Marketing Interactions

Q and A from 3 Must-Haves for Successful Lead Nurturing Webinar

Scott Mersy, Brian Carroll, Craig Rosenberg and I had a great time presenting the webinar, 3 Must-Haves for Successful Lead Nurturing. Thanks very much to the several thousand people who attended!

We didn't have time to get to all the questions you asked, so I wanted to follow up with some answers to a few of them. Thanks for asking!

Q: Ardath, would you agree that sales people are educators as well?

A: Absolutely! However, for a complex purchase, salespeople are coming into the conversation farther downstream. It's likely that by the time a sales conversation takes place, the buyer knows quite a bit about the problem they're solving, the product and company and is now looking to see exactly how it will apply to their specific situation. This is why salespeople need to know as much about their buyers as their products and solutions.

Q: Are there tools i.e questionnaires or templates to aid in developing lead nurturing programs?

A: Yes. My book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale is written to be a guide for creating lead nurturing programs and content strategy. For instant gratification, you can also download The Essentail Marketing Automation Handbook that I wrote for Genius.com. Brian Carroll's book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, is also a resource you'll want to have on your shelf. 

Q: Does the time delay re response time & engagement apply equally to higher value products/services that may have longer sales cycles?

A: This question is in response to a statistic that Scott Mersy shared about engagement opportunity declining after 30 minutes from when a lead visits your website. I think the answer depends on your perspective. In a longer cycle, you'll want to follow up with something useful - "I noticed you're interested in [topic] and wanted to let you know that we also have a white paper on the subject. May I send it over?"

The point in a longer sale is to be helpful, build your company's credibility and share expertise that has them coming back to your company for more answers to questions about how to best solve their problem. We talked about responsiveness in relation to increasing a prospect's level of engagement. So, in a longer sales cycle, don't think of following up as a sales call, think of it from a nurturing perspective.

Being helpful and not "selling" will keep the prospect from feeling stalked. And, a follow-up could also be an email with a link to related content - doesn't have to be a phone call. This is when knowing the prospect's stage in the buying cycle can be helpful. For example, you could set up auto responders for prospects with scores below #X who access specific content and set up an alert that notifies you to call them if their score is closer to sales qualification.

Q: What are your thoughts re using "networks" like Linkedin to promote content and generate leads?

A: LinkedIn can be a great network for generating leads. It's all in how you do so. Be respectful of the groups you belong to. Post links to your content in the News section. Make sure the information you share is relevant to the group. Don't do blanket posts across your groups. Many people belong to multiple groups on related subjects and it's irritating to see the exact same thing posted everywhere. The message that sends is similar to spamming people.

The other thing about networks like LinkedIn is that you need to participate as well as post your stuff. Be generous, gracious and respectful. 

Q: How do you recommend adjusting your prospect scoring algorithms based on environmental circumstances? (i.e. economy... a lot more "tire kickers" out there these days may show responsiveness, but are a long way away from buying)

A: This is a great question! My recommendation for this is that you adjust based on feedback from sales. If, in the past, marketing-qualified leads were in the right place for sales to step in, but now your salespeople are returning them to the nurturing program because their buying timeline is too far into the future, then you need to increase the score.

Lead scoring is not perfect and, as you say, environmental circumstances can impact the buying process. This is why we need to continuously monitor and update our processes. A couple of suggestions are:

• Audit some recently acquired customer profile histories to determine what behaviors they exhibited at the end stages of their buying process. Check your scoring to ensure that these "conversion" events are indeed factoring in properly.


• Solicit feedback from sales about triggering events and specific circumstances that precipitated a customer's choice to buy. Is there a content opportunity gap you can address that will shift your scoring toward better accuracy?


• Revisit the qualified lead criteria that you've agreed to with your sales team to see if adjustments are necessary and then update your scoring to match.

Q: Several people asked what the acronym WIIFM, on one of my slides, means. My apologies, I must have forgotten to clarify.

A: WIIFM = What's In It For Me? And it's definitely a WIIFM World from your prospects' perspective.

Q: What factors do you use to determine if lead nurturing is the best tool? Is price the primary factor?

A: If your sale is transactional, then lead nurturing may not be the best tool. If your sale is more complex and takes consideration and education, then nurturing will work for you. Take a look at the problems your products and solutions solve. How much education is needed for your prospects to choose to buy? How long is your sales cycle? What will it take to get your prospects to consider your company as the expert they want to partner with to solve their problem?

See more questions answered over on the Marketing Genius Blog

There are a lot more questions and I'm sure Brian, Craig and the discussions over on Focus.com will also tackle them. If you have a specific question for me that I haven't addressed, ask it in the comments and I'll be sure to respond.

You can also listen to the on demand webcast replay.

Thanks again to all of you for attending and participating! You made the experience memorable.

Marketing Content Should Educate Both of You

There's a lot of talk about how we need to focus on our buyers' issues and provide them educational insights to help them learn what they need to know to make buying decisions. Heck, I say it in my book...in several places, I think. I've said it on this blog, and I'll continue to say it.

But perhaps, what I haven't said here is that marketing content should also educate marketers.

Yep, you heard me.

That's one of the key payoffs you can get with a content strategy. This is why I advocate for using articles for content marketing in many cases. But I digress. Here's an example of what I mean.

Let's say you want to know which problem your prospect is working to solve. Think of this as the equivalent of a form with check boxes for "I'm interested in solving this issue - with check boxes for issues A, B or C.

Instead of the form, let's say you create a general article about the problem and then link to 3 tightly focused articles about issues A, B and C. Who is clicking to read which article?

What can you learn from that? If all your leads are reading about issue C and your nurturing program is focused more on A or B, you can shift quickly to capitalize on prospect interest. Not to mention shifting your content development plan to match up more closely.

Now, let's say that on the sidebar of the page for the article for issue A you have a registration form for a webinar about that issue. Whether or not they sign up will tell you just how interested they are. If they're willing to dedicate an hour of their time to actually attend, instead of just sign up, you've just learned something else about that prospect. 

Are they in the right nurturing track based on the content they're reading?

This is where lead scoring can really help you evaluate lead interest if you create scores based on topic-related behavior. In order for this to work, you have to present your content strategically to entice leads to increase their depth of focused exploration and learning. That's how you increase your learning, as well.

Creating a content plan is not just about creating content that maps to stages across the buying process, it's about planning your content to educate you so you can increase your relevance, hence their engagement with you throughout their buying journey.

So the next time you create content, think about what both of you can learn from it. You'd be surprised what kind of insights you can glean. Think not just about one content piece, but how you can weave content together to compound your learning, and theirs.

It's kind of like dynamic puzzle pieces. Sometimes you have to shift them around to see the full picture.

27 Benefits from B2B Lead Nurturing

Many B2B marketers will tell you they have a nurturing program. If you ask them what benefits they hope to gain, they'll likely talk about the goals for the program in relation to the number of sales opportunity conversions or revenues produced from marketing-driven customer acquisition.

Those are great goals, of course, and ones we need to realize for our companies, but we also need to think about the other benefits our companies can derive from consistent and relevant nurturing programs that help to produce those big payoffs.

In no particular order, here are 27 benefits that came to me off the top:

1. Interest/Pain identification
2. Increased credibility (propensity to opt in)
3. Thought leadership recognition (higher trust)
4. Buying path (stage) definition
5. Segmentation opportunities
6. Market awareness
7. Strengthened company positioning
8. Interactive online dialogues
9. Conversation generation (online and off)
10. Idea transference
11. Ongoing storyline engagement
12. Prospect intelligence beyond demographics
13. Identification of industry trends
14. Peer-to-peer referrals (here's a link to...)
15. Longer reach (unlimited distribution potential)
16. Greater depth (reach influencers beyond decision makers)
17. Marketing and sales alignment
18. Seamless sales enablement
19. Customer retention
20. Increased customer lifetime value
21. Cross-sell and Up-sell potential
22. Increased customer satisfaction
23. Inclusion in closed-door conversations (when you're not there)
24. Agile response to market shifts
25. Consistency in relevance and value delivery
26. Acceleration in growth of pipeline
27. Shorter time to revenue

You may be looking at this list and wondering just how you'd realize and capitalize on all these benefits to get those big payoffs mentioned at the beginning. This is where marketing automation comes into play. Companies like Genius.com, Marketo, Manticore Technology, Silverpop, Eloqua — and others — are the engines behind nurturing programs.

Lead nurturing is as much an exercise in content strategy execution as it is in syncing the people and processes that drive your business' success. Technology is the enabler that pulls it all together.

Marketing is not just a stand-alone department within our companies. At least it shouldn't be.

Just in case you think you can get all of this by executing the same old marketing campaigns the way you've always done them, think again. Your buyers have changed. If you want to reap all of these benefits (and I'm sure I've forgotten some), you must focus first on getting to know your buyers and customers as well as you know your products and base your nurturing programs on that intelligence.

Because, after all, it's truly all about them.

Never forget that many of these benefits are based on how well you can learn to read your prospects' behavior over time and how prepared you are to respond when they ask you to. That's one reason why marketing will always be a combination of art and science — that human factor.

Feel free to contribute any benefits you see that I've forgotten and I'll add them to the list.

Take 3 Steps Before Creating a Nurturing Program

I'm getting a lot of questions about how to get started with a nurturing program. Bravo to those marketers who are actively reaching out to get started!

I thought it might be useful to present 3 steps for evaluation that will help you create a baseline for building an effective nurturing program. 

First - About your customers:

• Who buys from us?
• Why do they buy from us?
• What do they need to know to make a purchase decision?
• Who influences our buyers?
• What could stop them from choosing to buy?
• Is one kind of customer more ideal than another? Why?
• What's your best foot-in-the-door sale?

Second - Evaluate your prospect database:

• Who's in it?
• Did THEY opt in or did YOU opt them in?
• How do the prospects in your database match up with what you know about your customers?
• How are you getting more prospects to opt in?
• When's the last time your database heard from you?
• What topics have they responded to?
• What's your opt out rate?

Third - Audit Your Website:

See my recent blog post about how to audit your web pages.

• How much information on your website matches the answers to the questions in the About Your Customers step above?
• What can be improved?

In case you're wondering, the reasons for auditing your website are to ensure that the messaging you're already sharing is in alignment with prospect needs. You also want to make sure that your nurturing programs are reinforced by your website content, not in conflict with it.

Nurturing programs are about so much more than just a continuous touchpoint program for prospects. They're about creating a consistency in brand and content and inviting interactions that reinforce and strengthen the choice of your prospects to continue to engage with you. Not to mention that a holistic presence will enhance your prospects' perceptions of your company's credibility and expertise for solving the problem at hand.

Audit Your B2B Website for Engagement

B2B companies say that improving their websites is a priority for 2010. I'm not sure exactly what they're thinking, but I do know that — before they do anything — they need to evaluate the website they have now in order to create a renovation plan.

I suggest that an audit be conducted for each web page, or at least your main pages if your site is really intense. The benefit of doing this audit will help to position your web pages to generate more responsiveness from your prospects and customers.

Some of the things overlooked on B2B websites include:

• Web pages are not stand-alone. They need to be integrated in a way that leads your website visitors to the information they find useful based on interest.


• Just because your navigation creates siloed areas of content doesn't mean your web pages need to follow suit.


• Your website is not a brochure all about YOU and your products. If it's not designed with your prospects and customers in mind, you lose. That means every single page.


• Each page has about 3 - 5 seconds to catch attention. Don't bury your hook.

I've created a simple Web Page Audit Form to get you started.

Here are the steps for auditing your web pages:

• Main Topic: Each web page should have a focus. You should be able to summarize the main topic in a sentence.


• Question Answered: When prospects are searching for information, they are seeking answers to questions. Which question does your web page answer? As you audit your web pages, you should begin to see the possibilities for ways to connect your content into pathways that apply to buying stages - or you'll see gaps that need to be filled.


• Call to Action: You need to show your prospects how to take next steps given the information they've just accessed.


• Takeaway: If all they read is this one page, what impression are you leaving with them? A takeaway is different from a call to action.


• Use of Company Focus: Print off your page and circle all the instances where you've used words such as; we, our, our company, company name, us, product names, features, etc.


• Use of Prospect Focus: Use a different color pen and circle all the instances where you've used words such as; you, yours, your company, roles (VP, CIO, Entrepreneurs, etc.), benefits and outcomes, etc.
  
  [Which side weighs in heavier? How focused on your audience is your content?]


• Keywords and Phrases: Now circle the keywords and phrases you're using on the page. Are they words your prospects use to search with? Or, are they only what you think are important. If you search for these terms in a search engine, does your page show up? Which words and phrases might work better at catching your prospects' attention?


• Time Spent: Get into your analytics and determine how much time people are spending on the web page. Is it enough to read and comprehend the content? Or is it only enough for a brief scan? Do they exit or do they visit another web page? Is the content they view next related to the topic of this page?


• Related Web Pages: What options do you provide to entice your prospects to spend more time with you? Which pages do you have that could be incorporated to enhance the experience you're providing to your website audience?

If you'd like a copy of the Web Page Audit form, download the PDF.

Once you've audited a number of pages, it's likely you'll see a pattern for revisions. You'll also discover new possibilities for creating an integrated experience for how your website visitors engage with your content. Finally, it should become really clear how to improve your online dialogue with your prospects and customers because your website will have the potential to become all about them. And that's a good thing.

eMarketing is Not a Formula

I've been asked a lot of questions lately about formulaic approaches to eMarketing. People want some kind of measuring stick to compare their results to those of others. Some kind of way to prove they're succeeding in comparison to the guy down the street.

I'd like to propose that that kind of perspective is a bunch of bull puckey.

Buyers are not the same. They don't think the same ways and they don't go through their buying process in the same order of activities. Their thought processes and their situations have different nuances that won't match up with a formula.

If the guy down the street says they've increased lead generation by 25% with their email outreach program this month and you've only increased yours by 10%, are you a laggard?

Well, that depends upon who opted in.

Are they viable prospects with a high propensity to become sales opportunities or are they just contacts added to your database because they wanted whatever that specific content offer promised?

If that 10% of additional leads are truly engaged with your company, showing interest beyond the content offer that enticed them to opt in, then it's more likely you're going to see some revenue coming down the pike as a result. That doesn't say "laggard" to me.

That's what eMarketing is all about. Activities that drive future revenues by building mutually valuable relationships with prospects and customers. 

The only way to employ eMarketing strategy successfully for your company is to focus on and respond appropriately to the behavior of your buyers. Having a plan is great, but you've got to continuously refine and adjust based on what your prospects show interest in.

Three touches and a sales offer is a formula. It's a halfway-in attitude. What it says is that you'll give them a taste, but then they have to ante up. It's self-serving and not highly effective in a lengthy complex sales process.

Instead, focus your eMarketing strategies on long term generosity. Measure against your past results and set your own benchmarks. Improvement is all about your relationships with your buyers, not your numbers against what the guy down the street is doing.

Refine and improve based on how your prospects are responding to your content and communications. Tweak and tune to increase relevance. That's what counts and that's what's going to produce sales opportunities that turn into customers.

A formula offers a false sense of security. It's a recipe that dictates you follow-it, regardless of what your prospects tell you. It promises if you take steps A + B + C that you'll get a specific outcome. It's like wearing blinders and believing you're in control.

If only your prospects were that predictable.

Instead, go All-in and provide continuous value. Focus your strategy on creating pipeline progression. A strategy is a process that requires continuous adjustments parallel to your prospect's changing needs and priorities. When you approach eMarketing in a holistic manner, you'll see impressive results. 

Every client project I work on requires a unique approach. That's because every company I work for has uniquely differentiating qualities. The relationships they build with their customers are influenced by those nuances. Your company is no different.

Trust me, formulas are not the answer for implementing eMarketing strategies.

Is Your Content Marketing the Conversation?

B2B marketers are focused on getting response to their content and outreach initiatives. They want click throughs and replies and inquiries to result from the calls to action they flow through their marketing programs.

But, what B2B marketers of complex sales need to focus on—in addition—is marketing the conversation.

There are a variety of conversations we need to influence and enable:

• Sales conversations - Yes, this is the big one that all marketers are focused on achieving. This is the one your sales team expects you to generate. A lot of them.


• Prospect conversations - As inside sales plays a bigger role, these are the conversations that help achieve the interest in participating in that big one above. They should be adding value to the content your prospects are exposed to during your nurturing programs.


• Influencer conversations - This is the one marketers overlook. An influencer conversation happens when our content floats ideas in prospects' minds that they feel compelled to go discuss with project stakeholders who have the capability to approve or derail a purchase decision with a two-letter word. "No."

Yes, that's all they have to say. They may not be able to make that final purchase decision on their own, but by saying "no" they can derail the possibility of any further conversation.

As marketers, we must develop content designed to enable the prospects we know about—and whose interest we've cultivated—to be motivated and prepared to take the discussion behind the walls to those we don't know about, or can't reach.

This means that the more you know about everyone involved in the purchase decision, the better able you'll be to design content that inspires a variety of conversations.

So let's talk about what that takes. Marketing the conversation means:

• Sharing information about how the problem impacts the decision maker and the company overall, but also providing them with insights about other impacts to stakeholders involved in or affected by the project.


• Creating content that helps your audience visualize the ideas and internalize them. When prospects can actually picture themselves in the scenarios your content provides, they can then grasp the ideas in a way that naturally inspires conversations. It's about context and storytelling.


• Designing resources for the express purpose of pass along and making them available to the audience you have. Pass along means that you help your prospects see the value in helping others involved in the project (and purchase decision) see the value of your expertise and solutions in relation to the impact from their vantage point.

It's ridiculous to think that your company will be involved in all the crucial conversations that take place during the course of a complex purchase. This means it's up to you to proactively create content designed to enable conversations that address the needs of all the other stakeholders.

Marketing Sherpa research shows that the number of people involved in a buying decision can reach up to 21. That's a lot of people to influence. It's also a really good reason why we need to step back and do the research that helps you get to know your buyers as Jerry, Sam and Debbie instead of the demographic qualifiers marketers seem to rely upon as indicators of interest.

Get To Know Your B2B Prospects

View more presentations from Ardath Albee.

We've got to work on expanding our depth of reach within our prospect companies. That only happens when we've got something relevant to say to each of them. The better we can do this, the more conversations—at different levels—our marketing content will help to inspire.

Is Your Marketing Content Ready for Step Backs?

As B2B marketers of complex sales gain traction in developing content across buying stages, they've got to remember that answering objections and correcting reversals is not just a sales activity. With sales conversations pushed farther back in the buying process, you can lose prospects before they ever speak with your sales reps if you don't remove any doubts that arise for them along the way.

Step Backs cause stalls to pipeline momentum. They tend to happen when your prospects have determined your company has a viable solution to their problem, but something pops up that causes hesitation. This can be a competitor's claim, a new ripple effect your prospect has uncovered that the solution will impact or something they've heard from a colleague or peer. There are a ton of things that can happen to cause hesitation.

Obviously, you can only address Step Backs if you learn what causes them to happen.

Some ways to do this include:

• win/loss reviews with your sales force
• customer interviews
• past customer surveys
• listening to and monitoring social networks

I've seen a number of questions asked on social networks lately about solutions. Someone posts a question asking for recommendations for a type of solution or what they should know about a specific solution before they choose to buy it or even why one solution might be better than another.

The amount of information being shared is extensive—some factual, but much that's based on opinion more than fact. Nevertheless, what's being said about your solutions on social networks needs to be listened to and, sometimes, responded to.

What marketers may struggle with is even admitting there are concerns about buying a type of product. They seem to have trouble talking about anything that's not evangelizing their products. Even though we all know that complex purchases are evaluated based on risk assessment as well as benefits. That's a part of the process. So, meet it head-on and be authentic while you're doing it.

I'm not talking about writing a piece about why buyers have chosen not to buy your solution. I'm talking about addressing concerns directly. For example; if your sales reps are reporting that you're losing deals because a certain type of influencer isn't buying in, find out why and develop content to address that concern to help eliminate that obstacle.

One of the best ways to identify Step Backs is with marketing automation. Here's one scenario made possible by the technology:

A prospect has been engaged by all your nurturing touches for the past five months and suddenly ceases to click through. Take a look at the prospect's individual profile and see if they've returned to some previously viewed content. If so, perhaps something in that content hasn't fully answered their needs and they've gone back to look for reassurance that their assumptions are correct. This is the perfect time to reach out to them personally and ask if they're looking for specific information you can provide. 

Most marketing automation solutions have a rules or work flow process that allows you to automatically send a message if your prospects do or don't do something. If you uncover certain patterns of behavior, you can develop content and distribution processes to address Step Backs as they occur, keeping prospects moving forward.

Or it could be that their priorities changed. You won't know until you ask. There's never a cut-and-dried rule for prospect behavior, but there are ways to try to address it helpfully.

Addressing Step Backs with content is a proactive way to show the depth of your understanding about your buyers' needs. By engaging with them about concerns that cause hesitation, you gain the ability to get them moving forward again, rather than losing them to a competitor or even to a decision to do nothing.

The Return on YES in Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing has been proven to be instrumental in producing qualified sales opportunities for B2B organizations—when done well. The goal, of course, is for your content strategy to produce momentum during the buying process that consistently produces that outcome.

But I'd like to challenge you to go farther.

You've got to harness the returns on YES to help your prospects take each and every consecutive step with your company.

Every time a prospect responds to you is not a YES.

Here's what I mean. If YES is defined as not only getting your prospect to open the email, click through to the content and then click to read the next related piece of content in your storyline, they have to do all three to give you a YES.

If they only make it as far as open, that's a "maybe."

If they make it past open and follow the link to your content, that's an "okay."

But, until they click on that next link, you don't have YES.

You see, the email send is only an initial invitation. In a considered sale, your prospect has so much to learn that if he's only reading that one piece of content you send out attached to your nurturing email each month—well, it will take forever to get to YES.

Eventually, as you help your buyer traverse the steps of learning all they need to know to be willing to engage in a sales conversation, the definition of YES will become that sales conversation.

YES is progressive. YES is based on credibility and value perception by your prospects.

YES takes patience, consistency and relevance.

YES requires that you show your prospects the next steps.

YES means you're continually assessing your prospects' online behavior and increasing your personalized responsiveness. (think tighter segmentation based on behavior)

Without a continuous string of YES in response to your nurturing programs, how far do you think you'll get?

That's why you need a content strategy. It's not just about "what do we send next?" Nurturing is about knowing and planning for how we respond when we get a YES. Interactive marketing means your nurturing program is a two-way street.

If your response doesn't acknowledge their YES, you're not likely to keep getting that level of engagement.

How are you incorporating YES into your nurturing programs? Better yet, how are you leveraging the return when you get YES? Something to think about.

AllBusiness.com Podcast on Handicapping Target Markets

I was recently interviewed by AllBusiness.com about the idea of Handicapping Target Markets. Handicapping in this sense is about how to use personas to increase the relevance of your nurturing campaigns to cull more ideal customers from your pipeline—as well as shorten sales cycles.

In the podcast I talk about:

• How a handicapping approach works -
• • Circumstances - the trigger events that create need for what you sell
  • Characteristics - the traits like roles, responsibilities and influencers that dictate your buyers' behavior and what they need to build a business case to buy.
• Handicapping as a group process involving salespeople and customers.
• Defining personas
• What kinds of questions you need to answer from the buyers' perspective to create content with higher relevance.
• Examples of persona-driven outcomes
• And more...

I also delve into this subject extensively in my new book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. I present the idea of extending the persona into the creation of buyer synopses, which is essentially the combination of personas with a targeted problem-to-solution scenario. The outcome of this work is producing the insights that help marketers develop highly relevant content for progressive nurturing programs.

You can also download two chapters of the book here.