Are Your Prospects Getting Whiplash?

The ways marketers can interact with customers, connect with prospects and build awareness are growing every day. But, I'm concerned that the new stuff is pushing out the "old" stuff at a rate that's causing prospects to get whiplash.

In B2B marketing, lead nurturing takes time. Building relationships with your prospects is not just dependent upon relevance, but consistency. And, you have to be in it for as long as it takes your buyers to buy.

What I'm seeing is that marketers aren't sticking with their strategies long enough. They're jumping ship for the next new thing, leaving their "old" programs — and the leads generated from them — swinging in the breeze. One day the leads receive an email with a link to a thoughtful, compelling article. The next thing they know, your company communications have either disappeared, reverted to standard company-focused emails or you've launched a whole other story they don't care about and didn't opt in to receive.

How do I know this? Because research shows that marketers are sticking with marketing campaigns for less time than buyers spend buying. They quit too soon. [I've also seen it. And let me tell you the company lost more than their investment in nurturiing.]

Here's the real problem. Marketers are marketing from a tactical campaign mindset instead of an overarching strategic mindset. If some new idea comes along, they're willing to switch to the more exciting idea of something new. And, they do it without thinking about impact from the prospect's side of the exchange.

Or, they don't look far enough downstream. I've seen campaigns planned for three touches. Then there'll be some new effort coming down the pike with different creative, a new focus and a new story.

I've seen companies that have so many separate marketing campaigns going on in different areas of their companies that their prospects can't help but get whiplash from the conflicting messages coming at them due to the lack of visibility the company has across the programs that would enable any reasonable coordination.

B2B Marketing deserves to be executed as a long-term, customer-focused strategy tied to business objectives.

B2B marketing is NOT a series of campaigns with a "theme of the moment" approach. It's more of an intensive strategic marathon with a lot of parts that should all be related to the company's core storyline.

But here's the real disappointment. When prospects buy in to the story you're telling, you've got their attention and their permission to continue to communicate with them. Switching your story like you change your socks violates that agreement.

For example, if you opted in to a content series that promised thought leadership articles and after the 3rd one you start getting links to videos meant to entertain, instead of inform, are you still interested?

One thing you can do (although I still say your story has to be in alignment) is ask your prospects if they're interested in whatever your new focus is before you commit them to it. Don't promise one thing, deliver it for a while and then change on them without warning.

Instead of rinse and repeat, marketers are letting any momentum they've generated from past efforts go down the drain every time they flip their focus toward something new. Even worse, your prospects wonder what's up with you? Then they start wondering if your company will be like that in a working relationship...you know, when they're counting on your company to deliver as promised.

Ask yourself these basic questions:

How long is the buying cycle for your average prospect?

Then ask yourself how long your average nurturing campaign lasts.

Is there a disparity?

And, if so, when you string your campaigns together, do they tell a compelling story from start to finish?

Or do they give your prospects whiplash?

Comments

[Brian Ellefritz]

Ardath,
Thanks for this great post. I couldn't agree more with the premise that nurturing isn't done much or well in B2B. A year ago I moved from an email marketing role where we built a newsletter-based relationship marketing program. This was painful to sell and execute and I'm finding many of the same challenges with social media, too.

You point out a few contributing factors and coincidentally I touched on this topic last night in my own blog post http://b2bsocialmedia.blogspot.com/

A couple other environmental factors that I've seen: One I touched on in my article is quarterly budget cycles which make sustained marketing a challenge (and a target when budgets are reduced). The other is the traditional habit of org charts that align marketers to products instead of audiences. Orienting your team to audiences helps build the wisdom and eventually the passion to think of delivering services and value to them (key in a real nurturing program) rather than monetizing the relationship and moving on once easy early buyers peter out.

Great content, keep it up.
Brian Ellefritz
Cisco Social Media

[Ardath Albee]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your comment. I've read your post and you bring up some great topics for consideration in regards to social media.

I think it's a cross play. If people can get social media right, then it's likely they can get nurturing right. Funny how one back peddles into the other.

The thing about products is that the focus for marketing can be about the product, but the perspective of the marketing conversation/storyline will be most effective when it's about what the customer gains when they use it.

I also agree with the quarterly view. I work against that all the time. And, unless the nurturing program gets renewal in the next quarter, you've got a whiplash situation. I think one of the keys is to determine short-term proof points at milestones along the way. If sales cycles are longer than a quarter (which they are) we have to figure out what kind of proof drives renewed investment in the programs.

Perhaps buying stage transitions? This could also be scoring shifts - given the use of marketing automation.

Maybe overall interactions that extended the original offer? Number of prospects who click on link in email and then read additional related content.

The volume of self-serve content access the program has promoted across the storyline? (e.g. indicating increasing interest and attention)

Suggestions? What's the validation needed to keep companies focused on executing a consistent strategy across quarters?

Ardath

[Jeff Ogden]

Good post, Ardath. Lead nurturing is a conversation. It is relationship building. Those take time and patience.

Today, time and patience are in short supply. It's try this, try that. And the in the long run, the results suffer.

[Brian Ellefritz]

Ardath, this isn't a blog post, it's a B2B Case Study :-) Seriously, one thing I've seen succeed is measuring signs of engagement in the nurturing process that are a proxy for success. At that stage anything that indicates serious interest or movement to the next likely purchasing phase is golden in proving the system works. For email programs this was click-throughs, filling out profiles, downloads, etc. In social media we would look for questions posed/answered, click throughs to web, sharing... Just simple thoughts for now. Big topic; thanks for taking this on.
Brian

[Ardath Albee]

Hi Jeff - thanks for commenting! Yep, that try this try that is the underlying cause of whiplash :-) The antithesis of patience, actually. Good point.

Brian - I love it! Thanks for adding more thoughts. I think we've got to reach farther with the metrics and show the parallels to related buyer behavior.

This is why I have a really big soap box about knowing buyers and matching content to stages, incorporating progressive calls to action. Now I've got a new idea brewing to wrestle to the ground. So much fun!

Thanks for contributing!
Ardath