Marketing Interactions

Robotic Email Campaigns Miss the Point

In addition to learning that lead generation is the top marketing priority for tech marketers, IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study asked them about their perceived effectiveness at lead nurturing. In reponse to the 22% who said they use regular nurturing touches geared to buying stages that include more than email and web-based multi-step campaigns, Kathleen Schaub, VP-research, CMO Advisory Service at IDC, said:

“I don't believe this, or people don't understand what nurturing means,” Schaub said. “I talk to a lot of our clients and people in the industry, and I know for sure that people are not nurturing well.”

Based on what I've seen, I agree with her. Kathleen also made the comment,

“A lot of people look at nurturing as, "Now we can program our campaign system to deliver six emails in a row.'"

Hence the need for this post. Yet again.

Lead nurturing is not about sending out emails on a regular schedule just because you can. Or just because you think that constant communication (regardless of relevance) will help you sell something. It won't.

And it's evidence that marketers have missed the point.

Lead nurturing is about providing education, expertise, and evidence that help prospects learn what they know during each stage of the process and build the confidence to make a buying decision in your favor — or to gain the consensus from those involved in the decision to get the deal done. It's about positioning your company as an expert that can bring more value to the project than the product would alone.

Let's face it, perceived value, expertise and credibility are the true differentiators in today's marketplace. Otherwise it would just be a price war.

Stringing together 6 emails as a set-it-and-forget-it program won't do this. Don't misunderstand. It's not about the number 6, but the laziness behind the robotic campaign that sets my teeth on edge. Based on the length of the buy cycle, 6 touches may do the trick — if they're relevant and build the right story.

The problem with robotic email campaigns is that they:

• Lack the consistent provision of relevance and value
• Irritate your prospects (based on the above)
• Don't build your credibility
• Are likely focused on feeds, speeds and products
• Don't take into account buyer behavior during the campaign
• Are a campaign, not a strategy
• Have no progression of story that builds momentum
• Have no cohesive story
• Do not differentiate your company
• Are more about timing than context
• Do nothing to stimulate dialogue
• Create another marketing silo
• Don't integrate with programs in other channels
• Probably push the sale for lack of anything better to do
• Are instantly forgettable
• Train your prospects to achieve speed records in clicking delete
• Are about you, not them
• Let you check the box without achieving objectives
• Put you squarely in the marketing fluff camp
• Usually aren't tied to revenue
• Make your company irrelevant
• Don't provide ideas worth sharing (or even pondering)
• Lack the ability to stimulate curiosity
• Repel engagement

I can probably think of more, but you should get gist.

Please understand that this has nothing to do with marketing automation. I think every marketer should have it. It's what you do with it that counts.

Lead nurturing is a process. It's the unfolding of a story that helps the buyer understand why they need to solve a problem, options for solving it, why they should change and why they should choose you to do so. It's never about buying a product. At least not overtly.

This takes thought, planning and the establishment of a lead management process that's managed to goals and objectives.

And it takes the chops to develop outstanding content designed for buyers.

It also means that you need to think outside the Inbox. Lead nurturing happens with every asset your prospects come in contact with in whatever channel they're using. Whether they see a Tweet and click to read a blog post or receive an email with a link to an article or white paper, or find your infographic using search, the result should be the perception of value and time well spent.

So before you go hook up 6 emails in a row to send out on a schedule, take some time to think about the experience you're creating for your buyers. If you need more motivation, review the list above highlighting the consequences of using robotic emails.

Picture courtesy of Robot Pictures

B2B Content Strategy Should Never Be a Wallflower

A B2B content marketing strategy should never be contained in a silo. First of all, to be literal, a silo is a dugout, cave or shelter for grain. Secondly, it denotes walls and barriers that keep its contents apart from everything else. A B2B content marketing strategy must lead somewhere. It should be based on a continuum that matches the needs of prospects and customers wherever they may be in the experience at any time.

The issue I see often, is that content marketing is an add-on to everything else that marketers have on their plates. It's viewed as a campaign, a project or a standalone initiaitve. A silo. This is in part related to the way marketers are wired. In the traditional sense, most of what marketers do has start and end dates and each effort is graded on its own merit (I'm using the word "merit" loosely).

How's our SEO strategy doing?

How many "leads" did that last campaign produce?

Did our webinar attendees increase for this topic?

How many followers did our Twitter account attract last month?

Is our web traffic growing?

Don't get me wrong, we need to measure and evaluate, but we need to quit using our metrics as boundaries that separate one initiative from another. To do this, we need to look at transitions and experiences across buying and the customer lifecycle.

An experience is a set of dynamic transitions that flow together. Until you step out of it or it ends.

When marketers focus on campaigns, they are instituting a construct that boxes in and ends the experience. Three email touches and a sales call, move on. This construct is for us, not related to anything our prospects or customers need, want or value. It was created so that we could manage and measure our efforts based on some ridiculous notion that a short-term campaign can definitively drive sales for a long-term buying process.

But I digress. The point I want to make is about the need to integrate transitions.

Channels are proliferating and marketers need to pay attention to the transitions between them. If your social media team isn't cognizant of your nurturing program, for example, how fluid will the experience be for a prospect or customer taking part in both?

If a buyer watches a video on your YouTube! channel and finds it fun and informative, then visits your website only to see a bunch of dry, product-focused content they find neither fun, nor informative, how will you overcome that disconnect? Or can you?

Often overlooked is the critical transition from marketing to sales. Marketers often plan their content strategy without ever sharing it with sales or - highly recommended - involving sales in its development. If the entire be all and end all of marketing is to help produce and grow customers, why the heck is this transition so overlooked?

It's time for marketing to stop producing more wallflowers and start creating the Belles of the Ball! You may laugh but the Belles of the Ball are sought out, followed and considered highly engaging. This will never happen if we don't integrate all of our marketing initiatives into our strategy and consider how to gain the benefits of dynamic experiences based on transitions.

I know this is difficult. If it was easy it wouldn't be near as much fun!

Take the first step by evaluating everything you're doing and discovering how to create better transitions that tell a story your audience finds engaging. Start connecting the dots. Just don't leave your content strategy sitting on the sidelines as just another project.

 

Designing Calls to Action for B2B Marketing Content

During my keynote at the B2B Content 2 Conversion conference on Tuesday, one of the questions the audience asked was about a slide I used when discussing how to create a content flow. To sum it up, I suggested that each "touch" should be based on three components:

• The question your content will answer for a persona.
• The answer to the question that becomes the content asset.
• A call to action (CTA)

I was asked to elaborate on what I meant by a call to action.

The normal response to the "call to action" mandate is inserting a "have a sales rep call me" or some other version of pushing the sales conversation. But, this is not helpful during much of the marketing process.

Marketers need to reframe the way they think about the CTA, flipping it from what they ultimately want (qualified leads that will buy from their sales team) to what will be helpful to their prospective buyers. But what's even more concerning is that much of the content used by marketing doesn't even nod in the direction of a CTA - demonstrated nicely by a post written by Eric Wittlake — New Research: B2B Content is a Dead End — which he telepathically knew to publish today so I could link to it!

Calls to action should be used to build the best and most engaging buying experience imaginable. They can take many forms and accomplish the momentum needed to turn cursory attention into intentional attention directed toward embracing change to solve a specific problem.

Some of the benefits available from putting thought into designing calls to action:

• Extend engagement by providing additional information about a topic the prospect showed interest in.


• Showcase your company's expertise in solving the problem.


• Expose the prospect to content that they may have overlooked by linking to the previous touch in your nurturing program.


• Differentiate your company's expertise from the competition.


• Build credibility for your company as a valuable resource.


• Cement your ideas with prospects so they get used in conversations when your company is not "in the room."

I'd say those are some pretty good reasons to give CTAs some serious thought.

An additional consideration is to make sure that you vary the types of content you're linking together to create that interesting experience for your buyers. For example, all calls to action don't have to be links to other resources. A call to action can also be an embedded resource within a content asset, such as embedding a video or slideshare into a blog post or article. If the prospect reads the post/article and views the embedded content then you've achieved that extension on attention.

One note of caution: Just because you can add CTAs doesn't mean you should saturate every content asset with links, embeds and "see also" extensions. This is why designing CTAs takes thought.

What's the one thing you'd like for your prospect to learn next?

Give them that with each content asset. If you do this, you'll create connected pathways that thoughtfully engage prospects by offering them additional ideas that make sense given what they've just engaged with. Don't overwhelm them with choices or it will backfire on you by increasing the effort to choose.

Calls to Action enable marketers to serve as the guide to the buyer experience. Go out and build a great one!

Below is my presentation from the B2B Content 2 Conversion conference. Slide 19 is the one I mention at the beginning of this post:

10 Steps to Launch a Content Marketing Strategy from Scratch

View more PowerPoint from Ardath Albee

Content Marketing: Theory vs. Practice

Sometimes I think content marketing can be made so convoluted and complex that it's nearly impossible to execute. I've seen spreadsheets and diagrams and lists of things you must do that make my head hurt. And, yes, I know I do this for a living. I'm a B2B content strategist - and dang proud of the work I do.

But reality is what we have to work with and a phased approach can be a beautiful thing. After all, if you can't execute the strategy it's not delivering a service to your company—or your customers.

Here are a few things I find true in practice:

• Marketers must be able to wrap their heads around the why, what, when, where and how.


• Content theories abound and if you try to kluge it all together, you will become as immobilized as a deer in the headlights of a rapidly approaching semi.


• Theory is great, but often difficult to put into practice in a reasonable way.


• Expectations need to be appropriate based on your resources, capabilities and limitations.


• Content marketing never ends, so quit trying to get it perfect before you launch.


• Until you launch, you have no real-world feedback to judge your strategy or programs. It's not about what you think, but what your buyers think and how they respond.


• Once launched, you can tune on the fly and add layers as you gain proficiency.

What I find with most projects is that the marketers taking on content marketing already have a full plate. This means that we need to figure out how to incorporate what they're already doing within the content strategy rather than approaching it as a standalone effort - which a content strategy should never be.

First, marketers need to build buyer insights and identify personas or market segments. It is only through gaining a clear understanding of each persona's orientation, objectives and obstacles that marketers can begin to design a relevant content strategy.

Without knowing your buyers, where's your focus? On your products and company, of course. Because that's what you know. This is why there's so much crappy content floating around in the ether.

Once you know your buyers, choose a segment, step into their shoes and figure out what are all the questions they need to answer based on their specific situation. Open a document and type the problem statement at the top of the page (or get a group together and use a white board to brainstorm).

Persona problem statement: I need to do X in order to get Y.

Start tossing up questions this persona would have about solving that problem.

For example:

• What are the different ways I can do X?
• How much of Y do I need?
• How are our competitors solving X?
• What competitive advantages could we gain if we solve X?
• Who else will be impacted in the company if we solve X?
• How will I convince them that Y is worth the effort to change the status quo?

Keep going until you can't think of another question this persona would ask in order to gather all the information they need to build confidence, gain consensus and make an informed purchase decision.

Now, given what you know about your persona/segment, how would you answer each question? The answers are the premise statements for your content development. And the answers should not be all about your product, but focused on what it enables that your prospect couldn't do before. The why, what and how that will get them Y. If possible, identify several different ways to answer each question.

Assess your existing content to see what questions it answers, or if it needs to be reinvented or retired. Identify your gaps for new content development.

How do your current and planned campaigns and events, etc. fit in with your content flow for this persona? Match them up and insert them into the flow.

Consider your marketing mix and where you've determined your persona goes to find information and create a distribution program. Based on the modes you use this can include website, email, blogs, social, etc. This is when formats come in. Not before. Your focus should be on the information first. Make sure you have the resources to execute and know what the timing looks like to get it done.

Don't forget to consider calls to action. What do you want them to do after engaging with the content? Be reasonable about what makes sense as a next step given the information they just viewed. It's not generally "have sales contact me." And, based on the technology you have, determine the best ways to measure and monitor outcomes.

Get it out the door and tune on the fly as you go. Even if you only start with one persona, just get it going. Evolve and add layers as you learn what works and what doesn't.

Content marketing in practice can be as easy or difficult as you make it. Focus on learning what your buyers need to know to reach objectives and give it to them in digestible ways they will value. That's really what's at the crux of content marketing.

Theory is great. All marketers should understand it. But practice is about execution.

Marketing Cloud Computing to Non-Believer CIOs

Cloud computing is a pretty big deal. It's one of the top priorities for many CIOs. So, it should be a pretty easy process to build a B2B content strategy that helps CIOs make a purchasing decision.

Or is it?

I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and have a ton of Google Alerts to help me mine for information I use to learn more about the buyers my clients sell to. In my Inbox today was a bonanza of a resource. SearchCIO sent me a link to: Quick take: Why iRobot's CIO doesn't like enterprise cloud computing

This resource is a quick interview with Jay Leader, CIO of iRobot, in which he clearly distills exactly why he's not sold on cloud computing. He shares the questions he has and the obstacles he'd need to overcome to change his mind. This kind of stuff is uber helpful to constructing nurturing programs, as topics for blog posts and providing seed ideas for all types of content.

Take a look at all the great nuggets from this interview:

IT Projects Completed and Planned:

• Completed: Integration of ERP and Product Lifecycle Management systems to shorten product time to market
• Completed: A major upgrade to their collaboration portal
• Planned: enterprise architecture and business intelligence

Culture:

• The CEO has a degree in computer science from MIT
• The company's legal counsel has a degree in engineering from MIT
• The company is filled with engineers - according to Leader, "It's like having 700 CIOs"
• Actually, the company was a brainchild of MIT

Now, if you were pursuing this company as a named-account, you can do a lot with the above information.

But take a look at the questions Leader raises that can be applied to a campaign directed at CIOs in companies with similar characteristics, such as: High Tech Manufacturing, $500M revenues, 700+ employees

Objections and Obstacles:

• Show me an economic model that proves cloud computing is cheaper than how I manage my storage today.


• How do I get out of a cloud provider if I'm unhappy?


• What change in competency do I need to manage disconnected enterprises?


• I understand the potential, but how do I actually reap the value promised?


• Why would I pay to store documents somewhere else?


• If it isn't more secure, cost-effective and functional that what I have, why would I do this?


• I don't have an environment that needs burst resources, so the ability to scale quickly doesn't make a big impression on me.


• How do I integrate the data that is out in the cloud?


• I have a data center and staff, don't plan on getting rid of either.


• How will I really know where my data is being stored?

Leader also mentions a colleague who implemented Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) who has a staff of sysadmins when what he now needs are project managers and coordinators.

If you're selling cloud computing, how many of these questions and obstacles have you addressed in your content strategy?

Even if you're not selling cloud computing, the glimpse into the questions that come to mind for a CIO considering a technology purchase can help you dig deeper into your own content strategy to ensure that you're addressing the issues that come up for non-believers.

I'd also bet that even if your prospect is a believer, there are a few non-believers that must be brought around in order for the deal to move forward. The interesting thing is that cloud computing is being discussed all over the place. It's hard to go to any IT community or portal and not hear about it.

Don't let the hype about a solution serve as blinders. There are always objections to change that must be addressed. Interviews with people like your prospects can be terrific sources of insight for generating relevant ideas to weave into your content strategy.

NOTE: This is only one perspective, so don't base an entire strategy on Leader, but use it to assess your strategy and possibly fill any gaps that exist. Go talk to your salespeople to see if they're experiencing any of these objections and obstacles. Ask customers with similar characteristics if they had to answer any of these questions during their buying experience and how much importance was placed on those they did have to sort through.

Are Shorter Sales Cycles a Wake-up Call for Marketers?

Marketing Sherpa's chart of the week shows the answer to this question.

Q. Please select the time period closest to the length of your organization's entire sales cycle, from first lead inquiry to purchase.

In the commentary, Jen Doyle states that these results showing shorter sales cycles correlate to the lower deal prices Marketing Sherpa's annual benchmark survey also discovered.

But I think there's more at stake here than lower prices. Everyone has been talking about how much time buyers spend self-educating and researching prior to identifying themselves to vendors. Buyers have even said that they may not request contact with a vendor until they have selected their short lists. Some estimates gauge the time buyers spend outside of vendor-defined sales cycles to include up to or beyond half of the buying process for a B2B complex purchase.

So, could this chart actually be reflecting that the period of time that buyers spend with a vendor is shorter, but not truly reflect the length of the actual buy cycle? I think it's very possible.

And, if so, then it validates the imperative for marketers to get their content found by the right audience, rather than waiting for them to enter their databases so they can nurture them formally. If your company's ideas and expertise aren't helping them decide how to solve the problem, then why would you think your company would make their short list when the time comes?

What do you think?

The Art of The Ask in Content Marketing

When working on content strategies with clients, the question about which content should be gated always comes up. Content — great content — takes a lot of time, effort and resources to produce. It just makes sense that B2B marketers want people to pay for it with their contact info. Or does it?

Regardless of how much has been said about giving to get, setting content free, and sharing without restraint, what comes up for many corporate marketers is that they're stuck in the cross hairs of corporate objectives that don't give them a lot of wiggle room. Accountability and proof of contribution to revenues also has marketers leaning toward shutting the gate, if you will.

The issue isn't the form as much as it's the attitude. Marketers feel entitled to contact information in exchange for access to their content. Unfortunately, over zealous behavior by companies in response to form submissions is still a bad practice that doesn't seem to be abating. Therefore, resistance to form completion is growing.

On the flip side, buyers expect that if you want to do business with them that you'll provide the information they need to make that decision. If accessing the content requires too much effort, they'll move on to a competitor with less hoops to jump through.

The downsides of the gate—in addition to less downloads—are that they introduce hesitation and doubt into what should be a fluid process of establishing a relationship with your buyers. We've all had the experience of trolling along through content we find interesting only to be confronted with a form. The form surfaces thoughts such as these:

How important is this going to be to me?

What are the chances that they'll call me?

Is it worth the risk?

I always wanted to be Mickey Mouse...

Maybe I can just alter one digit in my phone number...

And I can use my throw-away email that I ignore...just in case they send a link to the PDF instead of letting me download it right away.

Once this happens, trust diminishes just a bit. Or more than that. In order not to risk losing a relationship that hasn't had a chance to develop, marketers need to think a bit more about the art of the ask.

How Not to Ask:

• Gate everything. I've been on websites that gate everything - including case studies. Seriously? Why would you want to make it difficult for people to learn about how you help your customers?


• Keep Older Content Under Lock and Key. Who hasn't filled out a form for a white paper that's over 2 years old? How disappointed were you? Try setting that content free after six months to allow it to help you get more mileage out of it. Consider adding a link at the end of it to newer gated content if they want to learn more about that subject. Yes, this means you need to keep track of and update your content.


• Embrace Form Field Mania. How much information do you really need? You're not going to use my street address for anything, so why ask for it? More than 4 - 5 fields is too many and makes you seem greedy and self-interested. What's most important? Name, email and 1 other thing. What's most helpful based on your marketing strategy? Industry? Title? Company name? You don't have to get all their info at once. Progressive profiling is a good thing!

Deciding When to Ask:

Make strategic decisions about when and why you decide to gate content. One thing that helps with this is to map your content to buying stages. Anything early stage doesn't need to be gated. Use this content to build a relationship by sharing information that helps them form their thinking around the problem and why to go about solving it. Once they make progress, then offer them something worthwhile in exchange for a limited amount of contact information — only what you need to establish a dialogue.

Use the weight of the content when deciding to gate or not to gate. People generally expect to fill out a form to register for a webinar, a research report, a white paper or ebook. Anything less than that doesn't have enough heft to provide a mutual exchange of value. This being said, also evaluate the buying stage. If you write an early-stage white paper, set it free to build awareness and get that dialogue underway. Or offer an executive summary for free and gate the full version. The point is, the sooner prospects start using your ideas to think about solving problems, the better off you'll be.

Give Them a Guarantee. Consider adding a check box to have a salesperson call them and add wording that assures them that no call will happen unless that box is checked. Make sure to get buy-in from sales!

Gate to Gain Insights. What's the promise of your content? If the person takes you up on the promise and fills out the form, what will that tell you about their interests, where they are in their buying process, and what your next interaction with them should be? Doing this well means that you must know your buyers. You need to be able to think about and plan for next steps, not just this one transaction.

And, given the promise of your content, if that lead is already in your database, what one or two questions could you ask on the form to help you become even more relevant to them? Yes, this is where progressive profiling comes in.

Asking is an Art — but it's also a strategic part of marketing that must be clearly thought out to provide value beyond adding someone's contact information to your database. Asking is about getting what you need to improve their experience with your company and your content. It requires a bit of thoughtful planning.

Frequency: All the time vs. at the right time

In the Focus roundtable I participated in last week with Lisa Horner, Lauren Goldstein and Craig Rosenberg, Lisa brought up the term "perpetual denamd gen." This concept is a paradigm shift for B2B marketers that can be a great opportunity or present fierce challenges — sometimes it's a combination of both.

The nature of publishing on demand and 24/7 availability of content has obviously changed expectations for all of us. It's not only increased our expectations for instant gratification, but it's raised those expectations about the kind of information we should have immediate access to.

As a result, many B2B marketers feel like hamsters on the perpetual content publishing wheel. We keep peddling faster and harder to crank out more content, fearing that if we miss one opportunity, our online influcence will tank, competitors will get their messaging infront of our buyers first, or, even worse, we'll be letting down those buyers we've been trying so valiantly to build relationshps with.

I'm guilty of feeling guilty about this. My last blog post was over a week ago. Due to project deadlines and work commitments, there simply was no time—or brain power—to write a blog post. It was on my mind every day. This little voice that kept telling me "go post, go post, think of something, go post!"

Interestingly, my blog didn't tank. Traffic kept coming because of the nearly 1,000 posts I've already written. I like to think that's because they provide something my readers find valuable and useful. Then again, they could be showing up only to see nothing new and think, "Crap - where's the new stuff?" Ugh.

Which is the point I'm trying to explore. How often is often enough?

I've spoken with marketers who are feeling the pressure. The capabilities of real-time publishing coupled with the mandate to generate more and better leads has morphed into this ridiculous idea that the more content we shove out the door, the better our results will be.

I'd like to say, not necessarily. Some of the consequences of hyper-frequency include:

• Becoming irrelevant because your content quality becomes "so so" instead of "wow" due to the rush.
• Irritating because it's just too much to try to keep up with - we're all busy, right?
• Your content becomes a commodity instead of being a welcome break to indulge and learn. Hey, if I don't read today's piece, there will be another tomorrow. No big deal.
• Channel fatigue happens because corners get cut as marketers post the same thing everywhere, checking off the platforms to show the task has been completed.

When publishing becomes about publishing rather than about sharing valuable information, marketing programs will tank.

Instead of embracing an "all-the-time" mindset, marketers need to consider the difference an "at the right time" approach can make.

The ability to do this well is dependent upon the amount and type of visibility you have into prospect and customer behavior. Data is becoming the holy grail for marketers. What we know can determine how we publish, as well as the type of information we choose to share and the places in which we choose to share it.

Getting frequency right is a balancing act that will obviously take some work to achieve. Determining the best ways to listen to and interpret our prospect's behaviors and respond accordingly is an important skill to master.

I don't have all the answers. It differs with each company I work with. Testing and refinements are part of the process. But with visibility into the right data, we can begin to discern patterns and schedule our programs accordingly. Some channels require more frequency, some less. Prospects will respond to frequency based on where they are in the buying cycle. We can't treat everything the same.

And, with the overwhelming amount of content available, I'd say that, once again, we need to focus on quality, not quantity.

As a conclusion to this post, I'll share with you an excerpt from a DMNews article with a comment from Dave Frankland, VP and research director at Forrester Research:

Despite the focus on real-time marketing, just because data and automation tools have made triggered messaging easier doesn't mean a brand should always market itself moment by moment. Rahter, brands should focus on marketing at the "right time.

"If a customer can only change a contract once a month, it might not be the time to trigger a message just because they visited your website. There is no use in sending them a message when the timing isn't right. It's about leveraging the data so that you can send the intelligent message at the relevant time."

What do you think about frequency? Can you share examples of hyper-frequency that have backfired? Or examples of how increasing frequency at the right time has resulted in better response?

Which data do you use to determine frequency?

 

Inbound Needs Outbound

New marketing strategies and tactics attract B2B marketers like moths to a flame. For some reason, marketers think that in with the new and out with the old is what's necessary to get better results. One example is the notion that inbound marketing can be used as a replacement for outbound marketing.

How do you figure? Even Hubspot, arguably the creator of the inbound concept, uses outbound marketing to enhance their engagement with inbound leads. Anyone who receives email from Hubspot is getting outbound communications.

The difference is in how outbound marketing is defined and executed.

Inbound marketing is the concept of integrating content, search and social media to help prospects find your company through the sharing of information they consider valuable and choose to engage with.

If we consider the challenge of being found by prospects, what's really changing is the approach. With inbound marketing, we're working to attract prospects to our content through the optimization of search and the use of social media. Without the content, there would be no inbound marketing.

Outbound marketing—done well—is an extension of that concept. In fact, I'd argue that the defining difference is pull vs. push, which can also be stated as choice vs. interruption.

What we really want is to create extended engagement that manifests itself with the results of more time spent with our content vs. that of competitors and is considered valuable enough for prospects to share with others.

Take a look at a few approaches that rely on a combination of both approaches for success:

• Lead Nurturing - Continuous engagement with prospects who have demonstrated interest in specific topics by opting in to download a white paper or attending a webinar, for example. Instead of random email blasts to our databases (or even worse, purchased lists), we're honoring their expression of interest by creating and sharing content that addresses their preferences.


• RSS Feeds - Once you've enticed a lead to subscribe to your blog post, technically, each and every blog post that is relayed to them via the feed is outbound. Comments are inbound. Readers who share your blog posts are a source of inbound.


• Twitter - when we post Tweets leading back to our content, we're engaging in outbound marketing. Done well, each Tweet is an invitation to share information designed to be of value to our target market. Done old school, it's a megaphone blast screaming "look at us!" The first way is engaging and the other is noise. This said, others who Tweet about our content are truly a source of inbound marketing.


• Conferences - Participating as an exhibitor or speaker at a conference is an outbound activity. Whatever you deliver to those you interact with at a conference will determine its inbound capacity. Everyone who subsequently chooses to engage with you based on that experience can arguably now be considered inbound.

The true definition of inbound is creating the interest and engagement that keeps prospects choosing to continuously access your content because they've come to know that whatever you publish has a high likelihood of being valuable to them.

Inbound is definitely critical for marketing in today's overwhelming informational environments. But I'd argue that inbound doesn't actually work without outbound. It's all in how you incorporate the two disciplines.

What do you think?

The Job of a Lead Nurturing Email

I was reviewing a few email messages I'd developed for a B2B lead nurturing program with a project team when they said the equivalent of - Gosh, these are short. We should include links to events, products, etc. We're missing a big opportunity to give our prospects more choices.

Then there was a pause and one of them asked, "What if they don't like the one link we're including?"

And there you have the ultimate email challenge - being perceived as relevant enough to get the level of attention that motivates action.

This said, inundating prospects with more links and choices rather than improving the personalization, value and contagiousness of your email message is not the right answer.

The purpose of a lead nurturing email is NOT to:

• Be everything to everyone.
• Get any old click.
• Ask for a lot of time.
• Make a sale.

At the rate inboxes fill, you've got to pass the Catch Factor test. This means your email - within seconds - must communicate:

• Urgency - Do I need to know this right now?
• Impact - Is this subject matter relevant to my priorities?
• Effort - How easy will it be to get the information?
• Reputation - What's my perception of the sender?
• Intent - What do I think they want from me?

Attention spans are fleeting. Your email needs to get attention, motivate the action and be done with those two things really fast. At the outside, within 10 seconds. Bury your hook, use dense text not written in a scannable format and you're probably out of the game.

The only job of your lead nurturing email is to get the prospect to take an action that shows you their interest in the subject matter of your content offer. There's just simply not time for much else.

Instead of worrying about adding offers, start focusing on how you can improve relevance and create higher connection rates.

One of the biggest issues for gaining attention is uniqueness. The ease of publishing content has saturated the Web with redundancy - at varying quality levels. As a marketer, how many articles have you seen on the value of lead nurturing, or the top ten ways to use content? Repetition is great for creating awareness and acceptance, but how many times do you see the same words before you start tuning them out as so much blah, blah, blah that you assume you've heard before?

The same is true for your prospects. The challenge is often to say what you need to differently than others with similar messages. It's hard because you're also used to seeing all the same words used within your market.

Additionally, short is good. You should be able to compose an active email that does it's job in less than 150 words. In fact, aim for 100. Break it up so that it's easy to scan. Think about what it might look like in a mobile device. I often send emails to my smartphone just to see what they look like, how easy they are to read.

Dump the HTML and use text. Seriously. I don't download graphics if I can help it. Do you? I don't have time. Most business people I speak with don't either. In fact, if all I see is the emptiness of graphic boxes waiting to be downloaded in a preview, I just delete. Who has the time?

You may be proud of those gorgeous graphics, but if they impede your message getting through, are they worth it? At least do some A/B testing of text vs. HTML to see which perform better. I'd save them for your landing pages. That's where you want prospects to spend their time, right?

Now we're back to the job of lead nurturing email. Getting prospects to take the action you request of them.

After all - the metrics you can measure from an email are limited to clicks, opens, and bounces. But, get them to a landing page and you've got much bigger possibilities. You can learn about interest levels, topical interest, time spent, where they go next, if they share it with someone else, and what stage of buying they're in. [Much of that depends on the quality of your content offer, but that's another blog post.]

And, when your email message is confined to one focus, you're challenged to make it even more meaningful and relevant than you'd be if you relied upon throwing in the kitchen sink to try and just get any old click.

When your lead nurturing email is focused on doing its job, you're focused on doing yours.

Oh - and the thing about choices: More choices equals less response. It's too hard to decide what to do. Keep it simple and direct. One step at a time. Each thing you ask them to do is an added burden. If yourlead nurturing emails look like too much effort, the prospect deletes them and moves on to something easier to deal with.

I've done tests with email to prove just this to clients who've wanted to keep multiple links in their emails. The educational and thought leadership links got the clicks. The others were basically ignored. And the emails with many different links received higher unsubscribe rates - likely due to the scattered focus the emails presented.

What are you doing to make your lead nurturing emails more actionable?