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How do I nurture a raw inquiry into a marketing qualified lead?
What is the best process for nurturing a raw inquiry into an MQL?
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4 Answers
Josh:
There is no cookie cutter solution for this in terms of charting 4 emails and 1 phone call takes a raw inquiry and turns them into an MQL. I wish it were that simple. The key to increasing your conversions as you rightly state is nurturing and managing the relationship. The way this is done is by providing relevant and timely content and responding to the needs and request of your buyer.
The buyers today are more educated and have access to more information from an array of sources and when they do first connect with you they most likely have already collected some kind of information on your company. Knowing that there is already some kind of information that has been collected it is about providing them the information they need to want to take the next step i.e. being qualified.
The best way to start doing this is by building out your buyer profiles for as many personas exist in your typical buyer organization and also chart the buyer journey or progression. Once that is complete you can also overlay that with your content and offer map to determine what the typical buyer will receive throughout the process of initial contact through to the life of the customer.
This is not a one and done type of exercise but should be tracked and monitored to ensure the content is refreshed and engaging and continues to keep pace with buyer and any changes they have made to their buying process.
Carlos Hidalgo
The Annuitas Group
Something else I've found to be really important is to make sure everyone has a shared definition of a lead. Surprising how much disconnect there can around that.
I favor a definition that I've found to be best articulated by Greg Malpass over at Traction Sales & Marketing. Quoting him, "a lead represent an expression of interest at a specific point in time." Under this model a lead will have a 5-7 day shelf life. This is a big departure from the way a lot of people think of leads and has a significant impact on the approach to "nurturing" them.
Another aspect of this approach is the early introduction of the telemarketing / inside-sales team to call the prospect to qualify them as a lead. The threshold to reach this stage is low.
Not sure if you are just getting started or have some MQLs in your system now. For several clients, after a few hours at the white board, we came up with this radical idea -- why not call the converted leads and ASK THEM?
So we each ran a list of recently converted MQLs, called them and asked how they found out about the company, what were the bits of information that compelled them to want to get involved more deeply, and what they wished they knew about the company before going further.
That one-hour exercise was so much more illuminating than looking up industry benchmarks and best practices, that now I recommend it for all my clients looking to figure out drivers of conversion deeper into the funnel.
Answer a few questions:
-- what stage Have they reached?
-- what content would get them to the next stage?
-- how will you get it to them?
-- how will you measure their move to the next stage?
The personas Carlos mentioned will help.
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