Lead nurturing is an excellent tool for new prospects; especially those who aren’t quite ready to buy yet. Lead nurturing helps sales people build relationships with prospects while ensuring prospects keep the vendors solutions top-of-mind. All of this is great for prospects; but, what about the benefits to existing customers? Businesses rarely think of lead nurturing as a tool to help their customers. Let’s explore one way you can use lead nurturing to keep your customers.
Simply put, lead nurturing will help keep your customer’s business. Let’s suppose you’re running a subscription-based business. Every year, or every contract period, customers need to renew. Discussing renewals with customers you’ve rarely communicated with over the current contract period can be uncomfortable at times. It’s natural to think – “if ain’t broke don’t fix it” – so why wake the sleeping dog. But, is that the best way to practice business? Nurturing your customers during their contract period will keep the relationship warm and invite your customer to provide you with feedback. But remember, it is imperative you send lead nurturing content from a person, such as an Account Manager, rather than a company. Company-to-individual communications are much more impersonal than one-to-one communications.
Even if your company is not selling subscriptions then they’re probably selling perpetual licenses – unless they’re in the business of providing services only. Most perpetual licenses have a Maintenance and Support fee associated with them. Consider the opportunity to use lead nurturing to secure customer’s Maintenance and Support payments as well.
Start using lead nurturing to keep your customers payments coming and you’ll find your renewals, as well as relationships, much easier to manage!
Learn how Lead Liaison’s nurturing solutions can help you secure revenue with your existing customers! Contact us today!
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
https://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.png00Lead Liaisonhttps://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.pngLead Liaison2011-08-25 05:57:572014-09-16 14:47:50Lead Nurturing to Keep Your Customers
A recent study by Marketing Sherpa showed a breakdown of B2B marketing budgets in 2011. Frankly, I’m shocked to see how businesses are allocating their marketing dollars. I propose B2B marketing companies re-prioritize their budgets by re-allocating dollars from one marketing investment to another to produce a higher ROI and generate more revenue. Specifically, marketing investments in website design and trade shows should be decreased while marketing investments in social media, marketing automation and lead nurturing should be increased.
Increasing B2B Marketing Budgets
Marketers must recognize it’s a buyer’s world. More and more buyers conduct research online before ever contacting a vendor. The internet-era changed the landscape of sales and marketing. Data sheets, white papers, webinars, blogs, forums, public profiles, employees, competitors and more can be researched without ever picking up the phone. It’s the same concept as in the B2C world when consumers buy a car. Case in point, Polk and Autotrader.com conducted a survey of 4,005 U.S. consumers and found 71% of those surveyed conducted research online before buying their car.
The same process applies to the B2B world. More than 80% of B2B buyers research the internet for answers about products and services before calling a sales rep. With the proliferation of mobile phones and tablets this percentage will surely rise. B2B marketers have got to be in the right place at the right time (social media), monitor/listen to buyer’s behavior (marketing automation) and engage prospective buyers (lead nurturing). As the volume of online and/or digital activity increases, so does the opportunity to interact and engage with potential buyers. Lead nurturing helps B2B marketers create meaningful dialogue with prospects based on their research and interests. The net result of lead nurturing is stronger relationships and shorter sales cycles as prospects will keep you top of mind through consistent and on-target communications. For these reasons B2B marketing budgets should include social media, lead nurturing and marketing automation as a high priority.
But, what if there’s no more money in the budget for these items? That’s an easy problem to solve. Reduce investments in website design and trade shows and re-appropriate the funds.
Decreasing B2B Marketing Budgets
Trade shows are generally a thing of the past and put pressure on B2B marketing budgets. We’re not implying you completely do away with trade shows; however, reduced investment should be considered. Trade shows are expensive and usually cost about $10,000 minimum just to get in the door. Do yourself a favor and analyze ROI from past trade shows. The easiest way to do this is to look at past sales wins and identify if the lead came from a trade show. If you can’t tie revenue to your trade show investments they’re not worth it. Although, attending a trade show might help prospects recognize your brand/image; sometimes you’ve just got to show up. My advice is to pick a few select trade shows that you must attend and get an exhibitor pass for the others.
As for website design, I encourage B2B companies consider moving their website into a content management system (CMS) such as Drupal or WordPress. These tools have very professional off-the-shelf themes and several plug-ins for search engine optimization, blog authoring and more. You might spend a little more up front to change your site but its well worth it over time. Many of the processes which you rely on 3rd parties for can be automated and you’ll have more control over your content and of course, reduce costs.
Take your money saved from trade shows and website development and invest in social media, lead nurturing and marketing automation.
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
There’s a lot of talk on the web about marketing automation; consequently, sales automation gets left behind. Although, it’s arguably the most important thing! Are you looking to provide automation for your sales team? If yes, you’ve found the right corner of the web. Sales automation software helps organizations improve productivity, relationships and employee satisfaction – all key contributors to revenue generation. Three core technologies make up a sales automation software package. We’ll discuss these three technologies and to help you understand how software simplifies a sales person’s life and can get your company on the fast track to higher revenue.
The Ideal Way
Ideally, every business would fully automate their sales processes if they could. However, that’s not possible especially given the need for most B2B companies to personalize the sale. The “human touch” is often times a requirement, especially for B2B companies with transactional-based businesses. Regardless of your sales process almost every lead goes through the following lead management life-cycle:
Many of the pieces in the lead management life-cycle can be automated using sales automation software. Three key areas that must be automated to achieve an effective sales process are sales prospecting, lead qualification and lead nurturing.
Core Sales Automation Software Technologies
Automating Sales Prospecting
Sales automation software makes prospecting easy by integrating company, people, news, job, competitor, social media profiles and financials together in a single platform. Additionally, sales automation software natively integrates a professional contact database of millions of people making it easy for sales to find prospective buyers who match their target profile in a single click. With a second click, sales can import the contact along with their full contact information into their CRM.
Automating Lead Qualification
Sales automation software automatically qualifies leads by listening to a prospect as they interact with your marketing material. For example, monitoring a lead’s online behavior as they traverse your company’s website. When key buying signals are met and/or the prospect meets your qualification criteria they become a marketing qualified lead (MQL). At that point, the lead is ready for sales. Sales automation software quickly delivers leads to sales by sending a text message and/or email alert. Advanced sales automation software also pushes hot leads into a CRM such as Salesforce.com and automatically schedules a task for sales to follow up.
Automating Lead Nurturing
Sales automation software automatically nurtures leads to advance them through the sales pipeline. The majority of all sales people don’t have time to follow up with all their leads especially if the lead is not quite ready to buy just yet. Let’s say a marketing qualified lead is presented to sales via sales automation software, sales has a call with the prospect, but the prospect is in research-mode only. Nine times out of ten the sales person will take some notes, update their CRM and move on to the next hottest lead – the “archived” lead is forgotten. Lead nurturing automates the sales process by sending personalized (looking like it comes from sales and sent from one individual to another) emails over time to help sales build a relationship and connection with the prospect. More importantly, the prospect won’t forget about the sales person (and their solutions) either. When the prospect is ready to buy, sales will know.
Finding a great sales automation software package to deliver sales prospecting, lead qualification and lead nurturing is not easy. Fortunately, Lead Liaison has one. If you’re interested in sales automation software and much more let us know!
What part of the sales process not mentioned above would you like to automate?
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
Many businesses rely on email as a means to communicate with their prospects and customers. Unfortunately, plain vanilla email has become prehistoric. Intelligent email automation is necessary to hold meaningful, relevant and interesting conversations with prospects and customers.
Not using intelligent email automation has the following drawbacks:
• It takes more time as individual emails need to be crafted and sent
• Communications are usually one to one and not one to many
• It’s ineffective since the same messages are broadcast out to a large group
• There’s no interaction and opportunity to converse with your prospects/customers
Don’t make the mistake of thinking email marketing is email automation, it’s not. Email marketing is great for things like newsletters; however, email marketing doesn’t understand how recipients engage or interact with email messages. Also, email marketing requires marketers to manually dig through reports to analyze email opens. Additionally, email marketing has misled marketers to believe ROI is measured on email opens.
Email automation technology solves these problems. It helps marketers measure the true ROI of email campaigns by presenting who’s genuinely interested in real-time. Email automation is commonly called lead nurturing or closed loop email marketing. When marketers automate email they’re able to nurture leads. Here’s an example of an email automation process:
• Marketer sends a single email message to many recipients
• Message is personalized by using the recipient’s name, company and other credentials
• Recipient opens the email message and clicks a link of interest in the email
• Lead tracking technology shows which link was clicked and tracks the recipient’s entire online behavior (pages viewed, web forms submitted, content downloaded, etc.)
• Email automation kicks in and triggers a series of related, future communications based off the recipients interests thereby nurturing the lead
By using email automation businesses can increase marketing efficiency and build stronger relationships with prospects and customers. Using intelligent automation results in closer engagement between a buyer and a seller as two-way conversations occur vs. one-way “email blasts”.
To learn how Lead Liaison’s email automation can help nurture your leads contact us using the form on this page at the top right.
How has email automation helped you nurture leads?
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
A recent report from MarketingSherpa shed some light on why people unsubscribe from emails. In this article we’ll discuss the top three reasons and incorporate personal experiences as examples. In a follow up article we’ll suggest a solution to eliminate these problems.
Top 3 Reasons Why People Unsubscribe
First, 53% of respondents unsubscribed from emails when content did not interest them. This reminds me of a personal situation I recently experienced. An email landed in my inbox inviting me to learn more about security firewalls. I’ve never expressed interest in these types of solutions nor have I ever researched them. I hit the unsubscribe button.
Second, staying on an email list results in more unsolicited spam. I’ll share another personal example. Although I can’t recall how, I must have signed up for a sales and marketing newsletter at some point. Time passed, I forgot who I signed up with. I’m convinced my information got passed out to a 3rd party who is now licensing it to others. Now, I get about 3-5 emails per week from list vendors trying to sell me contacts. It’s frustrating too; they don’t have a link for me to unsubscribe. I hit the spam button.
Third, people unsubscribe when they receive emails too often. Sure enough, I’ve got an example to use for this reason as well. The example also relates to the first point, sending irrelevant content. My wife and I were considering the purchase of a new car, an Acadia Denali to be exact. About one month back we decided to request a quote through a GMC dealership online. We got an email quote from the online manager moments later. A few days later the online manager called me up. I took about 15 minutes to explain our situation. We let him know we had a few cars we need to trade in first before we’re able to buy. The online manager committed to look into buying our cars. Everything was going great, at least it seemed that way.
5 days later we decided to go into the dealership to test drive the car for the first time. We were upfront with them and told them about our experience online and that we made contact with the online manager. Here’s the kicker. For the next three weeks following our in-person visit I received emails saying things like “what do we have to do to earn your business?” and another email offering me an opportunity to buy a bunch of other cars before they go to auction. My reply to that is “I already told you, I need to sell my cars and no, I’m only interested in the Acadia Denali”. It seems the dealership didn’t listen to my interests and failed to respond in relevant ways based on my interaction. Their communication was irrelevant and too frequent during this follow up period. I’ve since unsubscribed.
Why do you think people unsubscribe from emails?
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
Source: MarketingSherpa
https://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.png00Lead Liaisonhttps://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.pngLead Liaison2011-06-17 11:26:062014-09-16 15:49:46Why People Unsubscribe from Emails
Successful lead nurturing programs have good planning, proper process and great content. Unfortunately, many companies never get to the “great content” step in lieu of perceived difficulty in creating lead nurturing material. We thought we would share a sample lead nurturing email and highlight unique points about the email that are generally applicable to all your lead nurturing content.
Sample Lead Nurturing Email
Jeff,
I thought you would find this short presentation interesting given your interest in protecting software applications. Ben Jones of Alegis Group discussed how to secure software applications from the most common threats. Ben covered three topics:
• Threats facing software applications
• Impact of having software compromised
• What technology is commonly used to protect software
Learn more. View the on-demand webcast.
Take care,
Sue Smith
Sales Development Manager, Security Vault
+1.512.222.1212
What makes this sample lead nurturing email unique?
There are six unique aspects of this lead nurturing email that you can apply to any of your lead nurturing emails. Here they are:
There are no pictures.
It looks like a regular email sent from a human being since it’s in plain text. When messages are personal they’re more effective.
It’s personalized.
The sample lead nurturing email is sent from a person and addressed to a person. Lead nurturing is about building relationships from one person to another. It’s not about sending company to company communications.
It references 3rd party content.
Not all lead nurturing content needs to be proprietary. Expand your marketing content library. What can you leverage from the internet, Analysts or Consultants?
It’s short.
Only 73 words! If your emails are more than a few paragraphs you can forget about it getting read. People are busy and inundated with digital communications. Keep it simple and remember less is more.
It’s relevant.
The person’s interest was notated in a CRM. In this instance, we’re sending a relevant email about software security since that’s the prospects interest. Using marketing automation we can trigger tailored communications off of parameters such as this as well as future parameters such as how the person responds to this email or future marketing communications.
It’s casual.
It’s signed in an informal way, “Take care”. Again, when messages are personal they’re more effective as well as believable.
It’s educational.
Notice the purpose of the email is not to sell, but to educate. The timing of this educational-type message is better on the front end of your lead nurturing cycle. Hard sales tactics will turn off your prospect when you’re first building the relationship.
We’ve had other clients purposely misspell words to make automated messages appear as if they came from an actual person. We’ll leave that tactic up to you. ;-)
Hopefully this sample lead nurturing email helps you think of creative ways to increase effectiveness of your lead nurturing campaigns.
We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. What sample lead nurturing emails can you share with us? What are some of your tactics?
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
https://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.png00Lead Liaisonhttps://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.pngLead Liaison2011-06-01 14:29:362014-09-16 15:58:28Sample Lead Nurturing Email
Answering the question, “what is lead nurturing?”, is difficult for many companies especially those that think they already do lead nurturing. Lead nurturing is vitally important to lead management processes these days because of the fundamental change in the B2B buying process. B2B buyers are reluctant to engage with salespeople until they are deep into the buying cycle. In recognition of this paradigm shift, businesses should conduct a careful assessment of their lead generation processes and “get real” about what they have and what they do not have.
70% of the B2B buying cycle is complete by the time sales people engage. – SiriusDecisions
Let’s first discuss what lead nurturing is not
• Emailing periodic newsletters • Sending out random product releases • Sending out random company announcements • Spending all your time creating fancy html layouts for your email marketing campaigns • Not understanding your prospects persona • Not running marketing segmentation on your database • Blasting out email messages to your entire database • Calling leads just to touch base with the intent to see if they are ready to buy
Well then, what is lead nurturing really? Lead nurturing is the process of engaging prospects or customers using relevant and timely communications to build a trusted relationship, generate interest, and raise awareness until they are ready to speak with sales. In summary, it’s the process of realigning the timing of sellers and buyers. Let’s itemize activities that help define what is lead nurturing.
Sending content after listening to your buyers
• Sending content based on timing • Sending content based on product or solution interest • Sending content based on a previous conversation • Sending information that is relevant to your buyer’s problem • Making calls based on touch point data that adds value to the interaction • Sharing content that’s relevant and valuable even if they never buy from you
Sending content by understanding your buyers
• Sending an email that includes content based on the recipient’s role in the company • Sending content based on your buyer’s location • Sending content based on your buyer’s industry
Sending content that matters
• Sending content that is useful to them such as tools, calculators, or programs • Sending content that helps your buyers expand their knowledge • Sending content that raises your buyers awareness
By understanding what is lead nurturing and what lead nurturing is not your organization will better understand lead nurturing and you’ll be able to identify whether or not you need this critical sales and marketing technology.
Lead Liaison is pleased to extend a free consultation service to help you assess your company’s lead nurturing capabilities and needs. To speak with Lead Liaison and learn about our lead nurturing technology please contact us.
We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. What is lead nurturing to you?
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
https://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.png00Lead Liaisonhttps://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.pngLead Liaison2011-04-25 07:50:272014-09-16 16:32:30What is Lead Nurturing?
Does your organization struggle with lead follow up? Does your sales team have a less than stellar process responding to marketing generated leads? If you’ve answered yes to either of these questions help is on the way. Follow 3 rules to lead follow up to help your company produce a higher number of well qualified leads.
The 3 rules to lead follow up are speed, process, and persistence. Let’s analyze these rules to better understand how they support and improve the lead management process.
Speed – Follow up quickly with leads
A recent study done by Leads360 sampled 25 million data points to find conversion rates (people converted from inquiry to qualified lead) increased dramatically with faster response times against initial inquiries. Below is a short list of data points from the sampled leads:
• When called within 1 minute of inquiry, conversion rates are 391% higher
• When called within 2 minutes of inquiry, conversion rates are 120% higher
• When called within 3 minutes of inquiry, conversion rates are 98% higher
• When called within 30 minutes of inquiry, conversion rates are 62% higher
• When called within 60 minutes of inquiry, conversion rates are 36% higher
As evidenced by the data, the lead follow up advantage is less significant after the first 2 minutes have passed and greatly decreases after the first hour. It’s undeniable that fast response time drives loyalty. Businesses create strong psychological and social bonds with rapid lead follow up. If the prospect sees sales ultra-attentive to their inquiry and pre-sales interaction with your company it gives them a feel for how they’d be treated once they are a customer. Additionally, fast lead follow up blocks out competing offers as your prospect invests time into a relationship with you, who is the fastest responder.
Process – Lead follow up is not a one-and-done thing
Companies must not think once initial follow up occurs the lead follow up process is complete. In fact, it’s just started. Unfortunately, most sales and marketing teams heavily invest in the first 3-5% of inquiries that have short-term potential. However, sales people who are not aggressive and tenacious may lose interest in continued contact and neglect lead follow up with these 3-5% of inquiries. Then you have the other 95% of leads that don’t have short-term potential, which businesses commonly ignore. Sadly, 70% of those leads will buy from someone. If companies neglect follow up it results in lots of opportunity left on the table.
The first thing sales, and marketers, need to do is stop thinking a sale will happen in the first call. B2B buyers do not buy on a whim. A relationship must be built. Lead nurturing technology will automatically send personalized and intelligent communications to your prospects to develop your lead until they’re ready to speak with sales. Put the inquiries not yet ready for sales into a lead nurturing campaign. See our post on Lead Nurturing Programs to get an active of 5 different lead nurturing tracks you can drop your leads into.
Forrester Research reported companies that implemented an effective lead nurturing process have a 300% (3x) higher closing rate than their competitors who fail to make a long-term investment with their prospects. – Forrester Research
Concentrate on how buyers buy before you can master how to sell. Buyer’s usually want educational content in smaller, bite-sized chunks, over a period of time.
Persistence – Make a concerted effort to reach your leads
In a similar survey, 15 million sales leads were analyzed. Results showed persistence increased the probability of contacting a lead. The same study revealed a disappointing 50% of leads are never called a second time. When making two calls versus one it increases the chance of contacting a lead by 87%. The report also found six contact attempts resulted in the maximum possible contact rate; however, nearly 60% of sales people made less than sixth contact attempts.
Timing contact attempts will also increase conversion rates. New inquiries should receive a response within 5 minutes and include a 6-call lead follow up process to produce the maximum conversion rate and minimize workload. Here’s the suggested contact attempt schedule to maximize lead follow up ROI:
• Day 1: call 3 times. The premise is new inquiries should be called immediately and in two subsequent time windows during the first day until contact is made.
• If contact has not been made, call on day 3, 4, and day 11 or 12 to maximize contact and conversion rates.
• Day 3, call once.
• Day 4, call again.
• Day 11 or 12, make 2 more call attempts.
Realizing the effort to track and schedule lead follow up, businesses can use marketing automation software to automate scheduling of tasks. For example, revenue generation software from Lead Liaison can schedule call follow up tasks and reminders at once. At Lead Liaison we use 6 sales pipeline stages to map the flow of a person through the revenue cycle. Once a lead becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) by achieving a particular lead score the lead is handed off to sales. Our system automatically assigns a lead to the sales lead owner and schedules the reminder process in a CRM, such as Salesforce.com.
Keeping the 3 rules of lead follow up in mind and leveraging revenue generation software to help deliver lead nurturing and schedule sales lead follow up will help businesses become more efficient in lead management and generate more revenue from marketing dollars. Contact Lead Liaison to better understand how we can help your business with lead follow up.
We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. What lead follow up tactics have helped you?
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
https://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.png00Lead Liaisonhttps://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.pngLead Liaison2011-04-18 12:46:142014-09-16 16:45:24Lead Follow Up
Designing lead nurturing programs can be difficult especially if you don’t know where to start. We put together five sample programs to get you going. The programs range from simple one month programs to complex 12 month programs. Feel free to take these lead nurturing programs and customize them to fit your business. Remember, getting started is the most important part. Over time tune the “knobs and dials” on your nurturing programs to align them with your business.
First, let’s start with a simple definition of lead nurturing. Lead Nurturing is the process of engaging prospects through meaningful dialogue at each stage of the buying process. A lead nurturing program is a collection of independent nurturing events. Many B2B companies build lead nurturing programs to position their company as the best choice to help meet prospects objectives. Lead nurturing is also referred to as a drip campaign; however, drip campaigns are not “intelligent” and cannot react to buyer’s online behavior and interaction with marketing assets.
Enjoy the 5 lead nurturing programs below
1 month lead nurturing program with aggressive actionable offers:
• Day 1: Email white paper download link. Recipient clicks link in email, gets redirected to a landing page then fills out a web form. Additional profile information is captured.
• Day 3:: Voice mail and email from lead owner thanking lead for the download (if the download occurred) with an invitation to a webinar on relevant topic.
• Day 7: Follow up email asking if the lead would be interested in learning more about the topic they are pursuing. If lead responds then schedule a demo with sales. If lead does not respond continue with the lead nurturing program.
• Day 15: Email customer success story from related industry
• Day 21: Email a brief note to touch base and make an offer. For example, suggest providing valuable information such as a white paper, awareness kit, case study, blog post, ROI, personal demonstration, video testimonial or a book from an industry analyst
• Day 30: Send a personalized email with an invitation to evaluation your solution, start a free trial. If you are a consulting-based business offer a free consultation.
3 month lead nurturing programs optimized for different roles:
This program was designed to meet three different persona’s. However, each program is structured the same, with a single lead nurturing event over three months, one per month. Notice each lead nurturing program begins with educational content.
Marketing persona:
• Month 1: Voice mail and white paper
• Month 2: Follow up call and email link to analyst whitepaper
• Month 3: Follow up call and email invitation to webinar
Sales persona
• Month 1: Voice mail and email relevant 3rd party article
• Month 2: Follow up call and email 3rd party article
• Month 3: Follow up call and email link to relevant podcast
C-level persona
• Month 1: Direct mail an executive report and follow up with phone call
• Month 2: Follow up call and email invitation to executive roundtable
• Month 3: Follow up call and ROI analysis tool
3 month lead nurturing program with aggressive initial phases and bi-weekly dialogue
• Day 1: Follow-up email or phone call
• Day 10: Email offering an article of interest from a third-party relating to previous communications
• Day 15: Personal email from sales rep
• Day 30: Email promoting a relevant webinar series
• Day 45: Call from sales rep to “check-in”
• Day 60: Email providing a similar case study or a best practices white paper
• Day 75: Personal email from sales rep offering a product demo
• Day 85: Call from sales rep to schedule a face-to-face meeting
• Day 90: Submit a sales proposal via email
6 month lead nurturing program with dialogue every three weeks
• Day 1: Initial phone call and follow-up email
• Day 28: Invitation to webinar with follow up phone call
• Day 42: Email customer success story in related industry vertical
• Day 60: Personal invitation from lead owner to forthcoming webinar
• Day 80: Email interactive ROI calculator or similar “tool” as prospect nears buying stage
• Day 100: Email article of interest from social media site
• Day 120: Send personalized email from lead owner to touch base
• Day 140: Email free copy of analyst report
• Day 160: Invite prospect to a personal demonstration of your solution
12 month lead nurturing program with monthly dialogue
• Month 1: Email 3rd party article on relevant technology
• Month 2: Follow up phone call and email industry related case study
• Month 3: Leave voice mail to check in
• Month 4: Email link to industry related video done by a 3rd party
• Month 5: Email relevant and educational-focused white paper
• Month 6: Direct mail collateral
• Month 7: Follow up phone call and email relevant eBook
• Month 8: Follow up phone call and email link to relevant podcast
• Month 9: Follow up phone call and email quote from industry-leading analyst
• Month 10: Follow up phone call and email invitation to webinar
• Month 11: Leave voice mail with invitation to industry trade show and email registration link
• Month 12: Email one page white paper on evaluation criteria for solutions in your industry
Lead Liaison’s lead nurturing software can save you time and help boost your sales conversion rates by sending customized emails to leads based on their characteristics, activity, interest and interaction with your marketing assets.
We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. What types of lead nurturing programs have you used?
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
Marketers are tasked to continually create useful marketing content to disseminate to prospects, customers and partners. The advent of lead nurturing and marketing automation has further fueled the need to have a library of marketing content on hand. Additionally, marketing campaigns typically leverage marketing content for a call to action. However, creating effective content is hard work and takes time. Marketers can focus on two rules of marketing content creation and follow a few tips to simplify the process.
First, think like the buyer, not the seller. Marketers must empathize with their buyers and put themselves in the buyer’s shoes. If you were a buyer what marketing content would you be interested in? Second, map out the phases your buyers go through before purchasing a solution. The B2B buying process varies with each company.
After thinking like your buyer and mapping out your buyer’s stages begin creating content relevant to each phase. For example, most buyers go through an “awareness” phase. Create marketing content commensurate with this phase such as analyst reports, glossaries, industry articles or checklists. Focus content on education and problem solving. Make the messaging all about them, not you. Create fresh content that helps your buyer meet their goals such as ROI calculators and measurement or optimization tools. Useful content can have 5X return over “self indulging content”. Don’t try to close the sale with a prospect right away, that will come after you build the buyer’s trust and garner a relationship.
Here are some more tips for creating marketing content:
Marketing Content Tips
1. Start by conducting a marketing content audit to assess your resource library. 2. Eliminate rarely used marketing content. 3. Separate content that’s all about your product or service (data sheets, eBooks, website copy) from marketing content that helps the buyer. 4. Keep your content short. It’s not necessary to write multiple page documents or 5 paragraph articles. People are busy and like to consume useful marketing content in bits, not bites. 5. Consider a compilation of check lists, glossaries, analyst reports, executive briefs, and industry overviews. 6. Think about how you can repurpose your marketing content. For example, take screen shots of videos and make a transcript of the audio for a blog post or document. Produce various iterations of a “How to Buy Product ABC” based on your customers industry or persona. 7. Stay committed to content marketing. Creating relevant content is not a one-time event and should be viewed as a long term commitment.
Check out the Content Rules book for additional content marketing tips. They discuss how to create killer blogs, videos, eBooks, and webinars.
Also, our article on 101 Business to Business Lead Generation Ideas and Tips might also stimulate ideas for good marketing content.
To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.
