The Marketing Conviction: Why Engaged Leads Matter Most

Over the years, through both reading and experience, I’ve reached a simple conviction about marketing: the real battle is not in generating leads, but in transforming them into engaged leads.

If you look at the customer journey, it flows horizontally:

Prospects → Leads → Engaged Leads → Closing

And right at the center lies the most critical point: the engaged lead. Having a lead alone means little — you haven’t won yet. The turning point comes when that lead feels the value you’re offering and starts seeing you as the solution to their problems. That’s when the relationship begins to shift.

The Prospect Puzzle: 10% vs. 90%

Prospects fall into two broad groups:

The 10%: These are the people actively looking for you, or at least for a solution. They know their pain, they’re searching for a fix, and they’re ready to act. Most companies target this segment, investing heavily in SEO, keywords, and search campaigns to capture them.

The 90%: The vast majority of prospects, however, are not looking at all. They’re either happy with what they have, or they’re completely unaware they even have a problem.

Most companies ignore this 90%, even though it represents the largest untapped opportunity.

The Trap: Awareness About Yourself

Here’s where many companies go wrong. When trying to reach the 90%, they create awareness about themselves. They shout, “Here we are!” — but it’s like calling out in a desert. Nobody is listening, because nobody cares about you.

What people care about is:

The value they can get.

The problems they may not even realize they have.

Simply talking about yourself is noise. Talking about value and problems creates resonance.

The Right Way: Education and Value

The real strategy for the 90% is education. That means:

Highlighting the issues prospects face (sometimes before they even realize it).

Showing them a better way than what they have now.

Positioning your solution as the bridge between their current state and their desired state.

This requires investment — in awareness, content, and consistent communication. But it pays back in engaged leads who are far more valuable and loyal than one-off conversions.

For industries like accounting and bookkeeping, this is especially critical. Business owners often don’t realize the risks, inefficiencies, or missed opportunities in their current setup until someone educates them. By becoming that educator, you shift from being a vendor to being a trusted advisor.

Final Thought

Marketing is not just about filling the funnel. It’s about creating meaningful progress through the funnel. The 10% may give you quick wins, but the 90% — if you educate them — will give you growth that’s both scalable and defensible.

At the end of the day, leads don’t matter — engaged leads do.