The age-old marketing argument –  Quantity versus quality

Marketers are consistently stuck with the age-old conundrum – when it comes to lead generation, what is better – quantity or quality?

For most people, the focus is likely dependant on who they are reporting back success to. Some leaders are focused on numbers of leads, whereas some are less bothered about volume and more bothered about how many of them they can convert, and how much revenue will hit their bottom-line as a result.

Into the detail

Quantity looks great on paper and in the here-and-now, and it is very easy to get carried away by a ballpark figure – 100 – 200 – or more net new contacts created. Having spent £x on a marketing campaign, it is quite easy to feel the need to share results quickly – and in volume. But what happens when you come to analyse the results post-campaign and attribute pipeline value and ROI? If the numbers cannot convert, is the once successful campaign no longer seen in the same way?

On the other hand, quality might not look good in the here-and-now, but longer-term, quality is what senior decision makers want to see. Quality leads help a business to grow, whereas quantity grows a newsletter database. And it’ is that simple.

From experience, too many businesses carry huge mailing databases that never engage or convert, which indicates thousands upon thousands of pounds of wasted investment.

As I’ve noted before in my blog about marketing ROI, we know that marketers are under pressure to deliver meaningful ROIs – fast. But it is important to take a step back, design a campaign that addresses overarching objectives, and agree KPIs for what good looks like. That way it is much easier to manage expectations at the end – and this is your opportunity to educate if you believe quantity is going to be a challenge (this could be due to data size, infancy in solution or audience, or value of sale, for example).

What exactly are we doing here?

The most important thing to consider before you set out to design, build and execute a campaign is the objective. What are you trying to achieve? Are we going after brand awareness, or sales / pipeline opportunities?

Secondly, you need to identify your audience. Who and how are you targeting, and what are the pros and cons of this approach to audience building?

For example, if you’re targeting the top 100 fastest growing Property Developers, you’re dealing with key targets – specific businesses. If you can convert one of them in your campaign, you’re onto a winner. If you can convert 10 of them, then you’re shooting for the stars. But with a limited audience, can you truly achieve quantity? Possibly not. Not in a short time period, anyway.

The pros of a data-driven audience

• Any leads generated are quality
• You can treat the campaign in more of an ABM (Account based marketing) way
• The targets are valuable to your business – you can afford to spend more time and be more personalised with content and the overall experience – one-to-one, rather than one-to-all

The cons of a data-driven audience

• You’re unlikely to achieve large volumes of net new contacts – and you’ll want to manage expectations upfront about this. Success might look like a couple of leads per week, rather than a couple per day. And that’s actually OK, because the leads are qualified – and they’re on your target list.
• It will cost more to target them via paid methods – the more defined your audience, the more you’re likely to pay per impression and click.
• The optimisation process becomes more difficult – you’re not able to make decisions as easily, and will need to rely on previous knowledge and experience. For example, you simply will not have enough data, or time, to review 100 landing page sessions via HotJar or Mouse Flow.

On the flipside, if you’re targeting a much larger audience – for example, any companies working in the channel, you’ll have a much bigger pool to engage.

The pros of a wide audience

• You can learn and optimise quickly – you’ll start to understand the types of messaging that works much quicker than with a finite pool.
• Costs are generally lower as the audience you’re going after are less sought after.
• You can often quite quickly generate large volumes of leads.

The cons of a wide audience

• Lead quality can really vary – from on-target through to unqualified.
• It’s easy to churn through budget quickly – as the pool is much larger.
• Deal value and size may be smaller than you’d like because the qualification piece hasn’t been done upfront.

In summary

As marketers come under more scrutiny to generate meaningful ROI, long gone are the days where quantity should be the focus. We should be focusing on meaningful campaigns that generate meaningful conversations and drive value. Every £ that generates a positive ROI puts us one step closer to greater things.