What is Lead Nurturing?

Transcription

1 ENTERPRISE LEAD NURTURING G U I D E What is Lead Nurturing? Lead Nurturing is a process by which leads are tracked and developed into sales-qualified leads. This means they are ready and worthy of a salesperson s time - Forrester Research Blog

2 2 Types of Lead Nurturing Form-triggered Lead Nurturing Form-triggered lead nurturing is a dripped series of s based on one action filling out a form on a landing page. This type of lead nurturing doesn t leverage the plethora of data about a lead that could be harvested, like other pages visited, s clicked, webinars attended, etc. Behavior-triggered Lead Nurturing Behavior-based lead nurturing enables brands to send communication based on simple to complex consumer behavior in real-time. A few examples of the behavior tracked and acted upon could include pages visited, lead score, content consumed and even how long a video is watched. 1

3 Lead Nurturing enables brands to deliver the right content to the right person on the right channel at the right time in order to optimize and drive profitable consumer behavior by nurturing leads through the appropriate sales cycle. 9 Reasons to Use Lead Nurturing 1. Lead Intelligence 2. Lead Qualification 3. Lead Segmentation 4. Lead Scoring 6. Sales Force Efficiency 7. Sales Funnel Optimization 8. Sales Velocity 9. Increased Sales 5. Customer Relationship Optimization At least 50% of your leads aren t sales-ready at their 1st conversion 2

4 The Role of Content in Lead Nurturing Content is the fuel that drives successful lead nurturing. Prospects aren t necessarily interested in doing business with a specific brand, but rather, are looking for the best, most efficient solutions to their problems. Each stage of the sales lifecycle represents a different set of problems and solutions to overcome. Below is an example of marketing content that can be used for the top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU) stages of the sales lifecycle: Blog Post, Press Release, Web Page Free Whitepapers, Free Guides & Tip Sheets, Free ebooks, Free Checklists, Free Videos, Free Kits Videos, ebooks, Subscriptions, Assessments, Free Webinars, Case Studies, Free Sample, FAQ Sheets, Product Spec Sheets, Catalogs Executive Summary, Brochures, Free Trials, Demos, Free Consultations, Estimates or Quotes, Coupons The content delivered in a lead nurturing campaign should reflect this reality. 3

5 4 CRITICAL STEPS for Deploying Strategic Lead Nurturing Campaigns IDENTIFY Identify the ideal leads based on personas, form qualifications, web activity, interests (topic of content consumed) or any other appropriate, measurable attribute. Also, quantify the length of the sales lifecycle for the ideal leads identified. This is critical for determining how long the lead nurturing process should be. Lastly, identify all online and offline content assets already developed. MAP Use content mapping (see page 5) to categorize existing content assets based on persona, interest (topic), segment or product/service. After the content is organized by one or more of the attributes above, classify the sales funnel stage that each asset resides in and identify where content is missing in the funnel. CREATE Once missing funnel content is identified, the development process begins. This can happen concurrently with the creation of s, subject lines and landing page copy and design. ANALYZE & ADJUST STANDARD 3% For each lead nurturing campaign, track metrics like active leads, unique clicks, percent clicked, unsubscribes, conversions and conversion rates when appropriate. Track this data over time, identify trends and experiment in order to optimize the performance of each campaign. 4

6 Content Mapping Checklist for Lead Nurturing 1. Identify Content Assets Each organization should have a number of existing content assets that have been developed over the years. Marketers should create a complete list of assets that may be used in lead nurturing. This list can include whitepapers, case studies, videos, brochures and online demos. 2. Organize Content by... This stage can be complicated or simple depending on the level of sophistication a brand has established for buyer personas. On the simple side, content can be organized by topic, product or service. Organizing content by consumption platform (mobile, social, web, offline, etc.) is an option, too. It s also possible to organize the content by all of the items mentioned above at the same time. 3. Classify Sales Funnel Stage Ideally, marketers should access past analytics in order to determine what content, current and past, customers consumed during each stage of their buying cycle. However, most organizations don t have access to such a rich, analytical treasure trove. Without access, the classification should be sculpted using barriers to consumption. The greater the barrier, the number of barriers overcome and the type of barriers overcome determines the likelihood of a content consumer being a qualified prospect or sales-ready lead. Barriers to content consumption can be any of the following: privacy, time, work, money, topic and inbox. Marketers who don t have a predefined sales funnel can use the top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU) model. 5

7 cont. checklist Note Missing Content and Develop The process of classifying content by the sales funnel stage will undoubtedly identify where content is absent. It s important to connect every stage of the sales funnel for every attribute decided upon in Step 2. Holes will make the lead nurturing process ineffective or less effective than it otherwise could be, so filling them with new prudent content is worth the time. 5. Map Content Workflows Here s where all of the hard work comes together: Develop a content workflow map for every attribute or combination of attributes identified in Step 2 (persona, topic, product, etc.). Then divide the map into the parts of the sales funnel used in Step 3. TOFU x4 x4 MOFU BOFU x4 6

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