New Lead Nurturing Study from Aberdeen Group

Aberdeen Group recently released Lead Nurturing: The Secret To Successful Lead Generation, and they are offering a free download of the report until January 30, 2009.

The report includes:

  • Basics of lead nurturing
  • Analysis of how lead nurturing is linked to top-performing businesses
  • A guide to best practices, including a case study
  • Tips on developing content

This piece is worth the read, whether you are looking to improve your use of a marketing automation solution or just starting to investigate the benefits. If you don’t have time to read the full report, Demand Gen Report has put together an excellent summary of the key findings.

Examining Modern Relationship Building

This week Brian Carroll posted four unique perspectives on today’s communication styles. In a world of digital communication, the rules of relationship building have changed. Many of us have clients for years and never meet them face-to-face.

Carroll poses the question: “To what extent can emails be used in place of phone calls and face-to-face meetings when maintaining and developing relationships with clients and other important network contacts?”

He then invites four bloggers, including himself, to give their perspective on the issue.

Though modern technology gives marketers the opportunity to do very specific targeting and provide personalization, nothing takes the place of building good, old-fashioned relationships. Carroll stresses that today’s buyers are saavy - and in some cases, are marketers themselves! They are very sensitive to being pitched by a fast-talking sales rep. Therefore, it’s wise to start building those relationships with key targets even before they are sales-ready. This ensures that they will trust you when the time is right.

As Carroll points out, one way to do this is through a lead nurturing program. Positioning yourself as an industry expert and providing truly valuable information to your target audience will secure a place for your company in their conciousness and prove you know your industry. Staying top-of-mind means you’ll be first on the list when it’s time to buy.

 

The Ins and Outs of Inbound and Outbound Leads

Marketing, especially B2B Marketing has its own unique language. Attend any professional event and you’ll hear jargon tossed around as freely as the coffee flows at the refreshments table. Sometimes it is important to return to the basics and make sure you review the terms so that you can keep up.

Aaron Ross at Build a Sales Machine provides a rundown (and even some fun illustrations) of the sometimes confusing definition of inbound leads versus outbound leads. According to Ross:

Inbound leads are, as it implies, leads that come to your company and into your website or 800#: usually through word-of-mouth and referrals, public relations, search engines or perhaps through marketing campaigns… these leads generally are already interested in what you have to offer, and are about to start a buying cycle.

Outbound leads are lead that you had to go dig up, whether through market development campaigns or a Cold Calling 2.0 or other “proactive” methods to let prospects who aren’t already interested know who you are, what you do and why it should matter to them.

Ross goes on to explain how a marketer should approach or nurture these different types of leads and what to expect from each group.

Marketing Sherpa: Never Send Unqualified Leads into your CRM

In Marketing Sherpa’s recap of their B2B Lead Generation Summit, they designate one point as the summit’s key takeaway. The “most scribbled-down-tip” was when Jackie Kiley of Sybase explained the importance of passing only qualified leads into your company’s CRM. Marketing Sherpa’s article highlights this point reinforcing that your firm should “*never* put suspects, inquiries, or unqualified leads into [your CRM]”.

By not filtering your leads, you send the good and the bad onto your sales team, and create an immense amount of “noise” which the sales people must sort through to be successful. Rejection and lost time results in a less-than-motivated sales team, that will begin to distrust leads sent to them from the marketing department.

A lead qualifying tool can improve the relationship between your sales and marketing departments by allowing for a more seamless interaction between the two. Marketing automation software allows only qualified leads to make it to the sales pipeline, allowing both departments to more effectively accomplish their goals.

Also key in aligning sales and marketing is providing scheduled feedback on leads by having sales report on the status of leads (good, bad, accepted, rejected, etc.) Doing so is the final step in closing the loop between the two functions by further refining the filter for the next sales cycle.

Who has time to reengage leads? You do.

Everyone talks about lead reengagement. Very few companies do it. Even fewer companies have found a reliable way to automate it.

If you are a B2B marketer, it probably seems as though your marketing budget is always too small, no matter how cleverly you stretch your dollars. One way to get more out of your lead generation spend is to reengage old leads when the end of the year (and the budget crunch for most companies) rolls around. Just because some of your leads haven’t been converted to opportunities doesn’t mean that they’re worthless. In fact, some of them might be waiting to hear from you!

If your organization makes the small initial investment in software that lets you track leads and automate your marketing programs, reengaging leads can be easy and profitable. Setting up a drip marketing program specially designed for old leads will ensure that even if your sales reps forget to follow up, your marketing automation software won’t.

You can create an emails that are less about advertising and more about thought leadership. This is a much softer sell and can be especially effective when reengaging dormant leads who may be turned off by receiving what amounts to a sales pitch. Many leads that fell through the cracks earlier were simply not sales-ready, but that things might have changed. Talking to old leads is the perfect way to get the most of a tight marketing budget and can improve the bottom line.

How much does it cost you to generate a lead? A lot, right? I thought so. Fight hard to keep that lead in play.

No Lead Left Behind

A lot of marketers talk about automated lead nurturing but very few actually put it into practice. It may be because implementing a program is perceived as a lot of work. It may be that the early technology in this space was cumbersome and unreliable. It may be because marketers are simply unaware that this is possible. Whatever the reason, in spite of this being a hot topic at conferences, very little is actually being implemented by B2B marketers.

Aaron Ross brings up several great points about lost leads in his latest blog entry: Build A Sales Machine: “Never Waste A Lead - Part 1″

He correctly points out that lost or ignored sales leads is one of the most common bottlenecks to growth in a B2B organization. This is probably why the average tenure of a CMO at such a company is only about a year long.

It is often said that 80% of leads passed on to sales never have a meaningful conversation with a rep. Sales reps often attempt to make contact several times but ultimately put the lead aside if they are unable get in touch or the prospect is not immediately ready to buy. Although the lead may eventually show interest by visiting the website again or clicking on links in an email newsletter, there is no way for the sales rep to be notified and the prospect that is “raising her hand” goes unnoticed.

New technologies, including marketing automation solutions, allow you to place your non-sales ready leads into nurturing tracks. You can then ensure that your marketing efforts periodically “touch” leads via automated, one-to-one advertising such as email or direct mail. All links and calls to action in your marketing collateral are tracked individually to prospects and your sales reps will be notified as soon as a lead responds. By automating the lead nurturing process you are not only further qualifying your leads, but also freeing up sales or marketing personnel who formerly did this task manually.

Whatever the reason for not implementing a nurturing program, one thing is clear: if you are not using automated solutions to keep your leads engaged, you are leaving revenue on the table.