What Happens After Your Marketing Works?

There's a story that's been told for years about President John F. Kennedy visiting NASA during the race to put a man on the moon.

Kennedy supposedly encountered a janitor carrying a broom and asked him what he was doing.

The janitor replied:

"Mr. President, I'm helping put a man on the moon."

Whether every detail of the story happened exactly that way isn't really the point.

The lesson is.

The janitor wasn't designing rockets.

He wasn't an astronaut.

He wasn't sitting in Mission Control.

But he understood that his job contributed to something much bigger.

Businesses could learn something from that.

Particularly when it comes to marketing.

What Happens When the Marketing Actually Works?

Businesses understandably spend a lot of time worrying about marketing that doesn't produce results.

But there's another question that's asked much less often:

What happens when it does?

Suppose you launch a campaign.

People see it.

They're interested.

The telephone starts ringing.

Emails arrive.

Website inquiries start coming in.

Potential customers are raising their hands and saying:

Marketing has done its job.

Now what?

I Watched This Happen in Real Time

Years ago, I was contacted by a fairly large mortgage brokerage.

Mortgage rates had fallen and homeowners throughout California were looking to refinance.

The company wanted more inbound refinance leads.

From a marketing standpoint, the opportunity was excellent.

People were already looking for exactly what the company sold.

Our job was to put the company in front of them.

We did.

The company began appearing prominently in search results and inquiries started coming in.

About a month later, I was summoned to the company's office.

The owner wanted to know:

"Why isn't the marketing working?"

I knew the marketing was working.

What I didn't yet understand was why he thought it wasn't.

Then I sat in his office and listened.

The Phones Were Ringing

While we were discussing why the marketing supposedly wasn't producing results, the company's telephones were ringing with inbound inquiries.

I could hear the receptionist answering them.

Names and telephone numbers were being taken.

Potential customers were being told:

So I asked the owner a fairly obvious question.

Where are those calls coming from?

The marketing.

There was nothing wrong with lead generation.

We had a different problem.

Nobody Was Ready for the Results

The mortgage officers were already busy.

• Some were speaking with existing clients.
• Some were working other prospects.
• Some simply had as much business as they personally wanted to handle.

Meanwhile, new inquiries continued arriving.

Email leads were also being generated.

Some weren't receiving timely responses.

Think about what was happening.

The company was paying money to find potential customers.

Those customers were responding.

And then some of them were being left waiting.

The owner looked at the revenue being generated and concluded:

But marketing wasn't the problem.

The company's ability to handle what the marketing produced was the problem.

A Lead Has a Shelf Life

Eventually the owner stopped the marketing.

The telephone became quieter.

Then business slowed.

At that point, some of the old leads suddenly became interesting again.

Mortgage officers began calling people who had inquired weeks or months earlier.

But those homeowners hadn't been sitting beside the telephone waiting patiently.

They'd moved on.

They found another mortgage company.

One that responded.

I experienced this personally years later when refinancing my own home.

About six months after I'd made an inquiry, a mortgage company finally called and asked whether they could help with my refinance.

They were a little late.

The refinance had been completed months earlier.

Was that a bad lead?

No.

It had been an excellent lead.

It had simply expired.

And the Loss Can Be Much Bigger Than One Sale

There's another part of this that businesses frequently don't calculate.

The lost opportunity isn't necessarily one transaction.

Years ago, when mortgage rates were falling, my wife and I refinanced our home through a responsive mortgage broker.

They handled everything efficiently.

Then rates dropped again.

The broker contacted us and suggested refinancing again.

Then rates fell again.

Another call.

Over roughly 18 months, our original inquiry resulted in four transactions.

From our perspective, the additional refinances made sense because our interest rate kept falling.

From the broker's perspective, one customer acquisition produced multiple pieces of business.

And presumably we could also have referred friends, relatives or neighbors.

Now imagine being the mortgage company that received our original inquiry but didn't respond quickly enough.

They didn't simply lose one transaction.

They potentially lost everything that could have followed it.

Marketing Doesn't Operate in a Vacuum

This is why I don't think marketing should be treated as something that happens solely in a marketing department.

Marketing can make the telephone ring.

But somebody has to answer it.

Marketing can generate an email inquiry.

But somebody has to respond.

Marketing can bring someone into a restaurant.

But the experience has to make them want to return.

Marketing can bring visitors to a website.

But the website has to make the next step easy.

Every part of the business affects what happens to the opportunity marketing creates.

Which brings us back to that NASA janitor.

Everyone has a part to play.

Before You Spend Another Dollar

Before increasing your marketing budget, ask a few questions.

• Who handles new inquiries?
• How quickly are they contacted?
• What happens if the first person is unavailable?
• Can you track where each inquiry came from?
• Can you see whether it became a customer?
• Does your team actually have capacity for more business?

And perhaps most importantly:

If the answer is no, spending twice as much on marketing may simply mean wasting twice as many opportunities.

Marketing shouldn't be judged only by how many sales ultimately appear on a spreadsheet.

You also have to look at what happened between the moment someone showed interest and the moment they either became a customer—or disappeared.

Sometimes the marketing isn't failing at all.

Sometimes it's doing its job perfectly.

The gap is somewhere else.

And yes…

Keep the janitor in the loop too.

…And that's my Two Pence Worth.