Your business is attracting lots of leads. Congratulations!!

At this point, it’s easy to think that you need to pause your marketing efforts. Because, let’s be honest, why keep pouring into an already full cup?

First, this is a flawed way of looking at it because it assumes that marketing is similar to promotion. But, at its core, marketing is the intersection of a business’s interests and the needs of the consumer. In other words, it’s the process of understanding your customers and eventually building and maintaining relationships with them.

That said, marketing could be an ad, a press release, a brochure, a Twitter account or even a Facebook page. David Packard put it well:

“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.”

So why should you continue marketing even when you have too many leads?

Let’s find out.

#1. Business Continuity

First, let’s look at it this way:

Marketing is like a conversation. In the beginning, it starts with people who don’t know each other well (your business and the prospect). To better understand the other person’s needs, you need to have great conversations (great marketing). Eventually, you will be able to offer amazing products or services accompanied by remarkable customer experiences.

At this point, it’s tempting to stop marketing if you have continuous leads. But, there’s more.

Customer preferences are constantly changing. What is important today may not be so valuable in tomorrow’s environment. Simply, if you don’t keep having the conversations (marketing), then you will miss the changing buyers’ needs and desires.

For example, if you stop posting on social media, your audience will stop engaging with you. Again, if you stop producing valuable content, there’s the risk of your business losing credibility.

The result?

Mismatched goods and services that lead to loss of customers and eventually the drying up of your seemingly endless pipeline of leads.

Secondly, people don’t go from being unaware of your business to being loyal customers all at once. They have to go through various stages—awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation and finally purchase. As each step takes time, you need to keep marketing to help people throughout the customer journey.

#2. Allows You to Innovate

Marketing ensures a constant supply of leads and this gives you the room to innovate and experiment with new ideas. When you pause your marketing efforts, the leads dry up, your bottomline suffers and your business goes into crisis mode.

Instead of investing time and money to find new ways to delight your customers, your focus will be on making ends meet. You’re also likely to make mistakes because you will have little time to evaluate different marketing strategies.

In a nutshell...

Keep Your Business Alive

As seen above, marketing isn’t just about acquiring new customers. It’s also ensuring that you get the most out of the existing buyers and making sure that they stick around as long as possible. By keeping at it, you will close more sales, innovate and keep growing your business.

And if marketing isn’t giving you the results you want, then it’s best to change strategies instead of stopping marketing altogether.

The reason?

If innovation is the heart of any business then marketing is the blood. None can function without the other. If one fails then everything comes to a standstill (or worse, death).

Henry Ford sums it up perfectly:

“A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.”

(Replace advertising with marketing).