Many brands in Malaysia believe acquisition is key to brand building and are always trying to speed up the sales process. They focus on trying to close a deal as soon as possible. Qualification doesn’t exist, there is no attempt to build rapport and lay the foundations for a relationship. All that matters is closing a deal.

Even at road shows or other public events essentially meant to be marketing efforts to gather leads to approach later, the focus is on trying to sell something. Often, a photocopied flyer, even for luxury products will be thrust into a passing consumer’s hand with numerous features described in a robotic manner.

From suspect to customer
But a road show or trade exhibition, advertising campaign or similar is often meant not to sell something, but to lay the foundations of a relationship with a consumer who may, just may become a suspect, then prospect and finally customer. In other words, they are lead generation campaigns.

CSO insights release an annual report on Lead Generation Optimisation. Simplified, Lead Generation is marketing efforts designed to encourage targetted consumers to request more information about a product or service.

Unsurprisingly 67% of the 635 firms surveyed, reported weak sales so far this year as a result of reduced marketing budgets last year. But one positive to come out of the economic situation was that firms were spending more resources on measurement.

Measurement
Companies establish measurement systems to track strategic decisions – new enquiries, new customers won, sales and so on. But it is important not to measure the wrong stuff or measure for the sake of measuring. Metrics such as satisfaction (too broad) and awareness (too vague) are the wrong metrics and will tell you little.

In the CSO report over 50% of the firms that took part now have processes in place to track campaign ROI. And the criteria are simple, with the top 3 criteria being:

1. Total number of leads generated per campaign
2. Number of leads that convert to sales opportunities
3. Amount of revenue ultimately closed from those opportunities.

Now this isn’t nuclear science. Any company, of any size should be measuring these three elements every time they carry out a marketing campaign such as a trade exhibition. In the long run they may not speed up the sales process but they will definitely make it more profitable. And profitability not sales should be the goal of any brand.