New Webinar Spotlights 5 ‘Baby Steps’ For Enhanced Lead Nurturing
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As BtoB marketing continually changes with enhanced tools and technology, and buyers have more educational materials at their disposal, it’s becoming clear that a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer appropriate. Tapping a buyer-centric approach, marketers are encouraged to utilize behavioral data to provide relevant messaging and offer to prospects.
Ian Michiels, Lead Research Analyst with Gleanster, and Matt West, Director of Marketing Programs at Genius.com, shared key tactics for organizations looking to tap the power of marketing automation and lead nurturing, during the recent webinar “Walk Before You Run: 5 Baby-Steps to Lead Nurturing Success.” Building on the notion that customer education is becoming increasingly convenient and streamlined, prospects expect relevant information. Therefore, organizations need to utilize marketing personalization tactics to articulate the value of lead nurturing.
Michiels pointed to recent research from Gleanster that found most marketers (80%) are still using generic marketing tactics, while only 10% are personalizing offers based on customer behavior. The same research found that 25% of leads are legitimate and need to go to sales, while 50% are qualified but not ready to buy — and of those 8% will convert over time. “With a lead nurturing campaign, you can increase that number from 8 to 25 or 30%,” Michiels said. “…Just by doing lead nurturing tactics alone, you can expand that pipeline.”
Building on the “crawl, walk, run” mantra, Genius.com’s Matt West offered 5 key steps to get more intimate with your marketing communications.
Step 1: Smarter email marketing- Utilizing behavioral insights, like how customers react on your web site, marketers are encouraged to give sales an open view of how prospects are interacting on your web site. “The whole point is getting the most qualified prospects in front of your sales reps,” West said. “They’re already getting a lot of the benefits before lead scoring. If they’re able of develop a queue of the people they should be calling, they’re going to be a lot more efficient.”
Step 2: Track unknown prospects behavior- Search engine marketing, social media and other web outlets can tell marketing database who has been to the site, where they come from, what drove them to your site and what they did on the site. Marketers can then take action based on what prospect activity.
Step 3: Simple Drip Campaigns- To personalize communication while staying true to corporate communications, auto-response emails attached to forms can be tied to actions for prospects, fostering the ability to launch multi-touch campaigns for groups of people with something in common.
Step 4: Lead Scoring and Conversion Events- Rather than cold calling, sales will no longer have to waste their time with uninterested prospects. “Not only do we know who’s on your web site, but we can say how many times they’ve been there, what have they done and use lead scoring and conversion events to let the sales reps know ‘Alright, these are the people who you need to be calling right now vs. who you need to be calling today,” West said. “It allows sales reps to focus their time and be inclusive in nature.”
Step 5: Intelligent Marketing Workflows- West emphasized the importance of committing to:
- Start small: take it one step at a time;
- Get smarter about your customer: before you meet, develop certain groups that will most likely visit;
- Engage in better conversations (arm yourself to have better and more relevant conversations with potential customers).
For more insight on how to optimize the effectiveness of marketing automation technology, and on the “5 Baby Steps,” view the archived version here.