In the world of B2B the term lead nurturing has become more and more relevant as sales cycles become longer and traditional forms of outbound marketing become less effective.
Lead nurturing has now been identified as one of the leading methods for B2B organisations to generate both brand awareness and leads by leading marketing benchmarkers such as Marketing Sherpa and CIM. But what is Lead Nurturing? How does it work and what practical steps can you take to benefit from this shift in marketing activity.
What is Lead Nurturing
Simply put Lead Nurturing is a marketing technique that allows B2B brands to develop a deeper relationship with it’s target market by sharing insightful and relevant content. That’s quite different to a direct marketing campaign which is only there to generate leads from interested buyers. The problem with traditional direct marketing is that it will only be relevant to a small percentage of your target market who happen to be looking for a solution like your at the time they recieve your email/approach. Lead nurturing adopts a more whole market approach. Where the whole market can be nurtured and influenced by the content you create.
The reality is, traditional forms of outbound marketing are becoming increasingly less effective. Recent marketing benchmarke performance reports suggest that eDM and Telemarketing campaigns yeild an average of 0.3% response rate. Compare that to just 5 years ago when the rate was nearer 2-3% you can see why many marketers are turning to nurturing leads in order to gain insights into their buying position in the hope that they can turn insoght into relevant communications which could lead to a longer term relationship and customer.
So if you are experiencing a slow down in traditional form of outbound marketing, perhaps it’s time to adopt a longer term marketing approach. But how do you go about adopting a lead nurturing approach? Here’s our thoughts on where to start, what to look at and what to do. Good luck.
Understand your market
Of course you do. But I’m always surprised at how many companies see their target market as a list of Job Titles and little more. For any marketing to be really effective you need to get some real insight into their professional lives. What are their real concerns? Think “why would someone want to talk to me?”. How can your service help them in their goals. Most normal people don’t respond to ideas like “Collaborate” or “Efficiency” or “Cost Saving” they’re, frankly, unbelievable. Instead, demonstrate you understand what going on in their market, stick your neck out and ask them what they think. Try to get interacting before you try and sell.
Understand your markets buying cycle
I remember a ‘ big batting’ sales director telling me that there where 2 elements to a buying cycle – the influence and the decision maker. How arrogant was that? To thing that everyone you approach is gagging to be sold to.
The truth is not everyone is in a position to buy when marketing approaches them. It’s why telemarketing should never be seen as appointment setting. The biggest value of a great telemarketing team is to ask insightful questions to ensure when you next approach them your message will be relevant to their position.
In software sales I go by 4 key stages of a qualified prospect.
- Recently purchased – You probably lost the pitch. But as we all know early stage project have a habit of going wrong. So communications to the project team can some time land the project back to you.
- Happy with legacy system and no desire to move – This will be the vast majority of ‘influencers’ that get approached. They don’t want to change things, they don’t get a bonus on introducing a new vendor. But they do want to advance ther career, so when they’re management teams get emails or read great content about how an alternative system is providing competitive advantage to their competition they’ll soon be asked to look into it, if you give them enough reason to.
- The considerers – They’ve identified the need. They need to understand the market and budgets. According to Marketing Sherpa 80% of these decisions will be initiated online. So make sure you have enough great content to rank for your key words so you become the first they find. Use tracking software on your site to identify when they come through, then offer up a personal connection via social media – this way they’ll know who you are before any telemarketing takes place.
- The Intermediary – The PQQ, The ITT, The RFI. In my experience the consultant purchaser is often neglected when it comes to nurturing. If you work in a specific sector you’ll know who they are, so it’s worth creating dedicated communications. You just never know who they’re talking to.
Define what messages/content’connect’ at each stage of the buying cycle
Once you know your market (more importantly how your product/service solves their issues) and your defined your buyer persona in the buying cycle. It’s now time to think about the messages you need to deliver. I guess these used to be called campaigns but we don’t sell we nurture leads, this way we capture more of the market over time rather than just the 1% who we happen to connect with at the right time.
In truth, the needs of ‘the considerers’ are going to be different from those of the ‘Recently purchased’. The later will be experiencing problems in project delivery or perhaps (in the later stages of launch) user adoption issues; so your messages need to be tailored around the benefits of your deployment methodology or the easy of user adoption. These messages won’t be relevant to your ‘Considerer’ group. They’ll want client testimonials, TOC and assurance that you really are the experts and have a glowing future.
Forget ‘selling’, try relationship building as a though leader
If you sell an enterprise software or infrastructure solution you won’t generate leads off of one campaign. You need to demonstrate your expertise over a period of time before you even attempt to engage in a sales conversation. Consider your target audience ‘search terms’, on line media and forum they may use and try to influence these areas by developing the sort of content they will engage with. This is the idea of lead nurturing, after all.
Distribute content though social media
Creating a web site with an insightful blog and links to social media sites suchas LinkIN, Twitter, Stumbleupon , diggit, pintrest will all add to your online authority on your subject. Don’t keep you great content to yourself, share it with the groups who share a mutual interest.
If you would like help in developing a lead nurturing plan please get in touch