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So the giant companies have their complex marketing automation solutions which are programmed to nurture millions of existing and prospective customers to gush out a flow of qualified leads to the salesforce and make sure they meet their multi million dollar quotas every month. How does lead nurturing and marketing automation software and technology apply to the one man marketing/sales team in a start-up or a smaller company? The multi-role professional who can be CEO, VP of Marketing & VP of Sales all rolled into one and looks for business contacts and sends emails while simultaneously making phone calls to prospects. Does it have any relevence at all? cialises
It does. In fact lead nurturing is just as well suited to the one person or small team setup as a large global corporation. Working in a smaller setup, you tend to divide your time across multiple activities all of which need attention. At some point you may need to focus on building marketing data and locating business contacts at target accounts. Other times would involve sending emails and making contact with these leads to see if they have an immediate requirement. Often, if they are not ready they stay in the database till the time comes to follow up and check on them again. Beyond a certain number of prospects it becomes difficult to touch base with every lead or prospect every month or very periodically as the number of contacts you add to your ecosystem of leads grows and even if you are methodical, it takes longer to get back to leads and do that regular check for readiness.
This is where lead nurturing technology can provide great support for a smaller team. It can’t replace a call but what it can do is help you keep the communication with every lead you touched active till they seem ready to be engaged again personally. Once you have created a nurturing program with a series of emails and content which can keep your customer engaged, you have that system in place which can do those follow-ups for you to some extent and moreover you need not be overwhelmed by the volumes of leads that build up within your database. It lets you keep your focus and selling time on the qualified and sales ready leads and spend it on other aread such as inbound marketing. With the help of a lead nurturing application to support some crucial activities you can still do a lot without a big team.
Here is a paragraph from the Aberdeen Group press release
for their recent research study, “Lead Nurturing: The Secret to Successful Lead Generation buy cialis “:
“Successful organizations cannot afford to spend money generating qualified leads that slip through the pipeline when they do not result in immediate opportunities,” said Michiels. “Lead nurturing is a powerful example of how every organization can maximize lead generation efforts.” The top business pressures causing organizations to focus resources on lead nurturing initiatives are the need to increase top-line revenue (56%) and the need to improve sales productivity (60%). “The goal of lead nurturing is to solidify your company as a trusted advisor and a source of thought leadership for your prospects and customers,” says Michiels. “By doing so, you will ensure your company’s products and services are top of mind when prospects or customers are ready to spend. Successful companies will embrace lead nurturing techniques, especially during economic downturns. Laggard organizations will continue to look for excuses for why lead nurturing is too difficult. These organizations will choke on the dust of their competitors when the economy begins to grow again and spending starts to increase.”
The importance of being able to run lead nurturing programs has been quite clear for some time now and marketers looking to build a sustainable lead generation machine which churns out qualified and actionable leads have lead nurturing and marketing automation a the top of their lists. It’s also widely predicted by fellow marters that lead nurturing will be one of the key areas to see development and wider adoption in 2009. However, among those who have stood back from exploring a nurturing solution, there is a perception that implementing a lead nurturing program would involve a sizable investment or cost which is somethiing that just can not be considered when budgets should be focussed on generating new leads and opportunities.
Now perhaps its a matter of perception but investing only
in new lead generation can create waste. Lead that are generated from campaigns and various other marketing investments that do not convert to sales immediately fall through the cracks and end up sitting in a database forgotten. Remember, there was a cost to generate each one of those leads and by not converting those to revenue, they simply build up cost as more money is poured into generating new leads. Lead nurturing programs ensure your leads are still being tapped and are still working for you even when there is no immediate conversion into sales which really makes you realize the potential of your lead spend and prevent waste. With a host of lead nurturing applications available with flexible pricing models, it need not be as expensive and investment as it may have seemed earlier and in the long term, think of it as increasing the efficiency of your lead program and not just as adding cost.
Seller: Do you need a pair of shoes?
Young Sherlock Holmes movie full
Buyer: No
Seller : Here are some facts on our shoes and why they are better than others.
Buyer: Hmmppff… ok
Seller : Here are some promotions and discount coupons which you can use later this year if you ever need shoes from us.
Buyer
: Alright but I don’t need them now
Seller: We have just launched a completely new line of sports shoes since and thought you may want a copy of our latest catalog
Buyer: Intertesting
Seller: Here is an interesting article on the history of shoes which we thought you may like
The Distinguished Gentleman buy Buyer: Do you still have that promotion you sent me two months ago? I’m going on a hiking trip and wanted to have a look at what you have that could work for hiking
Seller: (Smiles wide and knows he could make a sale here)
This may not be an everyday business to business marketing scenario but the fundamental rules remain the same. This is in its simplest form what lead nurturing is all about. You can’t force someone to buy something when they don’t need it and yet, just because he/she doesnt need it now, it doesn’t mean they may not buy from you when they do need it. Knowing who your prospects are is the easy bit. Knowing when they are ready to buy from you and when they are ready to be pitched to is where lead nurturing
plays such an important part. It’s essence is about being able to build and maintain a relationship with the buyer through regular communication and then being able to tell when they are “sales ready”. It’s what a B2C mom and pop shop would do with their customers in a shoe store for example like the scenario above with a smaller number of customers where its possible to manually keep in regular touch with them. Where the number of prospects increase and physically keeping in touch with thousands, tens of thousands or more prospects becomes unthinkable that lead nurturing technology really comes to the rescue. Automating the process and being able to scale it to a larger number of users needs marketing automation or lead nurturing applications however the basics remain the same.
- Build constant conversation with various messages through email, ebooks, whitepapers, direct mail and more
- Monitor responses, activity and interest levels
- Identify and seperate the ones which are sales ready
- Continue the process for those still not ready
Just before the new year dawned BtoB marketers put down their predictions and trends for the coming year. From what’s going to be hot in 2009 to what we may see burn as business to business marketing evolves along with the technolgy that drives it. Based on what we saw last year, one of the predictions that I would put my money on is that more marketers will look towards marketing automation and lead nurturing solutions over their current email campaigns.
Towards the earlier half of December 2008, Robert Lesser of Direct Impact Marketing wrote a really insightful post titled “The Evolution of Email for Lead Generation” based on a survey the company carried out. The findings were really interesting and showed that 86% of the responders did use email campaigns for lead generation. What was more fascinating is that other than email solutions such as Vertical Response and Constant Contact, more comprehensive lead generation and nurturing solutions such as Vtrenz , Marketo
and Eloqua were gaining ground.
Email campaigns have been a staple for b2b marketers and while its unlikely to become any less popular for quite some time to come, there is a clear interest to have a lead generation system which does more than send out emails and track responses. Lead nurturing applications can provide that automation and more comprehensive system of reaching out to prospects periodically, tracking their activity and measuring their readiness to buy not to mention continuing to nurture those who are not yet ready. Nurture was specifically built to help bridge that gap between simpler email marketing tools and much more comprehensive lead generation applications and provide a cost effective alternative to running one off email campaigns. The benefits are very significant and more marketers are becoming aware of how effective the nurturing technique is.
Only time will tell just how much of a share lead generation software will take from email tools but it will be an interesting one to track through 2009.
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