The Way You Generate Leads Is Changing – Is Your Business Ready?

What would you rather have?

One million people seeing your business – most of whom have absolutely no interest in buying from you?

Or…

3,000 highly targeted prospects who have already demonstrated an interest in what you sell?

For most business owners, the answer is obvious.

And according to entrepreneur and author Daniel Priestley, this is exactly where marketing and lead generation are heading.

I recently watched a fascinating ActionCOACH conversation with Daniel about how AI, social media algorithms and changing buyer behaviour are transforming the way businesses should generate leads.

If you're responsible for growing a business, I strongly recommend watching the video.

Forget Vanity Metrics – It's the RIGHT People Who Matter

For years, businesses have chased followers, impressions, likes and views.

But Daniel explains that social platforms are increasingly able to understand what your content is actually about – and who is most likely to be interested in it.

That creates a very different opportunity.

You may get fewer views.

But those views could increasingly come from exactly the type of people you want as customers.

For a business owner, 500 views from your ideal customers could ultimately be far more valuable than 50,000 views from people who will never buy from you.

Are You Clear About Your Ideal Customer?

One of Daniel's most important points is that businesses need to stop defining themselves primarily by their location or even by the products and services they sell.

Instead, become incredibly clear about your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP).

Who exactly do you want to work with?

What problems do they have?

What are they trying to achieve?

And what knowledge, ideas and intellectual property can you become known for that matters specifically to them?

Get this right and you potentially stop competing simply on price.

The Personal Brand Opportunity

This may make some business owners uncomfortable.

Daniel argues that people trust and engage with people far more than they do faceless company logos.

That means the business owner – and potentially other key people within the organisation – increasingly need to become visible.

If you've been avoiding LinkedIn videos, articles, podcasts or putting your opinions online because you "don't do social media", this section of the video alone is worth watching.

Daniel's advice if you're uncomfortable?

Do it anyway – and get your repetitions in.

Confidence comes through doing.

A Simple Lead Generation System

Probably my favourite practical takeaway from the conversation is Daniel's remarkably simple marketing framework:

SHORT FORM → LONG FORM → LEAD FORM

Short Form

Regular posts and short videos get the attention of your ideal customers.

You're not trying to sell immediately. You're getting the right people to notice you and become interested in what you have to say.

↓

Long Form

Direct interested people towards something that allows them to understand your expertise and value properly.

That could be a longer video, podcast, webinar, article, guide or other useful content.

↓

Lead Form

Once someone understands your value, give them an easy way to signal that they're interested.

An assessment, scorecard, enquiry, diagnostic or another useful next step can turn an anonymous viewer into a genuine prospect.

And there's an important distinction here.

Don't ask people to buy too early.

Short-form content leads to long-form content.

Long-form content leads to the lead form.

Then you have a prospect who already knows something about you and has actively demonstrated an interest in what you do.

That's a very different conversation from traditional cold calling.

Stop Trying to Say Something New Every Day

There's another lesson that I think will resonate with a lot of business owners.

You don't constantly need new ideas.

Daniel argues that your audience needs to encounter your message repeatedly before they really notice and remember you.

His point is brilliantly simple:

You think you've already said it. Your audience probably hasn't heard it.

The best content creators don't necessarily invent a completely different message every day.

They become known for something – and communicate that core message repeatedly in slightly different ways.

That's potentially very liberating for any business owner staring at LinkedIn thinking:

"What on earth am I going to post today?"

Work Backwards From the Sale

Daniel finishes with an extremely practical way of putting the whole strategy together.

Don't start by asking:

"What should I post on LinkedIn tomorrow?"

Start with the end result.

What's the offer?

Then ask:

What would someone need to do to become a lead?

Then:

What longer piece of content would help them understand why that next step is worthwhile?

And finally:

What short-form content could attract the right people to that longer content?

In other words, build your marketing backwards from the outcome you actually want.

Why I Think Business Owners Should Watch This

There is a lot of noise around AI and marketing at the moment.

This conversation is different because it translates what's changing into a simple, practical system that virtually any business owner can understand.

It covers:

• Why getting fewer social-media views may actually be good news
• How algorithms are becoming better at finding your ideal customers
• Why defining your Ideal Customer Persona is becoming increasingly important
• Why personal brands can outperform company brands
• How to become more confident creating content
• Why repetition matters more than constantly inventing new messages
• The Short Form → Long Form → Lead Form strategy
• How to turn content into warm leads rather than simply likes and followers
• How to reverse-engineer your marketing from the sale backwards

Daniel says his businesses have used this approach to generate thousands of warm leads. More importantly for most SME owners, the underlying system is straightforward enough to start implementing without having a huge marketing department.

If you're a business owner wondering where your next generation of leads is going to come from, make some time to watch this video.

Don't just watch it passively.

Watch it with a pen and paper and ask yourself:

Who exactly is my ideal customer?

What do I want to become known for?

What long-form content would genuinely help that customer?

What could I start posting consistently to get those people to notice me?

And finally:

What is the next step I want an interested prospect to take?

Answer those five questions and you may have the foundations of your next lead-generation system.

Watch the video below.