What are your lead nurturing best practices?

Hi Laura,

I really agree with Carlos about speaking with sales to find out what tools they find most effective in one-to-one sales cycles...and then see if you can emulate those conversations or use those pieces in a one-to-many capacity. Getting that buy-in from sales also can eliminate any friction due to who owns the initial lead communication cycle.

In terms of lead nurturing for B2B tech companies, I like to offer different multi-media calls-to-action during any given nurture campaign with: white papers, webcasts, videos, social media, etc. This way, viewers can choose the way the want to educate themselves so the experience is more customized.

We just added a post today detailing lead nurturing tips for success: http://blog.net-results.com.

Thanks,

Elizabeth

Hi Laura,
In addition to these excellent answers, I would add this: make sure that you create relevant content for each segment of your target audience. For example, a sales training company client of mine sells to four audiences: sales executives, training directors, marketing directors, and C-level. Each group has different reasons for championing sales training, and each has a very different stake in the game. We develop content for each group, and have created a section for each audience segment on the web site.

Laura,

You got very good answers from the other focus members. Ill try and add in a couple of simple things.

Don’t get into lead nurturing without enough content. Make sure you have enough content that your potential buyer will relate to. Take the time to write the content. Re-use your content ideas in different medias (email, newsletter, eBooks, webinars etc....). This should help you get more content. If you want to be able to map your content to the buying cycle of your customer you will need a good amount of content.

Another best-practice is stay away from a salesy message early in your lead nurturing. Keep those messages towards the end of your nurturing cycle. Usually you should start off by offering educational content, then when the lead is a little warmer offer content in the form of problem/solution and then once the lead is hot give him why he should pick your company.

Alexandre Sagala
Alsamarketing - Marketing automation solutions
http://www.alsamarketing.com

Laura,
Lead nurturing/management fundamentally starts with a sound Thought Leadership program. I try to break down the problem(s) they solve into 3-4 themes or aspects of that problem as they relate to the buyers. This becomes the basis for the content themes we will drive into their target audiences over a 9-12 month period.

Each quarter we focus on 1 theme. For example for a Logistics software company with a focus on solving transportation problems for large shippers like P&G, the theme may be Visibility or Supplier Inbound. The key in developing content is not so much the amount we develop, but having a variety of tactics to deliver the primary messages surrounding that theme - for example one really good white paper (from a reputable 3rd party). Then develop a webinar on the white paper topic and have a relevant client participate in the webinar (be sure to record so you can repeat and use in subsequent camapigns waves). Also, develop 1 or more case studies, again focusing on that theme.

Then spend the entire quarter with bi-weekly outbound campaigns that highlight that theme each with a different deliverable; first the white paper, then the webinar, then the case study, with links each time to the other content on that topic. If you follow Brian Carroll and Ardath Albee's approach to repackaging and re-purposing content, you will find that you have most of the content you need, but need to package correctly to feed it to your target audience on a regular basis in varying ways (WP, webinar, case study).

The biggest thing to remember for B2b marketers is that it takes 7-9 proactive communications to get your buyer to opt-in and read what yuo are trying to say them. Once they do that then your other complimentary content will have more appeal.

I hope that helps.

Henry Bruce
President, The Rock Annand Group
www.rockannandgroup.com

Hi Laura,

Since you're already executing lead nurturing, I'd like to mention several procedural things we've found that are very effective in boosting lead nurturing response rates:

* Send follow-up contacts -- clearly positioned as follow-ups -- with the same offer within a week of the original contact with that offer. This can boost aggregate response rates by 50%-100% depending on the offer and the step in the lead nurturing process.

* Create integrated multi-touch nurturing contact series. These are not a series of one-off, stadalone emails, but rather a series that refers to both previous and subsequent emails in the series so that the series is the focus, not the individual emails. We've found that 55%+ of total response to an email series comes from second and subsequent offers in the series, which means isolated emails leave an awful lot of response on the table.

* Create series of escalating offers that range from introductory overviews to in-depth product analyses and case studies. Besides electronic documents, these can include needs analysis templates, ROI calculators, webcasts, etc. Combining multi-touch contacts with escalating offers reaches out to all levels of each of your target audiences, and empowers them to engage when they're ready, at whatever level of knowledge and experience they prefer.