
When we talk about potential clients How do we get better leads and better clients are more qualified ones that are ready to buy and how do we build trust so that? The leads that we're getting not only the quantity is more but they're better leads easier to convert So, how do I get better leads?

Marcus Sheridan
0:14:41
Well, I can tell you and I'm gonna just like look in your eyes here Leads are as good or as bad as the messaging that brought them there. If your messaging stinks, guess what? You've probably got a lead quality problem. And if you've got great messaging,

Marcus Sheridan
0:15:00
that's gonna coincide nicely with that lead quality. That's how it works. I will have two different companies in the same industry tell me two totally different stories. Our web leads, not very good. Our web leads, they're the best leads we get.

Marcus Sheridan
0:15:17
What's the difference? Same industry. Well, one of them has really, really poor messaging. Your messaging stinks, so do your leads. The other one is really explicit with their messaging, right? I mean, they just do a great job. Maybe they have things like, you know, cost and price information on their website.

Marcus Sheridan
0:15:36
So the person has a sense for what they're getting themselves into. Let's use an example, right? If you're doing they ask you answer and you're tapped into the questions your buyers are asking, right? The fears, the worries, the issues, the concerns, all those things. And then you're very explicit with addressing those well on your website.

Marcus Sheridan
0:15:59
I can tell you right now your lead quality goes up every single time. So that's the game. We consistently see leads can go up and lead quality goes up for companies that do they ask you answer

Marcus Sheridan
0:16:14
and they get much better with their messaging. That's why too, what we find when people produce like pricing content on their website, they tend to actually get more specific over time, not less specific in what they're willing to say. Why?

Marcus Sheridan
0:16:31
Because the lead quality goes up. And people do appreciate specificity, right? Yes. It's all in the right context of how you say these things. And so this is, you know, this is like, this is very, very key. It's all about, it's all about the messaging that we have.

Marcus Sheridan
0:16:46
I think there's just some other, I got to say this one thing though. Sure. I have a friend recently that he started his own little consulting company and he immediately in like less than a month went from zero to six figures as a consulting company. Wow. Okay. So how does that happen? Well, it happened because he a ton of direct one-to-one outreach with his entire database. He didn't go one to many, he went one to one.

Alex Winter
0:17:20
Made it personal, yeah.

Marcus Sheridan
0:17:21
And then he set up individual calls, had individual conversations, he was really frank, open, honest and explicit and suddenly, you know, he's got a six-figure consulting business as a solopreneur. That's balling right there. It's amazing. Four weeks.

Marcus Sheridan
0:17:37
Four weeks went from zero to six figures. So what I mean by that, that right there is a lost art. Because sometimes we're too scaly with our marketing. And what I mean by that is like, well if I'm not sending to a big list, I'm not doing it. No, it's like there is so much power sometimes in the individual. Reach out to the individual. Tell them exactly the problem that you might be able to solve for them. Let them know, we can chat about this if you feel like you might be experiencing that problem.

Marcus Sheridan
0:18:09
It may or may not be a fit, but here's the problem that I can help you solve right now. If it resonates, boom. You see, but most companies don't do that. Now in the sales world, that might be called like ABM, like account-based marketing. That is something that is not well understood, it's not done by many, but it's one of those things like,

Marcus Sheridan
0:18:29
if you're trying to generate rev right now, and you're looking at it from a marketing perspective, you also gotta look at it from a sales perspective, right? Which is, how can we do this and really have quality conversations? Well, you don't oftentimes

Marcus Sheridan
0:18:47
get the quality conversations you want if you're doing things just to the mass. So you've got marketing that's going on a scale level, right? They're really just, they've got a much wider net. But then you've got your sales team that has a much smaller net, but they're going a lot deeper with that. Way deeper. And with that, now you've got a great complementary setup there where you're going to start to find some of

Marcus Sheridan
0:19:12
the opportunities that you otherwise wouldn't have found.

Alex Winter
0:19:14
Yeah, that makes total sense. It feels like the marketing piece is the awareness and the sales side of it is where you get really granular and deeper into the conversations and personalization.

Marcus Sheridan
0:19:23
But to go back to the lead quality problem, I've never seen a situation where someone really was truly great at communication, was truly explicit in the way they communicated of the problem they solve, their ideal client, et cetera, and had a lead quality problem. You just don't see it. You just don't see it.

Marcus Sheridan
0:19:43
And so lead quality problem, quality, okay? If you're getting leads, if it's a quality problem, no question, you have a messaging problem. You have a transparency problem. You have an honesty problem. You have an openness problem, right?

Marcus Sheridan
0:20:00
It also means that your leadership team is probably not catching the big vision of how buyers think, what they want, and what they're attracted to. So you might be telling them what they want to hear to get their attention, maybe get them to fill out the form, but then as soon as the rubber meets the road, there's like, this stinks. This is no good.

Alex Winter
0:20:26
Right, well we all know what happens when sales teams, like the good old I'm going to convert them, let me talk to them, I'll make this happen. That doesn't always lead to the best outcomes because they may not be the best fit and then how's that relationship going to look as they become a client in the long term. We know where that goes. No bueno.

Alex Winter
0:20:42
Yeah, no bueno. So how does this apply for B2B? Because I feel like I hear a lot in B2B and I'm stereotyping here, but I feel like it's a lot of handshakes and referral based business. So if B2B companies are having similar problems with leads and lead funnels, does the same rules apply?

Marcus Sheridan
0:20:57
Well, absolutely. It's just that B2B companies are so caught up in their own uniqueness that too often they just don't do the things they should be doing, right? I mean, if you look at it right now, why do we have this podcast?

Marcus Sheridan
0:21:12
We have this podcast because it's a lead driver for a B2B organization called Impact, right?

Alex Winter
0:21:18
Correct.

Marcus Sheridan
0:21:19
It also helps me on a personal level. I'm going to be able to take this content. I can repurpose it. It helps grow my brand. It helps get me in front of audiences. Whether that's a podcast, another podcast, or whether that's a speaking gig, all those people will hear me. They'll say, hey, I'm interested in that thing called they ask you answer or I'm interested in whatever you know Marcus is talking about they get in our ecosystem then they get introduced to they ask you answer an impact and then they potentially become

Marcus Sheridan
0:21:46
a client I mean the amount of clients that we get just for my speaking gigs is quite significant substantial yeah in the company and so this what we're doing right now matters right so we have to do it we have to be in the game we have to continue to play the game I can't let my foot off the gas. I can't stop producing content. I can't stop getting my face out there

Marcus Sheridan
0:22:06
because the moment I do, this just isn't gonna work, right? This is a really, really big commitment. I should be home today in Virginia. I'm here in Connecticut right now. I stayed a day after a speaking gig. Why?

Marcus Sheridan
0:22:19
Because we need to do this. This is a commitment that we are in. It's costing us money, it's costing us time, but we understand that we've got this like foundational thing in our case called the Endless Customers Podcast. This helps grow an audience from the podcast, but it also helps grow the audiences of the

Marcus Sheridan
0:22:39
thought leaders that we put on the podcast, not just myself, but our team. And because our team is on there, their individual brands grow. And by the way, they just get better, right? Because the more you do this thing that we are doing right now, the more articulate you get, the more effective you are, the better

Marcus Sheridan
0:22:57
with your messaging you are, right? And so because of that, people ask me all the time, how do you do everything on one take? It's like it happens on one take most of the time, because I've said these things thousands of times. It's like I'm practicing every day.

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:10
I mean, I make Steph Curry look lazy when it comes to my jump shot called, in this case, communication, right? I don't actually think I make him look lazy. I think he makes me look lazy. I'm just kidding about that.

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:20
I'm taking over your point. But you know what I'm saying, right? It's like, it's all about, it's all about like a prolific amount of reps. And we're putting ourself in a position here to get the reps.

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:29
Most B2B companies aren't doing that thing, right? They're not putting in the time. So what are they not doing? They're certainly not, they probably don't have a podcast. They're not producing regular video.

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:41
They're not doing long form and short form video. So, again, it's not it's just not doing all these things that are getting themselves out there. A lot of them are still doing things on a traditional level. They're blaming things like, hey, I'm a referral based business. Newsflash. Every business is referral based.

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:57
Guess what? McDonald's is referral based. There's no such thing as a business that isn't referral based. You know those underground businesses in New York City that you got to be like really special to get into like that back room, referral based everything. Show me one business. Any anyone I'm ready for it.

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:22
Show me one business that isn't referral based. Stop saying you're referral-based. You're a business. That's what you are. Of course referrals matter. Now, if you say we're referral-based,

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:38
as in, ha ha, look at us, that means we're too lazy to do all this other marketing and it just so happens that the only way we're getting leads is through referrals. But you're not referral based you're a business right that's how this works That's how this game went it just drives me crazy people say you don't understand this a referral based industry

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:59
No, it's called a bunch of lazy marketers that aren't thinking like the buyer They're not thinking like the consumer and because the only way they've gotten leads up to this point in time is referrals They call it a referral based business get out of here with that right how much opportunity could you be potentially missing by having that mentality? Right. Well, 100 percent. And I saw it for years in the swing pool industry. I heard that game. And that's why we took over the industry, because while this dude's over here saying, yeah, man, we're referral based and he's doing his 10 pools a year.

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:31
We said we're going to take over the world and we end up doing hundreds of pools a year. And it changed my entire life. And oh by the way, referrals matter to us too. You see, that's table stakes. You give great service, you make the client, you make the customer happy, and you get referrals. That's business though.

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:53
There's nothing special about it. And certainly nothing unique. If you do this, I can see you're fired up. But it's so true what you're saying because if you do good business, people are going to

Alex Winter
0:26:03
talk about their good experience with other people and that's referral-based business. That's neat.

Marcus Sheridan
0:26:08
Yeah.

Marcus Sheridan
0:26:09
Ding, ding, ding.

Marcus Sheridan
0:26:10
Wow. Cracked the code on that one. Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:26:13
Blew my mind. Yeah. Yeah. So can we talk a little bit about really getting granular and painting the picture for leads? So a little bit about seasonality but then also what to look out for. I have here measuring how much your leads are worth? How much is the deal worth? Are you paying your agency too

Alex Winter
0:26:28
much money? Should you take it in-house? What are some of these granular things specific with leads that we can give some advice for business owners and CEOs and people out there?

Marcus Sheridan
0:26:37
Yeah, I mean like cost per acquisition, these things are big positives to measure. This I can say I will continue to do Google Ads, let's say, with River Pools, even though we get a lot of leads from an organic perspective. Because I track how much I spend, I track how many leads it generates,

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:06
I track how many of those convert into an actual customer. I track the total revenue that comes from all those folks. So you know if I'm spending, you know, let's say this year I might spend 50 grand, right? It's not a big deal to me though if I do, you know, 1.5 million off of that 50 grand, I'll play that game. Who wouldn't? That's probably like where we're going to be, somewhere around there. Very nice.

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:41
So it's like, why would I not play that game?

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:42
I'm going to be in that game. Huge ROI. Yeah, yeah. I think sometimes in that whole inbound content space, people act like paid is the enemy. Like paid is not the enemy, right? The enemy is that you go broke because you're not doing the things that you need to do as

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:56
a business to ensure that you've got positive cash flow and that you're generating leads and sales that you need to generate. So I think that's a metric that is really, really, that matters, that's, you know, they're very important. I don't obsess about a lot of others. You know, I still think a lot about

Marcus Sheridan
0:28:17
the amount of content leads consume on your website versus, like specifically, one metric that I'm really interested in is you take all your leads and you say, how much content did the leads consume versus the leads that turned into customers?

Marcus Sheridan
0:28:37
And there's always a really big delta between those two. And so like with River Pools, our typical lead might consume five that doesn't buy but might consume 35, 40, 50 pages that does buy. So that's a really, really big difference. So this is why lead scoring in general is quite helpful. It's pretty sad though how few companies even have lead scoring set up.

Marcus Sheridan
0:29:09
A lot of companies that have HubSpot, they got Pardot, they got whatever and they still haven't set up lead scoring. Pretty crazy, right? That is pretty crazy. There's a lot of companies that have those tools and the sales team doesn't actually look at the lead behavior before they reach out to the prospect, which is pretty sad too.

Marcus Sheridan
0:29:28
Which is, I mean, to me I can't even start to understand that.

Alex Winter
0:29:30
I mean, that's free info to help you do your job better.

Marcus Sheridan
0:29:32
Oh, man. I mean, it's just like tells you every piece of content they consume is a story about that person. It says what their hot buttons are, you know, and what they're interested in, and it paints a picture, right? And so as a salesperson,

Marcus Sheridan
0:29:47
I wanna see as much of that picture as possible. And so that's the type of stuff that I look at. Outside of that, you know, I leave it to some of the data nerds, but you know, those are the things I'm into.

Alex Winter
0:29:57
Totally, and for people that have an agency that are doing this, I feel like sometimes there's a lot of like, I don't want to call them vanity metrics but they'll be like, oh, you have this many impressions, isn't that amazing? And when you, just to your point that you were just talking about, impressions are good because that does contribute towards your overall goals of like attracting leads but

Alex Winter
0:30:15
just because someone sees it doesn't mean they're interacting with it, doesn't mean that they're going to the next step of maybe checking out your website or whatever funnel you're trying to pull them towards. So how do you look at that too and give advice for people that maybe are outsourcing this to an agency?

Marcus Sheridan
0:30:28
Yeah, this all goes back to what's the goal of the campaign, right? And things like impressions or even clicks that don't turn into an action, they're more relevant today than they were just a few years ago though. Because all these things are signals for AI, right? And so sometimes you are saying, I'm going to create a campaign just like I might create a short form video. And my goal is virality. That's it.

Marcus Sheridan
0:31:02
I want to create awareness, extremely top of funnel or not even in the funnel at all. I want to create signals, especially for AI to say, Hey, pay attention to this company. But it's really not designed to drive revenue in that moment, right? It's a very long-term play, it's a big brand,

Marcus Sheridan
0:31:22
if you will, brand awareness play. But then I might create a short video, like something on YouTube Shorts, that is meant for something more bottom of the funnel, something that's very they ask you answer, something that's specific,

Marcus Sheridan
0:31:35
something that shows up in search, especially because those YouTube shorts are popping up in search results all the time now and they're really trying to push those because they're trying to grow that platform so much. So that's the type of thing that you just want to keep in mind as you're thinking about, okay, how do I continue to spread this net and what are the things that matters and impressions versus actual clicks to conversions, et cetera.

Marcus Sheridan
0:32:03
Like that's some of the stuff that I'm thinking about these days. It's funny how my opinions have changed. I used to think virality was like the dumbest thing. It just made no sense. And in many ways, it didn't really make much sense.

Marcus Sheridan
0:32:17
But today, it is something that is much more important. The other side to virality is when, virality becomes this great social proof. So if I create a YouTube short, let's say, and maybe it's not designed for my main customer, but it's great for awareness,

Marcus Sheridan
0:32:38
and it gives me 20,000 subscribers, which has happened before, like on one short. Well, those 20,000 subscribers is a social proof mechanism for those that see the channel thereafter and says well 20,000 people can't be dumb Why would they subscribe right? It's no different than if I'm looking at Yelp and I see that it's you know 4.7 stars. There's a big difference between if five

Marcus Sheridan
0:33:04
reviews were put in at 4.7 versus 2,000 the difference 2000. Big difference.

Alex Winter
0:33:13
Yeah.

Marcus Sheridan
0:33:14
And I'm the type of guy that looks at Yelp before I go out anywhere. And I'm constantly going out places because I travel. Right? That's what I do. So I enjoy looking at Yelp. You get 2000 reviews.

Marcus Sheridan
0:33:23
I always say it out loud. Not many people can't be wrong. Right? And generally, that is the case. Right? And so it's the same thing.

Marcus Sheridan
0:33:30
That's a social proof mechanism. And so I think these mechanisms, these signals, again, it's a signal. Sometimes it's a signal to AI. Sometimes it's a signal to the world, but they both they have their influence. You want to know that going in. So you know really what your what your target is. And this should be agreed upon by leadership too, because if they

Marcus Sheridan
0:33:49
don't know, and they're thinking, hey, this is supposed to equate to revenue and fast. And you're out there popping out viral videos that are building the brand, but they're not really meaning quick revenue. Well, then you're, you're probably going to have some discord within the organization.

Alex Winter
0:34:02
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And 20,000 subscribers off of one short, that's...

Marcus Sheridan
0:34:07
One short, that's incredible. 20,000, yeah.

Alex Winter
0:34:09
Talk about new potential leads. Shell's team would have been pumped to hear something like that.

Marcus Sheridan
0:34:13
Wow, that was like a wowza. That was crazy.

Alex Winter
0:34:16
Great insights, Marcus, great insights. So any closing thoughts here for leads specifically and how businesses can get more leads before we wrap up?

Marcus Sheridan
0:34:23
Well, I would just say you can't do things like you've always done them. I was talking to some agencies this year, some web development companies, I said, what's one thing that you're doing that you haven't done in the last five years, but you're doing now to generate leads. Every single one of them in the room said events. They're doing events, they're speaking at events. They're showing at events, it's just they they're being very strategic with the events that they're at.

Marcus Sheridan
0:34:49
And these were like Drupal companies that I was talking to, so web dev companies. They're doing events. They weren't doing events three years ago. They didn't have to do events. But they're doing events today.

Marcus Sheridan
0:35:00
So you have to evolve with how you're doing your lead gen, right, your demand gen. And you can't be above something. And you've gotta say, all right, how can I have more conversations? That means one-to-one reach out.

Marcus Sheridan
0:35:17
That's what it means. If that means events, that's what it means. If that means paid, that's what it means. But don't just stick to, well, I'm only going to do they ask you answer. Well, sometimes that's not enough, right? Like as in the traditional content marketing version of it.

Marcus Sheridan
0:35:33
That's not enough. Remember, part of they ask you answer is the they, it's like how they think, how they behave, where they are, et cetera, right? And so if they're asking you to be at the event, go to the event. You see what I'm saying?

Marcus Sheridan
0:35:49
Absolutely. It's not just about the next blog article or video that you're gonna pop out, right? So go beyond that, otherwise you're missing the mark of the whole thing.

Alex Winter
0:35:57
Absolutely, couldn't agree with you more. And I think too for businesses, if you can get out of your lane a little bit, out of your industry, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised at what other industries are doing

Alex Winter
0:36:05
and how it can inspire and affect what you do in your industry and with your business.

Marcus Sheridan
0:36:09
Yeah, the great ones tend to not look for the inspiration within their space. They're going outside of their space. Yeah. And it's wild, you're like, but that shows you right away

Marcus Sheridan
0:36:23
that they've got this open mindset, right? Whereas there's a bunch of folks that would say, I don't think that would work in my space. Again, the great ones, they go outside of their space and they say, what's the principle that I'm seeing here? How could I apply this to my business?

Alex Winter
0:36:40
I love it. Marcus, if people have follow-up questions or wanna pick your brain about this topic, how can they get in touch with you?

Marcus Sheridan
0:36:45
Best way to find me is on LinkedIn, right? Marcus at marcussherden.com. That's my email address. If you got questions, hit me up. I will answer. People are surprised all the time, man.

Marcus Sheridan
0:36:57
And I get a lot of questions, but they're always like, I can't believe you actually took the time to answer this. I'm like, yeah, of course I'd do that.

Alex Winter
0:37:03
He's very active on LinkedIn and all the socials and everywhere. So thank you for being on the show. Appreciate your time, Marcus. And for everybody out there watching and listening, this is Endless Customers.

Alex Winter
0:37:10
I'm Alex Winter. I'm Alex Winter. See you on the next episode.




Transcribed with Cockatoo