Is your business struggling to get enough leads and sales? You're not the only one! Attracting new customers is a huge challenge these days with so much competition out there. There are several potential solutions, but which one is the right fit for your company?
You could build your own in-house marketing team, hire freelance growth experts, or partner with an agency that specializes in generating leads and sales. Each option has its own pros and cons. The best path for you depends on factors like your budget, goals, timeline, and the resources you already have.
This article will explore the key things to consider for each demand generation approach. We'll dig into the advantages and disadvantages of using your own team versus outside experts. This will help you figure out the best way to get the growth expertise your business needs. Whether you're a startup, small business, or larger company, you'll walk away with a clear framework for evaluating your options and making a smart investment in driving sustainable growth.
At the end of the day, generating a steady stream of leads and sales comes down to having the right marketing strategy and execution in place. Too many businesses struggle with a dry pipeline because they lack specialized expertise in growth marketing.
One common mistake is treating lead generation as an afterthought instead of making it a top priority. Marketing teams get bogged down with tactical stuff like email blasts and social media posts, rather than taking a strategic, full-funnel approach. There's also a misconception that having a great product is enough - even innovative offerings need targeted campaigns to drive awareness and interest.
Another pitfall is trying to do everything in-house without having the right experience or resources dedicated to it. Effective lead generation requires a diverse mix of skills like market research, persona development, content creation, nurturing leads, analytics, and more. Very few companies have all those capabilities at an expert level internally.
The impact on the bottom line can be huge. If you're not continuously filling the top of your sales funnel and moving leads through the buyer's journey, you'll experience inconsistent sales cycles and revenue dips. Slower growth means it takes longer to hit your goals, secure funding, and scale up. You'll lose ground to competitors who have finely-tuned lead generation engines consistently capturing mindshare and market share.
On the flip side, businesses that invest in robust lead generation see big benefits. An effective strategy will boost key metrics like:
- Website traffic and engagement
- Number of leads and their quality
- Sales pipeline contributions from marketing
- Customer acquisition rates
- Overall revenue growth
With a reliable stream of prospects engaging with your brand, you can accelerate your sales cycle and achieve more predictable growth over time.
There are three main routes businesses can take to up their lead generation game: building an internal marketing team, hiring freelance growth experts, or partnering with a specialized agency. Let's dive into the pros and cons of each approach.
1. Internal Lead Gen Team
Having your own dedicated lead generation team provides some major benefits. You'll have marketers fully immersed in your business, customers, and industry. They can craft a cohesive strategy tightly aligned with your goals, products, and messaging. There's also the ability to fully customize processes, tools, and data.
However, assembling a full suite of lead gen skills in-house can be extremely difficult, especially for smaller companies. You'll need to hire (and continuously train) specialists across areas like:
- Market/competitive research
- Persona development
- Content marketing
- Lead nurturing and scoring
- Marketing automation
- Campaign management
- Aligning with sales
- ROI analysis
Getting enough headcount and budget approved for a full team is a major hurdle. Even if you staff up, there's a learning curve - it may take 6-12 months before they start driving real impact.
2. Freelance Growth Marketers
Instead of building a whole team, you can hire freelance growth marketing specialists for specific projects or roles. This provides access to a wide range of skills without the overhead of full-time employees. You can handpick talent to fill gaps in your capabilities.
The downside is freelancers inevitably have less dedicated focus and accountability than an internal team. There can be continuity issues as people cycle through projects. You'll also need to invest time vetting, onboarding, and managing them.
While freelancers offer more flexibility, it can be challenging to develop and execute a truly unified, full-funnel strategy. Getting specialists across disciplines aligned on your goals, processes, and tools is tough.
3. Lead Generation Agency
Increasingly, companies are partnering with expert lead gen agencies to drive sustainable growth. This model provides a complete, integrated solution by tapping into an external team's specialized skills and proven processes.
A few key advantages of using an agency:
- Instant access to all the cross-functional talent you need without recruiting
- Ability to ramp up quickly with a battle-tested, full-funnel methodology
- Economies of scale by leveraging the agency's existing tech and resources
- Objectivity of outside consultants who live and breathe best practices
- Flexibility to scale resources up or down as needs change
The potential downside is less immersion in your product/industry compared to an internal team. However, top agencies have deep experience across many sectors.
There's also the cost factor. While not cheap, the ROI of investing in a proven lead engine is extremely compelling. Most agencies tie their fees to a percentage of the expected revenue impact, so you only pay for measurable results.
For example, one software company partnered with an agency to better penetrate the enterprise market. Within six months, the agency's strategic campaigns had doubled their sales pipeline and opportunities. They quickly earned back fees through an influx of new customers and expansion revenue.
No matter which route you go, the key is avoiding initial mistakes and building a solid foundation for consistent, scalable lead gen over time. With the right strategy, skills, and execution, you can turn your marketing funnel into a powerful growth engine.
Even with a solid game plan for building lead generation capabilities, businesses often face speed bumps along the way. Some of the most common barriers include:
**Limited Budgets & Resources**
For many companies, especially startups and small businesses, budget and headcount constraints make it extremely difficult to assemble and fund a full-fledged lead gen team or agency partnership.
Organizational Misalignment
Lack of clear leadership, disconnects between marketing and sales teams, and competing priorities can severely hamper lead generation efforts if not addressed.
Data Quality Issues
To optimize campaigns and ROI, you need to have clean data, unified systems, and the ability to accurately track leads from the first touchpoint to closed deal.
Outdated Processes & Tech
Legacy tools, manual approaches, and disconnected point solutions will bottleneck lead gen versus an integrated, automated engine.
So how can you overcome these barriers? Start by making lead generation a strategic growth priority backed by leadership support. Calculate the potential revenue impact of improved lead flow to justify the investment.
Next, break down organizational silos and foster cross-functional collaboration. Align marketing, sales, and customer success teams on shared processes, responsibilities, and success metrics.
It's also critical to get your data ducks in a row. Audit and integrate your data sources, define UTM parameters, and implement lead tracking and attribution. From there, you can systematically upgrade your tools, tech stack, and processes.
With a focused, phased approach and accountability from the top, you can clear the path for a powerful lead generation engine to fuel growth.
Now that you understand the core lead generation challenges businesses face and the potential solutions, what's your next move? If you want to accelerate predictable growth, you need to make building out world-class lead gen capabilities a priority. Here's a step-by-step guide to get started:
1. Assess Your Current State
Take a hard look at your existing lead gen people, processes, technology, and performance. Where are the gaps? What's limiting lead flow and marketing's impact?
2. Calculate the Revenue Upside
Model out the potential revenue gain from improved lead generation based on your goals. This will help justify and guide your investment.
3. Evaluate Your Three Options
Based on your assessment and revenue upside, determine if building an internal team, partnering with freelancers/contractors, or engaging a specialized agency is the best path forward.
4. Define Requirements & Success Metrics
Get stakeholder alignment on the key capabilities, skills, and processes required. Establish clear, measurable goals for lead gen's contribution to pipeline and revenue.
5. Select & Onboard Resources
Whether hiring, contracting, or partnering with an agency, make sure you have a rigorous vetting process to find the right growth expertise.
6. Enable with Data, Tech & Processes
Implement lead tracking, define UTM parameters, integrate systems, and invest in the foundational marketing tech stack needed for effective lead generation.
7. Launch & Optimize Campaigns
With the right resources and enabling solutions in place, you can launch and continually optimize a full-funnel lead gen strategy to drive consistent growth.
By methodically addressing your lead gen needs, you can overcome common pitfalls and turn your marketing into a revenue-generating engine.
To sum it up, generating a consistent flow of leads is essential for driving revenue growth, but it requires specialized skills and dedicated focus that most businesses lack internally.
Building an in-house team provides immersion in your business but can be resource-intensive. Freelancers offer flexibility yet struggle with strategic alignment across your marketing. Lead generation agencies deliver complete solutions built on proven methodologies.
No matter which path you choose, the key is prioritizing lead gen as a top priority, breaking down organizational silos, upgrading processes and technology, and partnering with true growth experts.
Are you ready to turn your marketing into a lead-generating machine? With the right lead generation strategy and capabilities in place, you can drive predictable lead flow and accelerate your revenue growth.
It's time to make mastering lead generation a priority if you want to truly scale and hit your ambitious growth goals. Don't leave money on the table - invest in world-class lead gen to maximize your potential.