How to build a lead buffer

B2B marketing and sales can be boom and bust. It’s a natural cycle, but also one that you should try to avoid for the sake of your business health, and your personal health as well. 

Marketing activity ideally generates leads, or at the very least interest from those at various stages of the purchase cycle. When done in short manic bursts of effort, expense and output, your team sets to work nurturing and converting any leads generated. When it works, the business gets busy, and inevitably attention turns to delivery and keeping your new customers happy.

It's a bit like a snake consuming a large meal. It takes a lot of focus to digest it!

The boom and bust cycle

No prizes for guessing what happens next. Typically, businesses feed well for a while, then get hungry again. And when you are hungry, you can also get frustrated and lack clarity of thought. “Hangry” is the technical term for that!

But with no regular marketing effort, you also have no lead buffer. Another burst of effort and activity follows, and ideally you get some leads and have another decent feed. But when you are desperate (and hungry), you can make poor decisions. 

Maybe you need to offer deep discounts to attract attention and leads. Or maybe you spend too much effort, resources and money in the wrong place because you didn’t have enough time to thoroughly plan and consider the right course of action.

It’s a very stressful way to operate. 

Create constant lead flow

A better way to think about lead generation is like this – generate leads until you’re busy, then keep generating leads to stay busy. This requires that you maintain a constant and appropriate level of marketing activity and content flow. Importantly, it needs to be ‘always on’. That doesn’t mean every single day, but it definitely doesn’t mean a flurry of activity a few times a year. 

For B2B marketers, this is especially important when you consider the potentially multi-year purchase cycle of your category. Logically, your prospects spend a lot less time in the market for your products and services, or even thinking about those products and services, than they do actively considering and buying. 

You can’t rely on randomly putting yourself in front of them in a burst of frenetic marketing activity, so you have to be there whether they are ready to hear from you or not. By default, you’ll then be there when they are actively shopping your category. 

End the boom and bust

Successful B2B marketing can’t be switched on and off like a tap. Rather, it needs to be a constant flow, like a stream. Without that consistent effort, by the time your leads dry up and you hurriedly try to generate some marketing activity and lead flow, it will be too late. And your rushed efforts are likely to be expensive and ineffective. 

To get off the boom and bust rollercoaster of random marketing activity and lead generation, you must find a way to be in market consistently. You need to be always engaging with your prospects as they move through the various stages of the purchase cycle, so you are top of mind when they are in buying mode. 

If you don’t think it’s possible to maintain ‘always on’ marketing content to create a reliable lead buffer, we should talk.