B2B Monday Myth: Once the Lead Is Generated, My Job Is Done
by MGB2B
Myth: Once a Lead Is Generated, My Job Is Done.
The Truth: Lead Nurturing Is Necessary to Drive Prospects Towards a Purchase Decision.
Your B2B sales funnel has multiple steps: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. As marketers, we spend a lot of time trying to generate leads and get prospects into the top of the sales funnel by promoting awareness. Once we have the lead, it’s time to pass the contact onto Sales, where they can try to work their magic on convincing the prospect to make a purchase, right? Not quite.
Before the prospect is ready to make a decision, they spend some time in the Interest portion of the funnel. This is the opportunity to nurture the relationship, and move the buyer along in the decision-making process. Here are a few tips to get you started:
Develop the Right Media Mix
The different steps of the sales funnel require different strategies in terms of media mix. So if you are targeting those who have shown some interest, attempt to settle their skepticism with targeted, informational media. This could include paid social media posts on topics in the industry, webinars with trade publications, sponsored e-blasts, or paid search. Take this step to foster interest. As a result, prospects will be engaged and ready to make a move toward decision-making.
Know How the Lead Was Generated
The way you nurture a lead will depend a lot on how you garnered the prospect’s awareness in the first place. They took some palpable step to give you their information, whether it was filling out a form on your website or giving you their business card at a trade show. How you go about nurturing one lead will differ from the others. The channels you use and the content you share will depend on many factors. For instance, if a prospect watched one of your webinars, send an email thanking them and asking for feedback. Then invite them to the next one. Automated B2B lead nurturing can help you get the right messages out to prospects based on their behavior. And it can raise conversion rates significantly.
Segment Your Prospects Into Personas
Creating a fictional character who represents a buyer in one of your audience segments will more easily allow you to share relevant content that the prospect actually cares about. Your target segments have different needs, preferences, motivators, challenges, media preferences, and belong to different verticals. Don’t ignore the power of personalization. Start here by checking out our guide to persona creation.
Be Authentic
Nothing will turn a prospect off more than trying to pitch to them every time you’re in contact. Your purpose for lead nurturing is to maintain relationships with your prospects, and convince them of you authority in the industry. This can be done without sending out weekly promotional product emails. Distributing relevant content will position you as a trustworthy company with integrity. And talking to your prospects like they are actual human beings can only benefit you. While promotions should be tastefully added, content should be your primary focus.
Marketing and sales teams should work together to master the lead process. Resist the urge to pass your contact along for a sales pitch without first increasing their interest. And remember — it often takes 7-10 touchpoints to have a qualified, interested lead for the sales team to close. If you beef up your lead nurturing program, you’ll enable your business to do a lot more closing. And the marketing team, the sales team, and the CEO will all be very, very happy.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: My Email Blast Should Be a Product Promo Machine
by MGB2B
The Myth: My Email Blast Should Be a Product Promo Machine
The Truth: Email Should Be Used to Distribute Relevant Content (with Some Product Promo Mixed In)
How many emails do you delete a day? Perhaps you don’t even take a peek before deleting. A barrage of daily promotions often ends up in the trash folder. The fact is, people don’t want to be bombarded with B2B product promotions in their already-crammed inboxes. Audiences will get email fatigue if you send them product promotions every day. So how do B2B companies successfully keep their prospects interested? Answer: Engaging content.
Email blasts can be a powerful tool, especially since the lists of contacts you’ve created are people who have willingly supplied you with their information. You’ve already captured them in your marketing funnel: they know of your company and your products, and have probably expressed some interest or purchased in the past. They’ve subscribed, so you’ve already won half the battle. But how do you create emails people actually want to open? The goal is to regularly send relevant insights via email, to provide information and position yourself as a trusted brand in the minds of your prospects.
Newsletters Are Great, But You Can Do More
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 77% of B2B content marketers are using email newsletters to update their audiences. These scheduled blasts are informative, often contain links to blog posts and other interesting pieces of content, and can be easily sent out to your audiences en masse. But you can go further, especially with tall of the automated email programs out there today.
B2B prospects are especially hungry for informative content that is relevant to their list. And going beyond the newsletter enables you to segment, and target by industry and interest. You are the experts in your field. All you have to do is own it. One of your engineers could write an article on using a product, to help clients who have already purchased. A manager could create a blog post with his take on industry trends. No matter where your client is in the buying cycle, there is information that they want. It’s up to you to create and deliver it.
Segment Your Audiences, Then Tailor
In another B2B Monday Myth, we busted the idea that all audiences are the same. As it turns out, not all audiences are created equal, and content must be personalized for each one. Email is one of the easiest channels to distribute personalized content. Instead of sending out one email blast to everyone on your list, you should segment your contacts. This could be based on vertical/industry, phase of the buying cycle, position in the marketing funnel, or even the subscriber’s job title. A sales representative is interested in different content than a software engineer. Those in the medical industry have different preferences than those working with consumer products. The long-time buyer wants different information than the prospect who expressed interest in your capabilities. Keeping your segments in mind when tailoring different emails will help you target more successfully, and wield better conversion rates.
It’s About Them, Not You
You’ve got your segments and have created emails that they would find insightful. Now, shift your focus off yourself, and turn it to the subscriber. Many companies get caught up in getting their message across and their product sold immediately. But you can’t force people to buy products by sending them dozens of emails all the time. By distributing relevant content, you will show you are trustworthy and establish yourself as an authority in your industry (and theirs). A good mix of relevant content and new product introductions can drive people to your website. Or it might put you at the top of the list the next time a prospect needs a job done. A little promotion tastefully thrown in is okay, but the content should be your primary focus.
While it’s easy for your company to fall into the trap of sending generic, promotional emails out to your entire contact list, start to go about crafting your emails more strategically. Tailoring your engaging content to relevant segments is a great place to start.
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