Is your marketing approach bringing in the Right Customers?

As an SME leader, you’re no stranger to marketing challenges — limited budgets, ambitious growth targets, and the constant pressure to generate more leads. But there’s a question that often goes unasked: Are those leads the right ones?

Too many businesses focus on volume — chasing lead counts, click-throughs, or follower growth — without stopping to ask whether their efforts are attracting the kind of customers who truly deliver value. The result? Wasted time, inflated costs, and frustrated sales teams working tirelessly on opportunities that were never likely to convert.

Why “fit” matters more than “volume”

The assumption that more leads mean more opportunity can be dangerously misleading. In practice, not all leads are created equal. A flood of low-quality inquiries might look impressive on a dashboard, but if only a fraction convert into profitable, long-term customers, then your marketing spend is effectively diluted.

The hidden cost comes in time and effort. Sales teams often spend hours chasing prospects who turn out to be poor fits — wrong sector, wrong budget, wrong timing. Marketing teams spend more each month to feed the top of the funnel, while conversion rates slide and ROI deteriorates. When the wrong customers make it through, the damage extends beyond wasted spend: projects can become unprofitable, relationships strained, and your brand reputation eroded by mismatched expectations.

The data: how much time and money is wasted?

Several recent studies reveal just how costly this problem can be. According to research from Smarte.pro, sales teams lose around 27% of their time chasing bad or outdated leads. Another study suggests that while 61% of marketers pass every lead to sales, only 27% are genuinely sales-ready — meaning nearly three-quarters of leads should never have reached the pipeline at all.

The financial implications are equally sobering. Across industries, the average cost per lead can range wildly from £167, climbing to more than £3,000 in B2B and SaaS sectors (based on personal experience with clients.

Factor in bad data — which marketing teams estimate wastes between 10% and 35% of their budgets — and that cost per usable lead quickly balloons. Poor targeting, duplicated records, and outdated contact lists can raise acquisition costs by as much as a quarter, while dragging down your sales team’s productivity and morale.

When you consider that sellers in B2B environments already spend more than 70% of their time on non-selling tasks such as research, proposals, and admin, the picture becomes clear: the average SME could be spending more time and money on bad leads than on closing good ones.

What the “right customers” actually look like

So, who are the right customers for your business?

They’re the ones who align with your ideal buyer profile — companies that match your target size, industry, budget range, location, and decision-making structure. Also consider the life time value and potential repeat business derived from your ideal buyer. They value what you offer, are ready to buy, and represent long-term potential rather than short-term wins.

The wrong customers, by contrast, create friction. They haggle over price, stretch project scope, or require disproportionate service relative to the revenue they bring in. Over time, these accounts drain resources that could be spent developing partnerships with clients who genuinely fit your business model.

You can usually tell you’re attracting the wrong crowd when conversion rates dip, deal sizes shrink, or churn rises. Salespeople report that “leads aren’t qualified,” while marketing keeps turning up the volume. At that point, you’re not scaling — you’re spinning your wheels.

Asking the right questions

If you’re unsure whether your marketing is bringing in the right prospects, start by auditing your numbers. What’s your current cost per lead, and how many of those leads are truly qualified? How much time do your salespeople spend validating, following up, and nurturing contacts who ultimately go nowhere?

Look at your lead sources. Which channels are producing profitable customers, and which are filling your CRM with noise? Sometimes, the cheapest sources on paper — mass email lists, broad PPC campaigns, untargeted LinkedIn ads — can be the most expensive once you factor in wasted hours and poor conversion.

Finally, ask yourself whether you have a clearly defined Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Without it, you’re effectively marketing in the dark. A well-defined ICP acts as a filter, allowing your team to focus only on prospects who fit your sweet spot. Communicate this widely within the business, your leads and prospects don’t always need to be generated from your marketing and sales activity.

How to refocus your marketing efforts

The good news is that improving lead quality doesn’t necessarily mean spending more — it’s about spending smarter. Start by tightening your definition of who you want to reach. Develop detailed buyer personas that go beyond job titles to include motivations, pain points, and buying triggers (why not let AI help you define these).

Next, make sure your data supports your strategy. Regularly cleanse and enrich your database to remove duplicates and outdated contacts. Even small improvements in data quality can have an outsized impact on cost per lead and conversion rates. This can feel time consuming, but its going to save you more time and cost in the long run.

Introduce lead scoring to help marketing and sales teams work from the same playbook. By ranking leads based on fit and intent, you’ll ensure that only those most likely to convert reach your salespeople’s desks. Close the feedback loop between teams so marketing can continually refine targeting based on real outcomes.

Finally, don’t overlook the power of retention and referrals. The best customers often come from the ones you already serve. Loyal clients who understand your value proposition will advocate for you far more effectively than cold prospects ever could — and they cost a fraction of the price to acquire. And don’t forget to ASK!

Time for a quick audit

If you want to test the health of your marketing approach, here’s a simple exercise: review your last quarter’s results. How much did you spend generating leads? How many of those were qualified? How many became customers — and what did they contribute to revenue?

You might find that the numbers tell a story of wasted potential. But recognising that gap is the first step towards improvement. With clearer targeting, cleaner data, and tighter collaboration between sales and marketing, you can transform your pipeline from a volume game into a value engine — one that consistently attracts the right customers and drives sustainable growth.

If you’d like some help assessing the performance of your current marketing, why not book in for a Marketing Health Check