How do you generate more leads for your business (or the businesses you’re helping)?
- Do you write blogs and post on social media?
- Do you have some kind of free offer or lead magnet on your website?
- Do you not do any of those, because you’re convinced that word-of-mouth is the only real source of lead gen that has ever worked?
I define my job as helping businesses generate leads through content marketing. Before I can do that though, I have to figure out what their customers are actually looking for.
And that’s the whole point of today’s post.
Lots of people define what their customers want in terms of the deliverables, the product, or activities. So, for example, they’d say their customers want websites or blog posts or some kind of physical product.
The problem is that this tends to be somewhat short-term and “me” focused, as in “the customer wants what I have to offer”. I would even argue that it ends up costing the customer more in the long run.
What I have learned – and am still learning – is that it’s much more effective to define what customers want in terms of their (often unspoken) desired outcomes.
This was what Theodore Levitt was talking about when he said that people didn’t want to buy drills, they wanted to buy holes in the walls (for those of you who aren’t familiar with his point, here’s a quick article on it).
In his article on Jobs To Be Done theory, Gianfilippo Ceraselli illustrates the difference between what people buy and why they buy it like this:
Obvious as it all might sound, it’s not always that easy. The key, though, is in talking to the customers.
If you want a fun example, check out Clayton Christensen’s video on why people hire milkshakes (yes, you read that right). You’ll see that people considered and tried several alternatives, and then you’ll find out the underlying job people want milkshakes to do.
I’m repeating myself here, but the key to the team’s discoveries was customer interviews.
To some of you, this might seem obvious. Others might be coming up with a million reasons why this doesn’t apply to them. Whatever the case, in my experience most people don’t take this crucial step because they don’t know where or how to begin.
And that’s what I’ll get into in part 2…
Until then, what do you do to generate more leads?
Get in touch and let me know.