Five Tips for Doing Lead Nurturing Consistently Well

The past few years have dramatically altered the way we think about and how we conduct business-to-business marketing and lead generation.  The ubiquity of Internet connectivity, broadband, and business email has led to a complete upending of the seller-buyer relationship.  Direct mail (“snail mail”) is out; email is in.  Reaching millions of people through mass advertising is out; reaching the same millions (but only when they want) through search engine optimization is in.  “Interrupt marketing” is out; “opt-in marketing” is very in.  Feast-or-famine results are out; consistent, smooth-line results are in.

With the advent of new technologies came the advent of new methods and strategies for finding and developing new sales leads.  The explosion of Google as the preferred search engine led to (or at least dramatically accelerated) the creation of an entire field of marketing around search engine marketing, and a second entire field of lead generation around pay-per-click advertising.  The affordability of email accounts and Internet connections for nearly every worker in America led to the explosive growth of email marketing, then (unfortunately) to the more explosive growth of spam, then to (fortunately) the creation of anti-spam filters and the CAN-SPAM Act, then to the concept of content marketing, and now to the refinement of email marketing into the twin cannons of lead development and nurturing: “outbound” and “drip” email marketing.

The objective of lead nurturing is to keep an interested lead engaged and “warm” until such time as that lead is ready to advance to the next sales phase.

The Five Principles of Lead Nurturing All B2B Marketers Need to Know

Let’s start by stating the obvious: There are far more than just five principles that are important for utilizing lead nurturing techniques to nurture leads and increase your B2B sales.  What we wanted to do with this post was present a brief, easy-to-read, easy-to-digest primer with just the five principles that everyone can take back to work and put to use.  In future papers, webcasts, podcasts, and books, we’ll go deeper into the strategies, methods, processes, and tools you can use to get even more effective with lead nurturing, but for now, let’s focus on our top five.

1.    Use conversational tone (not marketing or sales tone)

2.    Use lead nurturing only in the right phase of the sales cycle

3.    Use web analytics and tracking to adjust and mold your messages to your targets

4.    Use lead scoring to target highest potential leads

5.    Consistent repetition, consistent repetition, consistent repetition.

These sound simple and obvious, right?  Well, they are.  So are the instructions on how to hit a baseball (See ball, swing bat, try to hit ball with bat), but very few people can do it consistently well.  

In the next few posts, we'll explore each of these five tips and talk about doing them consistently well.

If you want to see an entire white paper on the topic and get everything in one PDF, then the white paper Top Five Rules for Using Lead Nurturing to Increase Sales is one in a series of white papers sponsored by WinGreen Marketing Systems.  Make sure to read the other papers in the series by visiting www.WinGreenMarketing.com/resources.aspx, where you’ll find links to many papers in the bottom right of the home page.

In our last post, we provided an overview of how to define success in lead generation programs. Today, we'll go into more detail on the three areas on which to focus: quantity, quality, and cost.

Quantity

If an organization has five sales people, each of whom is expected to close a $100,000 sale each month, the lead generation activities need to deliver 33 to 100 interested leads per rep into the top of the funnel each month.  Therefore the total objective is 500 interested leads each month. 

It is impossible to overstate the importance of having the sales and marketing leaders work together to agree on objectives.  Furthermore, we recommend a wide-open approach that involves all constituents in defining what a “quality” lead is, setting objectives, and agreeing to all aspects of the lead generation function.  Invite field sales, inside sales, marketing management, copywriters, and anyone else who contributes to the process to work together, communicate openly, and understand deeply what the numbers mean and what the quantity expectations are.

Quality

We chose to use the nomenclature “Contacts/Interested/Pre-qualified/Qualified/Closed” for our example.  Sales and marketing must mutually agree to the definitions of what constitutes a lead or prospect at each level of the funnel.  The best target type of lead for marketing lead generation activity is to deliver interested leads.  Contacts – or “suspects” -- are not sufficiently interested and will waste salespeople’s time.  At the same time, in our experience, using marketing or an outside firm to deliver live appointments or qualified prospects is too expensive, and often yields questionable results, as the people tasked with qualifying/disqualifying from interested leads have no vested interest in the final sale, and often “throw the prospect over the wall” to the sales organization while claiming success.  We recommend that sales and marketing mutually agree to define the quality objective as “leads who have self-identified and have expressed direct interest in what our products can do for them… or better.”

Again, the importance of mutual definition of “quality” cannot be exaggerated.  Even the tiniest disagreement or misunderstanding can grow into a canyon between sales and marketing when quota and revenue pressures mount.  It’s critical for sales and marketing leadership and employees to get together, discuss objectives and definitions openly, and commit to regular reviews of both their results and their assumptions.

Cost

Traditional marketing methods – direct mail, trade shows, and cold calling – will typically deliver interested leads for around $675 per lead.  Online marketing methods, when executed by experienced digital marketers, can generate interested leads for between $50 and $100 per lead.  Therefore, the final objective to be agreed between sales, marketing, and (now) the budget gatekeepers, is to deliver quality, interested leads, at less than $100 per lead.

From the WinGreen Marketing Systems white paper, 21^st Century Marketing for Effective Lead Generation:

The marketer of 1995 might conduct a direct mail campaign to a list of 50,000 people at a cost of $0.75 per name and address, $2.50 per color printed promo letter, $2.00 per insert, $1.00 for postage, and $0.50 per mailing house drop -- $337,500 for the campaign (without the telephone follow-up, if outsourced) – and get a 1% response rate (500 responses).  That’s $675.00 per “interested lead”. 

The 21^st Century marketer prepares PDF versions of collateral, builds interactive, informative, drill-down web pages, creates professional quality video and audio, and adds 21st century marketing assets like white papers, podcasts, webcasts, and online surveys.  Thousands of interested potential leads opt in to more communications.  Thousands more are offered marketing assets in email campaigns and subsequently self-identify.  Digital marketing assets are passed along by recipients, leading to more opt-ins.  The typical 21st century use of digital marketing assets allows the marketer to conduct a campaign to thousands of contacts, deliver them an invitation to download a marketing asset of interest, and receive perhaps 500 interested lead responses for about $50,000.

 

Setting an objective of $100 per interested lead is a reasonable goal for most organizations in technology businesses.  As we showed in the above example, organizations that run in-house campaigns very efficiently can deliver interested leads for a cost within the range of $80 to $150 per lead.

In our example of five sales people, each of whom is expected to close a $100,000 sale each month, the economics of online lead generation are quite compelling. We noted in the example that it would take an average of 100 interested leads (at a cost of $100 per lead) to yield one closed sale (at $100,000). Therefore the value of each interested lead is 100,000/100 = $1000. Since marketing costs are already factored into the financials and income statements, it’s fair to say that the incremental cost of $100 per lead yields incremental revenue of $1000, for a return on investment of 900%.

Economically, then, online marketing methods like content marketing, inbound marketing, and email marketing are far superior to old-school physical-world methods like direct mail, events, and mass media. The exact numbers, ratios, and dollars may vary quite a bit, but the logic is inarguable. Online marketing reaches your target buyers more efficiently, more effectively, and more affordably than traditional marketing.