Many demographic filters are a waste of money for lead or list acquisition. Why? Because they concentrate on what people have filled out on a form rather than what they are doing. They are an artificial means of segmenting an audience. I spent years fulfilling, selling, and buying lead generation commitments for clients with filter guarantees on titles, country and company size. These filters are still being used by companies and they pay a lot for them; increase your filters, and you increase your cost per lead by as much as $50 per lead in some instances. There are better ways to spend that money and attract the buyers you want: creating targeted content. I’ll get to that in a moment.

 

When you spend money on arbitrary filters based on forms your potential buyer filled out with someone else, you are artificially going after an audience that may or may not be in the market for your product. Let’s look at job titles. Job titles for the same position are as varied as different breeds of dogs. Let’s say you sell a Widget software solution. Just because an IT employee filled out a form and said he was a manager, doesn’t mean he’s interested in your Widget software. He might not need a Widget solution right now. He may have already purchased a Widget solution this month. Why spend the money to market to him just because he could possibly buy a Widget if he wanted to? However, if said IT manager is researching content on Widgets and is comparing product features, you had better reach him now instead of next quarter. Or as a manager, he may be assembling data for someone else to make a decision. If so, when you target that IT manager only, you are missing the decision maker. I would argue that you just excluded a potential buyer rather than targeted one.

 

I know, sometimes filters seem like the best way to fish in a smaller pond because you are basing your filters on the last place you caught fish. It seems reasonable to market to a target based on past purchases or stats, but there are enough ways to go after your REAL target audience. Paying for a job title, company size, or even a country filter to reach them isn’t one of them. Content however, gets you to the people who are actively looking for a product or service that you offer.

 

People read content because they care about it. Put another way, if they don’t care about it, they won’t read it. Content targets your potential buyers, by default. And if you focus on building your content to align with information your potential customers look for during the decision-making process, you can nurture them through the buying cycle and guide them straight to your company for consideration when they are ready to make a purchase. Investing in content is one of the first places you should spend your marketing dollars, if you need more leads for increased revenue and market share.

 

In my next blog post, I’ll give you the Top 10 ways that content maximizes your ROI.