Best practices for lead generation, marketing automation and revenue generation topics.

Lead Liaison

Best Practices For B2B Lead Nurturing Initiatives Part 1

/1 Comment/in , , /by

Best Practices For B2B Lead Nurturing Initiatives Part 1B2B sales representatives eager to close their commission-based sales all too often rush the entire process which, of course, causes buyer apprehension while heading for the door.  Once could really find benefit in nurturing leads perhaps slightly slower, especially when testing new markets or catering to finicky buyers.  With 2012 nearly in the books, 2013 presents new challenges among what could be our most challenging financial year post-911 yet; therefore, we introduce some lead nurturing best practices to consider when scripting your drip campaigns or initial post-lead capture phone calls. Here’s part 1 of our Best Practices for B2B Lead Nurturing Initiatives.

Landing Page Semantics

Lead nurturing initiatives should begin with an assessment of your landing pages. Your landing pages need perfected before any discussion of nurturing potential B2B interaction commences.  Succinctly purporting your message means becoming the buyer of your own products, perhaps better described as buyer empathy. If your landing pages lack fervor, insightful information or really zero mitigating reasons for potential business customers to request further information, your sales team will lead long, boring and commission-less lives.  Content needs to clearly pronounce your business goals, product usefulness and even the key benefits of buying into these products or services.

Perhaps one powerful, high profile buyer who willfully wrote an honest testimonial about using your services should appear on your landing page.  If you have access to top-ranking spokespersons, this would definitely be the time to employ their services.

Nurturing Through Pre-Sales Preparation

According to recent Marketing Sherpa studies, 27% of captured leads are actually ready for salespeople, leaving 73% which must be nurtured before sales pitches are introduced.  Insightful presales preparation, such as having live demos of products or services in action or informational welcome emails in place, have been known to make the entire sales funnel naturally populate with larger pre-prepped lead volumes; therefore, making a concerted effort in preparing your presales sales campaigns would provide immeasurable quality in both lead captures and less time in continuously polling leads before being shipped off to sales departments.

Tomorrow we’ll finish up with Part 2 of  Best Practices For B2B Lead Nurturing Initiatives. In the meantime, if you think Lead Liaison can help you with your lead nurturing initiatives please let us know!

Lead Liaison

Understanding the Secrets to Successful B2B Lead Nurturing

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Understanding the Secrets to Successful B2B Lead NurturingThe new marketing advantage that businesses use is B2B lead nurturing. B2B lead nurturing is trending because of how effectively it can build relationships, create interest and convert leads into revenue. It is considered to be the most crucial stage in a company’s marketing automation strategy and it has the ability to convert endless solid stream of leads into sales.

These are the secrets to successful B2B lead nurturing that every company needs to consider.

Qualify and Segment Leads First!

If a business has successfully marketed their website, there should be an abundance of potential buyers perusing their website each day. Each buyer has a unique personality, purchasing history, and specific need for their business. Get to know what matters to their business by mapping out a buyer profile (IT, finance, sales, marketing, etc.) and creating content tracks for each buyer profile. Group similar buyers together, so content can be created specifically for each group of potential leads. Use a marketing content map to map content to each buyer persona.

For example, consider a company that sells nails and screws. They might break down their B2B leads into three segments. They will need to create different content directed at companies that need nails and screws, companies that only need nails, and companies that only need screws. There is no point in sending material talking about the necessity of a quality screw, to a business that only purchases nails. That is why qualifying and segmenting is the first step in B2B lead nurturing.

The Right Frequency!

Most buyers are so busy with planning, strategizing, budgeting and their daily paperwork that they don’t have time to read everything that is sent their way. If they feel a potential supplier is bombarding them with new information daily it can quickly become a turn off. B2B lead nurturing articles, tutorials, emails etc. should be sent just often enough to keep them interested without becoming intrusive.

Send Relevant and Beneficial Content!

Think about what that specific lead segments need when creating B2B lead nurturing content. Most buyers are looking for new products and services that will improve efficiency, cut costs, and make them look more valuable to management. All content should start with a title or introduction that specifically addresses how this information will benefit the buyer and ultimately the buyer’s business. It should never reference requests to make a purchase or be created as a way to entice the buyer to commit to a purchase.

For example, the introduction should look like this: “Improve the strength and integrity of any structure by using stainless steel nails.”  Instead of, “Buy stainless steel nails because they are stronger.”  The first one is an example of successful B2B lead nurturing because it focuses on what the lead needs and not on what is being sold.

Remember to keep all B2B lead nurturing efforts straight to the point. The buyer’s time is valuable and it should always be treated that way. B2B lead nurturing is a great way to grow a company, but it has to be directed at the right people, at the right time and with the right information.

Interested in having Lead Liaison help your company with a successful B2B lead nurturing plan? Contact us by filling out the short form on this page.

Lead Liaison

How to Get Your Lead Nurturing Prospects to “Talk” to You

/1 Comment/in , , /by

How to Get Your Lead Nurturing Prospects to "Talk" to YouHave you ever wondered how to get your lead nurturing prospects to talk to you? B2B leads can tell you a lot about themselves through their responses – or lack thereof – to your marketing messages. They can reveal personality, interest, motivation, determination, and authority through their actions following a marketing contact. Successful lead nurturing starts with getting the information you need to make progressively more effective impressions.

But how do you get them to “talk” to you?

Direct response marketers have been doing this for years. DR companies care primarily about – what else – a response, so DR messages are often designed to initiate a specific instant reaction. Often, this means a one-off sale, but non-DR marketing can employ similar strategies in order to nurture leads towards a sales engagement.

In order to uncover vital information about your prospect during the lead nurturing process, response mechanisms should be included in each message that is sent. Here are a few ideas that can be used to provide insight into critical characteristics of your leads:

Act now! One of the mainstays of direct marketing reveals how motivated your lead is, what messages resonate enough to stimulate a response, and what buying authority the lead has.

Want to learn more? Providing teaser content, such as a brief product description, can be effective at collecting email addresses or other contact information, and may even lead to a customer-facing engagement with a sales agent.

Give us suggestions. By requesting opinions, thoughts or recommendations, a lead exposes his interest level, motivation, and buying indicators. This is an enhanced lead nurturing engagement; after all, he is interested enough to take the time to share his thoughts, so this lead may be worth pursuing.

Refer a friend. If a lead is impressed enough to share a message, product or company with friends, relatives or associates then the marketing impression has been effective. Although it’s difficult to determine lead qualities such as motivation, authority or determination, a lead that refers your information may likely be a good candidate for a brand ambassador.

Like us. Through social media, customers can express their support for your company. Social media “plugs” are good indicators of a lead’s personality. For example, sharing support for your product indicates she enjoys social networking and may possibly be influential.

Get prices instantly. If prices are not listed publicly, a lead can indicate motivation, determination, and personality by requesting pricing. A website widget that collects an email address and instantly delivers a price quote may reveal that the lead needs your solution and is ready to buy or is a price-driven decision maker.

A creative way to further conversations with your prospects is by using marketing automation techniques such as those found in Lead Liaison to reactive to link clicks in an email. For example, if a prospect clicks any link or a specific link as described above then add the prospect into a different nurturing “track” or send them another piece of content that’s relevant to the message they’re responding to.

There are many ways to generate valuable information about your leads. For more ideas to create a successful lead nurturing contact a Lead Liaison representative today.

Lead Liaison

Progressive SEO Tactics Which Define Inbound Marketing

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Progressive SEO Tactics Which Define Inbound Marketing You’ve probably studied numerous search engine optimization tactics which assist your business in saving money normally spent on marketing efforts.  The general consensus states you’ve probably read how inbound marketing tactics will grow your business by producing enticing content which organically ranks.  Combining both SEO tactics and inbound marketing efforts into one sweet package, however, is an area we’ll implore your astute business sense in today, providing specific steps on how progressive SEO tactics which define inbound marketing can redefine your business presence online.  Content is great, keywords are necessary and meta data definitely needs accuracy.  We’ll stretch well beyond those ideologies today, however, and bring your link efforts to light by introducing better content strategies.

Solving The Keyword Puzzle

It may seem trivial to many businesses; however, when businesses begin their online explorations they need to clearly define keywords before opening their doors, yet you’d be surprised how inaccurately this is done.  Many people use the Google Keyword Research Tool to find their highly relevant and widely searched keywords, hoping to vault immediately ahead of competition.  Sure, it works to a point.  What would be even better is employing keyword co-occurrence, otherwise called semantic connectivity.  Since recent updates to algorithmic patterns mean content is under fire, choosing words which naturally have similar meaning or belong with each other will make your keyword selection seem less forceful.  For example, let’s say you operate a music website; here is the old way and new way.

  • Older way to choose keywords: music, musical, a music, music a, music store
  • Newer way to choose keywords: audio, melodies, tunes, sounds, beats, songs

As you can see, we’re using synonyms of these keywords as our main website meta data.  We’ll then write content which blends these terms into something which naturally looks like it belongs.  Why is this relevant to inbound marketing? The more natural your content is written without forcing keywords, the greater relevance Google will find in your content which organically raises your position in search results.

Buddy Up With Blogs

Next phase of inbound SEO is how Google will adjudicate relationships you’ve formed with similar niche sites.  To increase your site’s worth, the evolution of guest blogging has now become hotter than ever, and for perfect reasons.  Instead of comment spamming to get relevant links, we’ll need to locate blogs related to your business and write for them with only one relevant deep site link in either your author bio or within content (depending on site rules).  How do we find guest blogs?  Here are some specific ways we can do this:

  • Use My Blog Guest to find blog or site owners looking for relevant content.  Write the content to their specifications with specific reference to a blog post within your own blog.  Sign your guest post with author biography dictating what your business or blog is about.
  • Search Google cold-turkey by using the following search query – blog: “submit guest post”.  You could specify “powered by WordPress” or even throw a specific keyword in your search query.  Alternatively, you could simply search for ‘top places to submit guest post’ and sift through thousands of blogs all day to find your niche.  Not exactly effective time management, however, to take this route when better search strings are available to use.

Once you’ve found relevant blogs where your content can reside, and upon approval of your post, you can write another post on your site with the title of your recently approved guest post as a themed link. This gives you both juice and makes people want to follow your other stories.

Why is this relevant to inbound marketing? Simply put, Google wants your content to contain inbound and outbound links to content which is similar to your own instead of boring contextual links parked in your link section.  The more you guest post and share your ideas with others, the more others will be drawn back to your content.

Making Internal Connections

Equally important to inbound marketing is tactically linking content together within your website to tell Google that everything you’re writing about or selling is relevant to each other, and keywords which you’ve chosen to target.  This is great for not only getting better page ranks, but also perfect for targeting search traffic to generate customer traffic specifically targeted to your businesses.  Making sure to link each keyword to specific keywords which belong together between content will greatly improve your inbound marketing efforts.

Ideas To Increase Content Readability

Since the greatest inbound marketing tactic which professional SEO companies will not tell you is organic rankings are golden, your efforts all begin with providing readable content your readers can relate to.  These readers will naturally find you if your content doesn’t appear to be repetitious, and avoiding repetition means coming up with well-discovered content from your own expertise and not copied from other sources.  Let’s look at several ways that naturally relevant content can create organic SEO opportunities which directly feed into the definition of inbound marketing.

  • Solve problems. You can write how-to’s, funny literature and content which seems to be heart-felt yet people have issues, and your business needs to address consumer woes and solve them. When writing your content, keep in mind prevalent worldwide issues.  Address the issues, what problems these issues are causing, and how you plan on defeating these problematic areas.  Constantly telling people how to do something will rob your business of customers as you’ll simply teach consumers how not to use your product or service.
  • Answer questions. If your website or blog receives lots of inquiries, perhaps spend your time writing content which collectively answers these questions.  When people feel suppressed by your solvency, they’ll be more apt to purchase from you or at least follow your content closer.
  • Debrief customers. People always wonder how things work in boiler rooms, office meetings or in datacenters.  Deliver a sense of demystification by describing what really goes on behind closed doors so people feel more ‘in the loop’ with you.  Making people feel completely in control opens more doors, and brings better meaning to word of mouth advertising.
  • Provide visualizations. Google loves videos, great content and website interaction.  You can easily combine the three to propel your inbound marketing efforts to the next stratosphere by making videos of your content, and even providing afterthoughts under the video.  When people have visual verification you exist, the walls come down and more business will come your way.

The Main Inbound Marketing SEO Tactic Is Content

If you list every possible search engine optimization method known to man, many relate to outbound marketing.  Link building, social sharing, PPC and other major forms of generating mass traffic are all relevant to shouting at customers instead of letting them find you.  Content creation, both through guest blogging and self-published works, is the best and only effective mannerism which inbound marketing truly comes to form.  Content may not be ‘king’ in the books of many SEO professionals, yet Google is proving through recent changes that more brownie points are given to websites which have useful, well-researched and deeply linked content as opposed to those who have millions of irrelevant links or multitudes of social media followings.

Lead Liaison

Why Do Modern Businesses Need Lead Nurturing?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Why Do Modern Businesses Need Lead Nurturing? Every business needs a systematic lead nurturing plan if they hope to stay competitive in today’s marketplace. Times are changing and every company’s marketing efforts have to change along with it. Thanks to online capabilities the world is now an open market and no customer is out of reach.  By having a reputable, high ranking online profile, the possibilities for growth are exponential.  Below are three examples of why modern businesses need lead nurturing.

To qualify, find & segment leads first!

Leading nurturing starts with a proven marketing automation program that is designed to find and qualify potential leads. There are countless potential leads surfing the web every day, but searching for leads manually is too time consuming (and costly) for anyone to do it with any real success. Automated systems like Lead Liaison helps businesses track and qualify leads and then segment them into definable groups. By grouping leads based on demographics, personal interests, similar browser history and any other criteria important to your business nurturing can be personalized without having the daunting task of targeting each prospect specifically. Lead nurturing can then be geared towards a pre-determined set of leads that share common goals and backgrounds.

To provide quality information!

Every lead nurturing email, article, free report or tutorial needs to be created with the lead’s interests and desires in mind. It has to grab their attention and provide real value, so they are inspired to continue reading. By understanding a  leads interests, the information that is sent can be catered specifically to topics that they want to learn more about. Modern businesses need to send out quality information regularly to build trust and establish themselves as experts in their specific field. A lead is more likely to convert when they feel confident in their choice.

To stay competitive!

The global marketplace not only creates more opportunities to find leads, it also creates more choices for the lead. A customer today can choose any supplier in the world. A smart shopper will comparison-shop to make sure they are getting the best product or service, at the best price from the best supplier. That is why every modern business needs lead nurturing to convert leads. They need to do something to make their business stand out as the leader in the field. If they neglect to nurture every potential lead, another business will do it.

If a company neglects opportunities created by marketing automation and lead nurturing, they will lose out to businesses who have already contacted the lead and leverage marketing automation technology. That is why it is crucial that every company has a strategic plan for generating, qualifying, segmenting and converting leads into sales through quality lead nurturing. A modern business won’t be able to stay competitive if they are not practicing lead nurturing.  Don’t fall behind the times and let your competitors take away your business!

Lead Liaison

10 Winning Email Drip Campaigns – Part 2

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

10 Winning Email Drip Campaigns – Part 2Email drip campaigns can be an effective lead nurturing tool if used appropriately. Email provides a convenient way to establish trust among leads that take time to cultivate, and allows you to build a relationship without offending prospects. There is a variety of useful ways you can inform, assist, and entertain your leads while they go through their buying decision cycles.

In 10 Winning Email Drip Campaigns – Part 1, we covered five effective options that can be used for lead nurturing purposes. Here are five more that experts agree will boost your lead nurturing effectiveness:

  1. Free Resources – Providing a link to a tool or resource that your prospects can use is a great way to show that you are interested in being helpful, that you wish to be an ally. For example, if your market includes companies that provide financial investment advice, provide links to popular trading software products. Online financial calculators, website keyword analyzers, and energy conversion charts are commonly used examples of helpful tools.
  2. Industry Surveys – Send relevant data that gives your prospects a view into what peers are thinking. Information about trends or opinions can provide valuable insight to your email recipients. One strategy might be to conduct your own survey and furnish the results as part of a drip campaign.
  3. Industry News – Creating awareness about important news can be an effective method of building trust. Many business professionals like to be informed about their industry, so sending a brief message that includes a link to a recent news article provides a reason to make contact – and a way to remain relevant in your prospects’ eyes.
  4. Blogs – Why not provide a link to your blog in an email message? Using this technique combines the marketing power of email and blog posts in your lead nurturing strategy. One good way to promote your company and nurture leads is to share recent posts, but be sure to remain sensitive to the frequency with which you are contacting prospects.
  5. Videos and Images – Visual content can help to achieve TOMA in your prospects’ minds. Sending a useful how-to video or a funny (but tasteful) cartoon can provide a nice break in their routine and build a relationship over time. It’s most effective when you use content that is relevant to your B2B prospect or your offering.

There are a few things to keep in mind when you design your drip campaign. First and foremost, touch points should not be stale rehashes of previous messages. Secondly, every message should be designed to provide value to your prospects. Third, it’s best to integrate a variety of content within a linear campaign; provide content that builds engagement as the number of contacts increases.

While you nurture leads through a drip campaign you should avoid overexposure. On average a schedule of blasts every 2 to 4 weeks is appropriate. And don’t forget to include opt-out links within your email messages to avoid being labeled as spam.

To find out how we design effective email campaigns for lead nurturing, contact a Lead Liaison representative today!

Lead Liaison

10 Winning Email Drip Campaigns – Part 1

/1 Comment/in , , , /by

Winning Email Drip Campaigns – Part 1Lead nurturing can be accomplished through several channels: phone, direct mail, social media, and email. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, nearly 60% of Internet users check email daily, so a winning email drip campaign is a logical choice for lead nurturing.

Studies show it takes an average of 3 to 30 impressions to become successful at creating interest through an email marketing campaign. So how can you be effective at lead nurturing through a drip campaign without filling your prospects’ mailboxes with useless marketing fluff? The short answer: provide value. Although the purpose of a drip campaign is to create top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) for your offering, each message should be valuable to your audience while earning trust in your company.

In this two-part series, we’ll discuss 10 ways to provide useful information that makes an email drip campaign effective and engaging. The ideas in this series are not presented according to any specific metric, but each should be used within a comprehensive engagement strategy in order to be effective at nurturing leads.

  1. Newsletter – Invite prospects to subscribe to your newsletter. Avoid simply asking for a subscription; provide a sample of the content to whet a prospect’s appetite for more information. By giving readers a sample of stories it will allow them to determine if a subscription would be beneficial. One effective technique is to provide the actual headline and a portion of the article with a Read More link to a signup form.
  2. Best Practices – Business professionals are constantly seeking ways to improve. By providing information that assists your prospects in their business activities, your company gains trust and value. For B2B consulting or B2B service vendors,  providing free information can be effective in persuading prospects to purchase premium offerings, such as research studies or software development contracts.
  3. White Papers – Thought leadership is a highly coveted position among B2B marketers. Producing white papers filled with relevant statistics and hard-to-find data has been shown to be a productive means of lead nurturing. Introduce prospects to your white paper through email messages. Use a lead-in within your message to generate interest. You can create several drip messages by highlighting different findings within the paper.
  4. Info-graphics – Create a visually appealing email filled with statistics and other data for quick consumption. USA Today is a major media outlet, due in part to its focus on easily digestible graphs, charts, and lists. This strategy works for B2B email campaigns because readers are often sifting through multiple emails at a time. An info-graphic gives prospects a quick dose of relevant information and provides a valuable reason to reach out to your prospects.
  5. Webinar – Sending an invitation to a free webinar you are hosting or participating in can provide value to your leads. One effective technique is to introduce event topics and presenters in the email message. It helps to provide an easy registration process and a follow up message with simple connection steps to make attendance easy for your prospects.

It’s important to schedule email blasts with a frequency that isn’t too pushy but allows you to achieve TOMA as soon as possible. In Winning Email Drip Campaigns – Part 2 we’ll discuss five more ways to nurture leads by providing value to your prospects through effective email messages.

For more ideas on drip campaigns and other lead nurturing strategies that boost your marketing effectiveness, contact us today!

Lead Liaison

Guaranteed Lead Proliferation Using Sales 2.0

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Guaranteed Lead Proliferation Using Sales 2.0For those who desire cutting-edge sales techniques for turning warm leads into constant streams of B2B sales traffic, current Web 2.0 technologies and normal sales stratagems collide head first into lead proliferation principles using Sales 2.0. This incredible art of social selling and collaboration opportunity, which every marketing professional has been seeking for years, has come in handy when B2B lead generation schemes have tightened down over the past decade.  Since many businesses spend hours online researching products and services which you offer, socialization seems to make sense when trying to push leads through funnels ready to close sales indefinitely.  Here’s how increases in sales flow comes with Sales 2.0.

Changes Sales Strategy

Under normal circumstances, B2B lead calls open with who you are and what you offer; since Sales 2.0 has turned normally lengthy sales calls into more unique sales presentation opportunities, the need for introduction becomes moot since social media and Web 2.0 handle your ‘who you are’ for you.  Focusing on how you can help B2B customers becomes the central focus instead of uncomfortable introductions which tend to throw off your sales balance.  Overall, changes in sales strategy are formed through proliferation of social media channels and make your sales pitches even more fine-tuned than before.  This increase in lead ‘security’ only gets better as time goes by and campaigns are refined.

Recent Metrics Show Us Hope

Since marketing professionals always seek the easiest road to sales closure, recent Sales 2.0 figures collected from various sources reveal just how powerful your campaigns can become when collaborating Web 2.0 with regular sales mediums.  These stats show just how important Sales 2.0 is:

  1. B2B sales reps are 30% guaranteed to hit sales targets using competitive strategies
  2. Roughly 46% of sales professionals believe their pipeline accurately displays future B2B sales
  3. Over 51% of projected sales deals never close
  4. One in nearly five sales personnel emphasize the value of each product or service sold
  5. Sales 2.0 is nearly 40% more likely to attract new B2B leads than print advertisements

Making social media and old school bull-nosed sales tactics work for your business to business customer interactions simply makes sense for the future, and is the current reality in marketing nomenclature.

Getting Your Crew 2.0 Prepped

Many different advanced sales techniques are wrapped into Sales 2.0 packaging, especially when LinkedIn and advanced CRM communication devices are implemented daily.  Imagine marketing through RSS while serving that particular feed into mobile devices; it gets that down and dirty.  To adequately handle B2B sales at this level, specific preparations need to be made within your own sales crews, like:

  1. Understanding what business entities are active on your website although no forms were completed.
  2. Conjugating thought leadership properly and funneling organizational social media campaigns with hefty marketing incentives to create an aura of positive salesmanship.
  3. Supporting sales processes, nurturing leads which are aged and effectively communicating returned leads from sales departments so new marketing directives can be invocated.

Conclusion

Remember, the end result of any Sales 2.0 campaign strategy is having an effective manner of marketing professionals funneling leads into sales for closure.  If closure isn’t within the realm of attainability, leads need to head back into marketing for reworking.  Web 2.0 and your current sales strategies, when combined into one exponentially powerful system, will guarantee lead proliferation simply because Sales 2.0 cannot fail when every phase of marketing and sales are in complete syncopation with each other.

Lead Liaison

Lead Nurturing for B2B Marketing

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Lead Nurturing for B2B MarketingHave you ever wondered what lead nurturing for B2B marketing is? A successful company expects to have hundreds, even thousands, of visitors on their website each day. If companies setup effective promotional offers, catchy call to actions and dynamic landing pages then there are opportunities to convert approximately 3% of these visitors into known leads (person is identified). The trick becomes converting these leads into revenue. One critical strategy companies should use to increase their lead conversion rate is a well-executed lead nurturing campaign.

A lead nurturing campaign is the bridge that transitions leads from one stage in the buying process to the next. Companies can bridge this gap by sending a series of automated emails to leads intending to educate them and give them a “call to action” which progresses a lead to the next stage. As the lead is directed through the planned stages there should only be subtle suggestions to convert, with the content aimed mainly at building a solid and trusted relationship.

Lead nurturing for B2B marketing is a discipline focused on qualified sales leads that are not currently looking to make a purchase. Consequentially, a successful B2B lead nurturing campaign involves delivering content that has noticeable value and is compelling enough to engage a lead. If it is done well, lead nurturing can build a strong brand and make a company the preferred provider long before the prospect has even begun the buying process. Lead nurturing software allows for qualified sales leads to be tracked, while relevant content is automatically delivered through a variety of proven B2B marketing channels.

One objective of lead nurturing for B2B marketing is to maintain a visitor’s permission to stay in contact with them.  This is the most crucial objective of lead nurturing and without it a company will lose the lead completely. Content has to be catchy and informative to keep the prospect interested. If the lead does not see sufficient value, they will disengage by unsubscribing or by filtering lead nurturing efforts as spam. Recipients can also just ignore or immediately delete the message, which defeats the entire purpose.

Another key of lead nurturing for B2B marketing is providing ideas, information, or points of comparison through strategic education. A potential buyer may not be interested in making a purchase for a while, which means a company has the opportunity to gently persuade them over a longer period of time. During critical lead nurturing periods, content should be used to educate prospects and guide their thinking in the right direction. Content should incorporate specific requirements and ways of viewing the market which will convey thought leadership. This way, once they are ready to buy, they will be convinced that choosing the source behind the useful information they received is the only way to go.

Lead nurturing for B2B marketing is a powerful and effective way to automatically stay engaged with qualified leads. By doing this right, a company can establish buyer preference, recommend solutions related to a specific product and successfully convert leads into sales. This is only possible if the lead nurturing program delivers relevant content that also offers value to the lead and keeps them interested enough to preserve their permission to stay in contact.

Lead Liaison

Lead Nurturing Best Practices and Stages

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Lead Nurturing Best Practices and StagesThere are several lead nurturing best practices and stages to be aware of. Absence of effective lead nurturing practices results in the loss of 79% of generated sales leads according to a research by MarketingSherpa. Lead nurturing has emerged as a key concern for organizations as today’s B2B buyers prefer to educate themselves about a product before committing to buy it. They spend more time on research and studying info about product features, usability and customer services before engaging with the seller’s representative. Again not all prospects are interested in buying your products. But you can attract and drive their interest through constant engagements and by conveying time-appropriate messages.

All these present before us challenges of a sales funnel with a widening top and a complex sales cycle that require an organization to nurture leads with efficient process and targeted content while preventing any leakage of leads. An ill-equipped and inappropriate lead nurturing process may lead to a leaky sales funnel and high customer acquisition cost, blunting effective utilization of marketing automation strategy. The following are some important steps to streamline your lead nurturing practices for better results.

Start With An Impression

Start on an influential note. Identify and analyze the interests, exact needs, and behavior of prospected customers and help them build awareness accordingly. Create a pool of sources to enable yourself to draw and share explicit and implicit information as industry trends and customer behavior. Present yourself in an attractive way to generate their interest and influence their choice. Make sure the information you provide exactly matches what they look for. A deeper relationship and sense of trust thus created over a period of time is certain to influence the purchase decision.

Reinforce Impression

Send timely and personalized messages to reinforce your impressive start. You must have meaningful communication with focus on educating customers. Wherever possible, share whitepapers, podcasts, blogs, videos, which will reinforce your brand identity and product value proposition. Also, share your success story and demonstrate your value over competitors.

Sustain Prospect’s Interest

At this stage, keep your focus on maintaining the level of interest you have created in prospective customers and steer their choice to your advantage. Share feedbacks, show third-party information, and organize webinars to sustain communication. It is important to plan and control the process so that the relationship does not face any bottlenecks and create trust deficit.

Seal The Deal

If you have sufficient indication to think that a prospective lead is “purchase ready,” then propose a deal to them. The sales team should take over and send them a proposal based on your awareness of their purchase need and references. Follow up with a personalized message seeking their response. If possible, offer a free trial.

For sustained communication leading to a high percentage of lead conversion, keep a few additional things in mind.

  1. Keep the communication language simple and comprehensible with a considerate view of the real world
  2. Focus on prospective customer’s interest, likes, and dislikes while following leads or nurturing campaigns
  3. Ensure that your interaction with prospective customers is not highly pitched or of low mettle
  4. Send right message at prospect‘s time of preference
  5. Keep the communication meaningful and responsive
  6. Messages must include personalized and customer-specific message
  7. Avoid generic contents to the extent possible