Todd Ebert

The World's First Site Devoted to the Deplorable Problem of Lead Leaks

Our goal is to make marketing so useful that people not only seek it out but stick around once they visit.  Toward that end I'm proud to announce our latest effort aimed at helpfing businesses solve the deplorable problem of lead leaks. What the heck are lead leaks?  Essentially they are the places in your sales and marketing process where you are losing potential customers to competitors because your marketing, website, or follow-up isn’t up to par.  Or stated another way, the places where you are throwing away customers and revenue. 

Two quick examples of lead leaks:

• What percent of your website visitors leave without contacting you? Not having a fresh, professional, conversion-friendly website is like turning away potential customers at your front door.
• How many of your calls go to voicemail or are after hours? Waiting too long to follow up with new contacts (even just more than an hour) usually means they choose someone else.  

These are just a couple of common lead leaks, but there are so many more.

Anyway, it was driving us crazy to see so many businesses waste so many of the leads they’re working so hard to get – without even knowing it. So, we created an entire website dedicated to educating the world about lead leaks and helping businesses get more customers from their marketing.

Check out the site at www.dontleakleads.com for helpful info like:

• Candid “leaks on the street” videos with real consumers that will open your eyes to the problem
• Ebooks, articles, infographics, and presentations explaining the most common ways businesses leak leads (and what to do about them)
• A Marketing Math calculator that enables you to calculate the number of customers and amount of revenue you could get by fixing lead leaks
• Other fun stuff like videos and memes you can share

Bringing the Buying Funnel to Life - Literally

I guess our "Don't Leak Leads" marketing campaign is resonating with the Sale & Service team who brought it to life in their Halloween costumes. 

Are you leaking leads? New infographic shows you where to check.

More fun with funnels. Our best infographic yet.  Make sure you aren't leaking leads at each step of the buying journey customers take to discover, contact and choose your business. 

See more on the ReachLocal Learning Center

The New Consumer Buying Journey

I updated my presentation from last year -- you might say it's "new and improved" ;)

How Consumers Buy - The Infographic

My team created this infographic to give an example of the consumer buying journey for a need-based service like plumbing.

Even in this simple scenario you can see the complexity involved in trying to get a new customer for your business. You must continuously build your web presence with fresh content across all the places consumers go to discover and research before they buy.  Google calls this the Zero Moment of Truth.  I call it imperative to stay in business today.

Top Down View of the Consumer Buying Funnel

Image from my ebook: How Consumers Buy Today: Harnessing the Buying Journey to Get More Customers.

 

New Ebook: Harnessing the Consumer Buying Journey to Get More Customers

How Consumers Buy Today - Harnessing the Buying Journey to Get More Customers from Todd Ebert

The Launch and Marketing of Microsoft Vista

The "Good" - developing and executing the marketing plan for one of the biggest new product introductions in history ... WOW ;)

I attended an interesting presentation about how Microsoft launched Vista and Office 2007. John Roskill, Microsoft's US Business and Marketing Officer gave an overview of the marketing plan (audio, video and slides can be found here).  As you can imagine with a launch of this magnitude the marketing team faced many challenges including:

• Reaching and persuading an incredibly wide range of customers from novice consumers to developers, IT gurus and business decision makers in the largest enterprises and governments. (B2C, B2G, and B2B)
• Covering a wide range of product lines with an extremely broad value-proposition (Windows Vista, Office desktop, Office System Server, and others).
• Managing the timing of multiple staggered launches on a global basis.
• Competing against a large and determined group including Apple, Open Office, Apache/Linux.
• Overcoming the "good enough" mentality of current Windows owners.
• Managing a wide array of partners including hardware vendors, software developers, systems integrators, VARs and resellers.
• Changing market perceptions such as "its been a long time coming" and "weak security."

The launch objectives are similar to what you and I have written in numerous marketing plans ... Ready the channel, Build awareness, Create enthusiastic advocates, Generate revenue opportunities / sales pipeline, and drive partner-customer connections.  However, the execution of the plan was anything but business as usual as they "touched" over 100 million consumers in less than a month in the U.S. alone and developed 15 million enthusiastic advocates that spread the message. 

Mr. Roskill shared great insights on the strategy which are too lengthy to describe here, but one thing that I took away was the need to move beyond transactional marketing to relationship marketing.  Microsoft has finally gotten it and this launch marked their shift from...

• Point in Time Marketing to Continuous Conversion
• Single Product to Solution Stack
• Hitting the Masses to Targeting/Sub-segmenting/Measuring
• Generic Call-to-Action to Customized Call-to-Action
• Disconnected from Sales to Connected with Sales/Partners/Services
• Offline to Online (blogs, wikis, reviews, etc.)

These are good points to keep in mind as we develop our own marketing plans. Its easy to stay true to the old way of doing things, especially since relationship marketing is a lot more work.  But, as professionals we must continually look for ways to take our game to the next level.  If we don't, our competitors will!