Why Now is the Time to Evaluate Your Lead Generation Strategy

As the owner of an Ag business, you are likely hyper-focused on sales. With the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc on small businesses across all industries, this focus has likely intensified. And while a desire to make more sales is entirely natural, it is necessary to remain committed to a robust lead generation strategy.

There is no way around it; the better your lead generation strategy, the more sales you will make. What’s more, the sales you make will come from farmers and ranchers who are likely to become repeat customers.

When looking at your lead generation strategy, you must weed out any potential problems that will negatively impact your sales numbers. What follows are four of the most common ones we see every day when working with clients just like you.

1. A disorganized sales funnel. Failing to follow up with leads consistently means sales opportunities are lost. Ask yourself a couple of questions: What is the path leads take through your sales funnel? When and how do you reach out to prospects? If there is a problem with your sales funnel, putting more leads into it won’t solve the issue. Instead, you need to learn how to better organize and manage the funnel itself.
2. Absence of a lead scoring system. It is critical that you quickly and successfully separate high-quality leads so that they can be followed up with first. Generating a high number of leads through pay-per-quick advertising, for example, makes little sense if you have no idea of the quality of leads they produce.
3. Lack of data analysis. Unless you know how much you are spending per lead or customer acquisition, you don’t know if that money is well spent. It is only through key performance indicators that you can determine which lead generation tactics work and which ones do not.
4. It all depends on you. Find yourself alternating between having plenty of time to work on marketing and no time at all? The result will be periods when you cannot handle the influx of leads and times when you are scrambling to bring in new business. The only way to break this cycle is to work with an outside marketing firm or hire a dedicated marketing professional in-house. Running an Ag business is no easy task, and when you add marketing to your to-do list, both your business and your marketing will take a hit.

It is a great feeling when sales are pouring in. However, without a solid lead generation strategy, that feeling is unlikely to last for long.