Introduction:
Who Should Read
This Book?

THINK OF The New Rules of Lead Generation as a Lead-Generation Marketing 101 course for companies with a growth agenda. This book is designed for companies that have resources and staff, as well as a budget for growth.

If you’re reading this book, chances are you already know something about lead-generation marketing. Maybe you’re a marketing manager at a company that is using lead-generation tactics (such as e-mail marketing, search engine marketing, attending trade shows, etc.). Maybe your lead-generation campaigns are not doing as well as you’d like. Maybe they are doing well, but you’d like to achieve better lead-generation results as your company grows.

Or maybe you’re a marketing novice just entering the field of lead-generation marketing. In that case, you’ll want to study this book very carefully. You can use the tools and techniques provided here in the real world of marketing. Your knowledge of lead-generation marketing will make you a valuable, in-demand asset for employers.

Lead-generation marketing is often the unseen power behind a company’s marketing success. If brand marketing is the face that a company shows to the world (through TV commercials, billboard ads, etc.), then lead-generation marketing is the backbone of the company’s marketing efforts. Brand marketing makes the customers aware that the company and its products or services exist. Lead-generation marketing helps to bring in prospective customers as leads and convert them into actual sales.

Yet lead-generation marketing is one of the least understood forms of marketing! Most graduate and undergraduate business and marketing programs focus almost exclusively on the brand-oriented fundamental principles of marketing (as taught by my mentor, Philip Kotler). Also, future MBAs and marketing grads often see brand marketing as the creative, sexy side of marketing, whereas lead-generation marketing is seen as a “necessary evil”—something that most companies must do, but which doesn’t get as much attention. Most business and marketing programs place little emphasis or study on lead-generation tactics. This is surprising, considering how many large to midsized companies depend on these tactics to produce quality leads and drive sales.

Lead-generation marketing is often the real world of corporate marketing. Yet so many business and marketing graduates enter the workforce knowing nothing about it! Many marketers will tell you they had to learn lead-generation tactics on the job.

If you’re like many marketing managers, your knowledge of lead-generation marketing may be limited to the tactics you regularly use. Few marketing managers and executives really understand all the lead-generation tactics or the theories behind them. They don’t know which tactics will provide them with the best, most actionable leads, or how to use these tactics to find and target the best customers for their products or services. Some lead-generation tactics may generate more leads and be more cost-effective for your company than other tactics. For example, depending on your type of product, e-mail marketing may generate more leads and be more cost-effective than attending trade shows. But you may not have the tools you need to measure and compare tactical results to determine which tactic is more effective.

Some companies use only one lead-generation tactic at a time—simply because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”—when they could use five or six lead-generation tactics to their advantage. Others are still using a lead-generation tactic that served them well in the past, but may not be the most effective tactic for their present needs. Just as your company’s products and target audience may change over time, lead-generation tactics evolve and change. If your company is stuck using the same lead-generation tactic in exactly the same way year after year, eventually the tactic will prove less effective in providing you with leads. Even if your company wants to adopt new lead-generation tactics, you may not know how to budget the new tactics outside of your existing resources. Or you may not know how to compare the results of the new tactics against your current ones to find out which give you the best return on investment.

This book helps marketers to better understand how to use lead-generation marketing to its maximum effect. The goal is to help you develop a strategic action plan for using the seven most successful lead-generation tactics to your best advantage. I’ll show you how to set targeted goals, execute smart campaigns, and use testing and measurement to find out which lead-generation tactics work best for you. I’ll also show you how to combine strategies and tactics in an integrated lead-generation campaign to help you get the maximum number of leads for your company at the best cost-per-lead.