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The Ebb and Flow of Leads
I’m feeling a little zen this morning in Los Angeles, and I’m wondering if your businesses tend to follow how mine’s been, at least for the past year.
It feels like, outside of ongoing repeat work, that the leads we get tend to cluster. We’ll get 5 or 6 really good leads within a week (I discard the bad leads, can’t count those). Then, it’ll be some time in between, where we will perhaps get one or two leads. Then, back to a cluster.
I’ve looked at the calendar, and tried to predict these clusters, but so far I don’t see a pattern, really. But it’s an interesting phenomenon. I’ve tried tracing it back to our Google rankings- but no correlation. Also accounted for any advertising, or marketing. The only slight correlation I’ve found is related to end-of-quarter spends by companies, since we do a lot of corporate video production as well as TV stuff. But it’s a very weak correlation.
P
I shoot people.
http://www.patrickortman.com -
3 Replies
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I see a longstanding trend in our sector, it involves the approaching end of a budget period and the clients find they have reserved some money that hasn’t yet been spent. If they don’t spend it, the higher-ups will automatically assume the group can get by with that much less next year, and cut the budget by that amount.
So, the approach of the fiscal end-of-year tends to get some projects off their launching pad that have sat around for a while, just to spend the money. These projects, I find, tend to have the most problems in production, due to less lead time for planning, and a lower overall level of commitment from above.
Of course, we work as hard on these as we do on anything else, but the feedback is often less. I don’t want to say any of these latecomer projects are not done earlier because they not worth it – a cynic might say that, but, that’s not really the case.
Really, it’s more about having a longer list of very appropriate and relevant “wants” than the resources will ever allow you to produce, so the prioritization can be somewhat cruel. It doesn’t mean the project that just missed the cut for funding isn’t also a legitimate and important piece of work. Just that you can’t save them all when the house is burning down around you. Hopefully, the ones that missed the cut this year get first try next fiscal year.
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I certainly can’t argue with that, although in our case I know that’s not the only thing. The correlation I found between end-of-quarter was pretty weak (although it did exist). End-of-year spends hiring us is an almost-nil, actually. Which I’m thankful for- nobody likes working long hours in Thanksgiving-Christmas-Etc-Land.
I dunno, maybe it’s what you say, that “corporate says we gotta spend this money now or lose it forever”, plus synchronicity weirdness.
I shoot people.
http://www.patrickortman.com -
Not everyone is on the same financial calendar, remember. Ours for example starts and ends in June.
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