The dangers of lead generation obsession

In this blog, Hayley Goff, CEO, Whiteoaks, explores why B2B tech businesses need to look beyond lead generation metrics in marketing, including:

Why it’s tempting to focus on lead generation

How this leads to short-term campaigns with no sustained impact

The importance of building credibility and trust over the longer term

In B2B tech marketing, it’s easy to fall into a cycle where everything revolves around lead generation. Targets are set, dashboards are checked and activity is judged on how quickly it produces conversions.

With so much pressure to demonstrate instant progress, lead generation becomes the default measure of success – even when it only creates short bursts of activity rather than lasting momentum.

The fixation is understandable. When the economy is struggling with growth at little more than 1% and marketing budgets are tight, results need to be visible. A channel that produces rapid, trackable outcomes feels like the safest option.

But when lead generation dominates the agenda, the long-term work that shapes how an audience perceives a brand – through credibility, trust and recognition – is pushed aside. Without this foundation, every new lead takes more effort to convert and more time to nurture.

The quick fade of performance marketing

One of the problems in any sector – and that includes B2B technology – is that potential customers have limited attention spans.

They are unlikely to buy from brands they cannot remember or do not immediately associate with anything positive, useful, transformative or just interesting. It means that once a digitally-driven ad campaign exhausts its budget, a brand can be left with precious little.

Performance marketing versus Performance PR

It is important to recognise that Performance PR is significantly different from performance marketing.

The former is a data-driven approach to advertising which focuses on lead gen metrics and immediate wins.

The latter is more strategic and ensures a company’s brand becomes part of the conversation in the right places.

That is not something that happens overnight after a pop-up ad campaign. It requires consistent, unrelenting focus on gaining recognition and respect among the right audiences.

The multiple tactics of Performance PR

Performance PR in the B2B tech sector builds authority for a brand through earned media, the quality of ideas and the way they are expressed in articles and other forms of thought leadership. It extends to briefings with journalists who are experts in their field and write for the most influential publications.

But it also breaks from the traditional narrow focus on media relations to cover social media content, support at events and creative work.

And it is fully integrated, so each element aligns with a brand’s stated aims.

Credibility is the path to conversion

This is how a reputation is built up, brick-by-brick until a business has established its credibility in the market. When levels of credibility are high, leads convert much faster and they are more likely to stay longer.

Without credibility, every sale has to start from establishing the basics of what the business is, where it comes from, what it does and why it should be trusted to deliver on its promises.

When confronted with the reality about lack of trust for their brand, the reaction of many B2B marketers is to compensate with yet more ad spend.

They ignore PR at their cost because they simply end up having to manage even longer sales cycles. And when there is an important shift in the market, their brand is likely to have little resilience.