Marketing Interactions

The B2B Funnel is More Like a Pinball Machine

I was watching the video for the second roundtable video that I participated in at Content Marketing World and Nick Panayi from CSC said, "the funnel is more like a pinball machine, with leads bouncing everywhere" - I'm not sure that's verbatim, so go watch it.

Anyway it got me to thinking about one of the big concepts in my next book that I call The Continuum Experience. It's actually a continuation or extension of the concept of natural nurturing that I presented in my first book a few years back.

Essentially the gist is that the funnel has constraints as a process of elimination based on the limited set of prospects in your database. A bunch go in at the top and a few come out the bottom. If you think about it, it's like setting yourself up for failure.

Instead, if marketers are willing to look at nurturing as a function that works both with and outside of your database, you then have a construct based on infinite potential–rather than reduced possibilities.

The other thing that the continuum experience does is to eliminate standalone, start and stop campaigns that just halt momentum in its tracks. Why do we ever want to do that?

Creating a Continuum Experience makes sense when you consider that modern marketing is about:

• Meeting and engaging your leads in the channels they frequent
• Providing information that matches prospects needs based on who they are and where they are in the buying process
• Helping prospects choose to become your customers

In marketing, we've created a lot of issues for ourselves by naming stuff and then separating it. Marketers have a bunch of functions, including:

• Lead generation
• Demand generation
• Lead nurturing
• Brand awareness
• Sales enablement
• And more...

We segment our activities to address each one separately. But we don't need to.

• Who's to say that a white paper that's being used specifically for lead gen isn't just as applicable to a prospect in your database and nurture program that hasn't seen that information?
• What if a prospect in your database and nurturing programs stumbles upon a blog post that fills in a key gap that was holding him back from taking the next step?
• What if your salesperson is in a great conversation when a question comes up and she can share just the right content to help the prospect keep moving? Even if it's a piece designated to an early-stage nurture program and not publically available.

In any of these situations, should we be sorry that it happened? Or should we be facilitating these types of occurrences as a matter of course?

I'm voting for the latter.

But the only way this works is if our content and communications are consistent and relevant across all the channels we and our audiences use. And it means that we need to be sharing all the pieces of the story across those channels. We can't just reserve the good stuff for the nurture programs that are only shared with those in our database.

Well, you can, but why would you want to limit potential?

I would stipulate that the pinball thing has always been there, only we now have the technology to see it happening as we engage with prospects in various channels.

So what does it take to adopt The Continuum Experience as a new construct for nurturing?

You can wait for my new book, Digital Relevance, to come out in January, or you can get a preview deep dive by listening to my session on PowerViews Live with Dan McDade on demand through the link below.

Persona-Based Continuum Marketing - It's the New Nurturing

Dan and I discuss the above points and how personas can help you to speed up the buying process through alignment and progression strategies that resonate with buyers.

If you're feeling the pinball fatigue, maybe it's time to change your perspective about nurturing. It's really about smart marketing that can help you accomplish a variety of tasks in an integrated way that will resonate with more of your prospects.

Why "Who" Sends B2B Nurturing Emails Matters

A lot of marketing emails used in B2B nurturing programs don't have a live person tied to them. Signature lines that reference Your [Company] Team, or no signature at all are the norm. This bothers me. Not only is it impersonal from companies that are trying to prove to you that they're putting your needs first, but it represents a hands-off attitude that is a bit offputting for your buyers. Not to mention it screams "I'm a marketing email."

Even worse is the dreaded "Do Not Reply" email moniker. I cannot believe that marketers think this is effective. You want to talk to me, but you don't want me to talk back? Nice.

Then there are the companies who use what looks like an executive's email and signature. Nice try, but I'm not buying for one minute that the Executive VP from a global company is using his or her personal email to do nurturing sends to thousands of contacts. Do you really think your prospects are buying it? If it's true, good for you, but I wonder what that exec's inbox looks like...

There's a big opportunity with sig lines. Some of the benefits include:

• Building a personal relationship
• Improving your responsiveness
• Inviting replies
• Showing you care
• Giving buyers an alternative to the anonymous contact form that goes who knows where?
• It's really easy to hit "reply"

In fact, I was on the phone with a client the other day and he was sharing some of the latest reactions the inside sales team has had from replies to nurturing emails. Yes, each rep has their signature on the emails sent to leads they'll be speaking to when the time comes. This company has their inside sales team set up as concierges who are helpful, coordinate the introductions and hand offs to the sales team and act as the connective tissue as much as needed during the entire buying process.

Here are a few of the responses they've received via replies to nurturing emails:

From a customer in a nurture stream:

The contact replied to a nurture email informing her rep that she's been promoted to a different area of the company, but she's been sending the emails on to four other colleagues who have asked to be added to the list. She providing all their contact information and faciliatated their request to personally receive content from the client because they find it that valuable.

When's the last time that happened to you?

From a targeted prospect company:

The executive who'd been receiving nurturing emails forwarded one on to a staff member and requested that he set up conversations to discuss their upcoming project. With the contact information on the email, the process was super simple and he also acted as if a relationship was already established because of the way his boss forwarded the email and request.

From an active prospect:

This contact sends his rep suggestions for what he'd like to see in the content we're sending to him. This helps to evolve their content process and editorial calendar. Mostly, what she wants is for the client to connect more of the story so she can keep following the thread. How's that for engagement?

Responsiveness is Critical

It's bad enough that many companies never respond when a contact form is submitted from their websites. But when marketers are actively trying to engage prospects and retain customers, responsiveness isn't a maybe, it's a must do!

Why in the world would you want to make it difficult for prospects and customers to start up a dialogue with your inside sales team?

Oh, I've heard the excuses - bunch of wimpy stuff in my opinion that includes stuff like:

• We don't know which rep they'll speak to
• We have a lot of attrition - why set up a relationship with someone who might not be here when they call?
• Field sales doesn't want inside sales building relationships with their leads

Change your processes. Hire better people, train them better and keep them up to speed about the content your prospects are engaging with. I don't know one inside sales rep who wouldn't be ecstatic to have an interested prospect reach out to them!

And if field sales has a problem, put their signatures on the nurture emails.

Just get out of your own way and set the stage. Let the dialogues happen as they will. Otherwise, what's the point in creating great content that promotes the urge for prospects to continue the dialogue in the first place?

Making Assumptions About The Buyer's Journey

I'd like to take pause to question how marketers are using the term "buyer's journey." This also applies to buying process, buying cycle, sales cycle, etc.

If you've been reading my blog lately, you know I've been on a bit of a quest to get marketers to stop and think about what the terms we use every day actually mean. We're moving so fast and trying to expand our skill sets in real time and I think we adopt terms and apply them to what we're doing without really analyzing the underlying meaning.

So, let's take on the buyer's journey.

I write a lot about the buyer's journey/process. In fact, I took a very hard look at it when I was writing my book. Since I work with B2B companies with complex sales that have very long periods of prospect gestation, I came to the conclusion that the usual definition was just too broad to be meaningful.

I'm talking about the usual nod to: Awareness, Consideration, Purchase.

If the cycle takes 9 months, that's a lot of gray area for each stage. And all stages are not created equally in length of time or objectives that must be met for the continuation of forward motion. Plus, it occurs to me that the construct above is for us more than it is representative of our buyers.

I chose to break the buyers' journey into 7 stages based on how I've seen prospects navigate problem solving:

• Status quo - Their situation today before they are actively trying to resolve a problem


• Priority - Their realization that a problem exists that's worth solving


• Research - Actively seeking education, best practices and whatever they need to know to determine a viable course of action


• Options - Determining who has the expertise to help them solve the problem with the least risk


• Step Backs - Handling the doubt that occurs to restore confidence that all their questions have been answered and they're on the right path. Answering the "What if...?" questions


• Validation - Verifying that they're making the right choice in solution and vendor


• Choice - Making the purchase

However you choose to define the buyers' journey is fine. There are many roads to Oz. But what's important is that we consider this process from the buyers' perspective, not ours.

For example - let's say you use Awareness as your first stage. For some reason, marketers assume that if prospects are just "aware" of their company and solution that they will move on to the consideration stage.

Why?

I'm aware of a lot of companies that I never buy a thing from. So are you. What creates that defining moment that speaks to your prospect and motivates them to take an action to learn more about you or from you in relation to a problem they are trying to solve?

If they do learn more, do you assume they're now in the consideration stage? Or are they just becoming more aware? What is the catalyst that creates a stage transition? And how do you evaluate that?

With buyers taking control of their "journey," what makes you think you have the inside track?

These are not easy questions to answer. Developing a strategy to engage buyers by answering their needs as they look for solutions to problems requires hard work, research and continuous testing as markets evolve and priorities shift.

The starting point (in my opinion) is buyer personas. You've got to compile insights across the entirety of the process to determine what to provide, when. And how to provide it in a way that works for them.This includes uncovering the questions they need to answer to open up a path of discovery with the intention to solve a problem.

I think that in order to do this well we need to forget about format and think about information. For some reason, marketers always want to assign formats to stages before they think about the information that prospects need. I see this a lot.

Should we use a case study here or a blog post there? Who cares? If the information isn't what the prospect is looking for, it doesn't matter what format you put it in.

I took a road trip this summer and it occurs to me that turn-by-turn navigation from my GPS is pretty much definitive of the buyers journey. In other words, you can't turn right on Main Street until you take exit 12 off the freeway.

The same is true from an informational perspective. For example, until I know what my problem is costing me or what I'm giving up by letting it persist, I may not be motivated to seek change. So if your information is about why your solution is the right choice for solving my problem, I'm not interested because I haven't decided it's worth doing...yet.

If you want to know where your buyers are in their decision process, you've got to create tightly targeted content that will tell you based on their interaction with it.

And that's where marketers tend to miss the point. One interaction with your content doesn't prove a thing. How do you know it was really what they were looking for? Did it resonate or did they walk away after viewing it unimpressed?

Only by observing patterns of behavior over time can we ascertain how interested someone is and if we're truly seeing the display of intention.

There's much more to be said about the buyer's journey, but I'm stopping here. I'd like to know what you think. Where can we improve how we address problem solving for our prospects?

In fact, maybe it shouldn't be called a Buyer's Journey at all. Maybe it should just be called Problem Solving. For without problems, there would be no need for solutions, right?

And for those of you who look at the other end of the stick, an opportunity that isn't realized is due to a problem that is limiting potential. Just saying...

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

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

Why B2B Marketers Must Address Status Quo

When I do stategic planning workshops with my clients, we get into a lot of discussions about buying stages. Anyone who's followed me for a while or read my book knows that I always start very early in the process with the stage of Status Quo.

My definition of status quo is the buyer's current situation. We get to that by answering questions such as:

• How are they doing what your product enables today?
• What workarounds may be in place that could be escalating pain?
• Why should they care about what you're talking about?
• What would get their attention?
• What would they need to learn to become motivated to change?

In a recent conversation, a client voiced concern that we were starting too early in the process. Comments such as "this is a mature market, they know they need to change" came up as I probed deeper.

My response was, "If that's true, then why aren't they actively pursuing change?"

There's a big difference in knowing change is available and actually agreeing that change is needed and taking steps to do something about it.

Regardless of what you think your prospects and customers already know, they still have a status quo. If you can't motivate them to move from that position, you can't sell them anything. Period. End of discussion.

Heck, I "know" a lot of stuff, but I don't necessarily act on it. Even if I "know" it will be good for me.

But addressing status quo goes much deeper than determining their current position. It means you have to figure out why they aren't changing and what might make them reconsider their stance that status quo is good enough.

When looking for an approache to dislodge status quo, try applying some of these questions:

• What trigger event would cause them to pursue change?


• Is the way they've been offered the idea of change not aligned with their perspective?


• What business objective might they miss achieving if they don't change?


• What future opportunity might they miss if they don't start changing now?


• Is there a cultural "elephant in the room?"


• What move by a competitor might get them out of the gate?


• Is an industry development moving their market right while they're still going left?


• Is a regulatory or compliance change coming that they will need help addressing?


• Are they losing market share even while growing revenues?


• Are they meeting their KPIs, but still leaving revenue on the table they don't see?


• Will a looming merger threaten their market position?


• Is there a new market opportunity that they're missing due to their status quo?


• Who is an obstacle? (In B2B, there's nearly always a consensus that must be reached)


• What is an obstacle blocking change (process, legacy equipment, TCO, etc.)

Those are just a few ways to look at how you might position marketing content to catch your buyers' attention and arouse their curiosity about the costs of status quo. Just make sure you're creating a business-relevant dialogue, not a treatise about why your product is the best choice.

The goal in this stage is not to get them to choose a product, it's to get them to choose to pursue change. Big difference.

In today's market environment, good enough isn't a strategic growth plan, it's a recipe for obsolescence.

What will it take for you to reach buyers and make them reconsider their adherrence to status quo?

What other questions would you add to the list?

Content Marketing Hubs Deliver ROI

Last week I was part of the panel for the Marketing Superhero webinar hosted by OnPath where we discussed how to create demand generation strategies for 2012. I chose to make my tip about Content Hubs.

A Content Hub is a content marketing program that takes full advantage of a bigger content asset to combine lead generation with lead nurturing and gain optimal value from your investment in content development.

A Content Hub serves to:

• Generate leads and/or engage prospects by providing a valuable, extended experience.
• Presents the topic in a variety of ways through a variety of channels that all lead back to the hub.
• Keeps marketers on point by focusing everything around one topic important to buyers.

Here's what a content hub looks like:

In this example, I've used a webinar as the anchor content in the center of the hub. You can also use a white paper or other "big" content asset. Most marketers don't gain the true value of their most meaty content investments. In the case of webinars - the usual campaign includes:

• Send webinar invitation emails to your database.
• Promote through social media.
• Send a reminder email the day of the event.
• Hold the event.
• Send the archive link and file the webinar away as completed on the task list.

What a waste of your investment.

Instead, consider all the ways you can use that content - both pre and post event.

From the Pre-event perspective:

In addition to the above usual stuff, pull out a couple of the topics that will be covered in the webinar and write several blog posts to give people a preview. Get them excited and include the link for registration.

Start a discussion in a LinkedIn group that will appreciate the topic. Don't just post an advertisement for the webinar. As a question or two that will be answered in the webinar and discuss why it's important to consider the ways various answers might affect whatever. Then invite people to attend. Also submit it to events on LinkedIn.

Issue a press release that includes a two-minute preview video with the presenter. Have them hit on the high points of what attendees will learn. Include the biography and picture of the presenter and perhaps a one-page checklist or cheat sheet that people can download that will encourage them to sign up for the webinar to learn how to use it.

After the Event:

Take the slide deck and spiff it up for SlideShare. If it's mostly graphics with not a lot of text - which most good presentation decks should be - add some brief text to clarify the graphics and ensure that when you flip through the deck, the story unfolds without gaps. Post it to SlideShare and embed in in a blog post.

Take all the questions that were submitted during the webinar and write a Q&A blog post. If you don't have enough questions, create some more that your readers will find useful and answer those too. Even if you answered them during the webinar, people won't remember. Those who didn't attend the webinar may be inspired to go watch it. Never forget that webinars have a shelf-life that needs to be addressed.

Have the recorded audio transcribed, edit it and turn it into a white paper. Use some of the slides as graphics or the information on them to create sidebars. Voila - you have another meaty content asset and perhaps a new lead generation vehicle. Add in some expertise that wasn't covered in the webinar to make it fresh and new.

Take several of the points made in the webinar and spin a new article series that you can use in a nurturing program. Cull out several two or three minute snips of audio and create short podcasts that you can embed on your website along with the other materials.

Remember to create a comprehensive display of all the resources so that your Content Hub is useful, rich and worth returning to repeatedly. Make it the destination for people interested in that topic.

Creating Content Hubs gives marketers a number of content assets all focused on a topic prospects have expressed interest in learning more about. It streamlines the creation process and escalates the ROI marketers can earn from their investments.

One of the biggest challenges marketers state is creating relevant content. Another is creating enough of it. With a Content Hub, you can nail both challenges with ease. A Content Hub is an excellent way to gain more traction with your content marketing efforts.

Content Marketing Needs More Than Content

A lot of companies have embraced the idea of content for use in marketing. This being said, there's much more to the practice of content marketing than just cranking out content. B2B companies with complex sales that overlook the strategy and process will find themselves in the weeds in short order.

I'm working with a lot of companies who are really trying to evolve the practice of content marketing, but I'm also talking to a lot of companies who just want content and quick-fire campaigns. Which defeats the point of sustainable marketing performance that optimizes the buyer experience for complex sales.

There's a reason why nearly 80% of marketers have said that they'd "better prepare their organization by building better processes and content offers to feed the automation system" if they had it to do over again. - DemandGen Report

Content is indeed the fuel for today's marketing programs (in all its forms), but if marketers are actually going to generate high-quality leads, nurture them in a way that drives pipeline momentum, and produce demand that turns into closed business, there must be more.

This often means that skill sets need to evolve, as well as thinking. Just take a look at an off-the-top list of my top ten (in no particular order) for what else is needed to make content marketing a high-performance practice:

1. Buyer personas - this is more than just title and industry. They're only helpful if they help you to identify the priorities, needs and interests of your target audiences. Yes, that includes influencers.


2. A clean database - this should be obvious, for so many reasons


3. Segmentation capabilities - content marketing is NEVER one-size-fits-all


4. Lead scoring - you must monitor profiles and behavior to judge interest and quality. This process can also help you refine your cadence and assess what's working and what's not.


5. Content strategy - what overall story are you sharing across markets, where should your company be represented, what will you accomplish and how will you measure it, etc.?


6. Editorial calendar - how does that story roll out with content? Who's developing the assets, how will it be distributed, where are the overlays, what are the calls to action, etc.? 


7. Lead management process - what defines a lead in different stages? What defines a sales-ready lead? How will the handoff to sales be handled? What are the rules of engagement? Etc.


8. Performance metrics - how will you prove the value contribution of marketing programs as related to revenue and customer acquisition?


9. Testing and optimization - you won't be right the first time and, even if you are, things will change. What's the process for the testing and refinement of messaging over time? Your "gut" doesn't count.


10. Sales enablement - how will you help salespeople step into the conversation gracefully? If buyers are spending 56% of their time with content (IDC), salespeople need to know just what that means so they can adjust accordingly and provide more value in the conversations they have with buyers.

Of course it should go without saying that all of this cannot be accomplished without marketing automation.

I'm not trying to make content marketing hard. In fact, I've helped companies successfully get started with a few core elements and layer on more of these as they develop competence they can build upon. Keeping it simple is a good rule of thumb for getting started, but failing to realize the importance of any of these components and plan for their development and integration into your content marketing practice is not a wise choice.

I'd be curious to know which of these you think are the most difficult to accomplish - and why?

Update: To Christa who asked for links to the IDC statistic - It came from a webinar I attended in July. The link to the archive is here. I also wrote a blog post about the webinar here.

Content Marketers' Great Expectations

With the advance of content marketing as a mainstay strategy for B2B marketers comes the inevitability of great expectations. But, I often encounter B2B marketers who are recounting their experiences with content marketing as not living up to expectations.

I hear things such as:

"Other email campaigns generate much higher click through and open rates than our lead nurturing program is achieving. It's just not working."

To which I inquire: What kind of email campaigns are you comparing with your nurturing program results?

The answer is usually related to eNewsletters or sales discount offers. These are two very different vehicles.

• An eNewsletter will generally have multiple offers and links with a variety of information. The recipient list can include both customers and prospects. I'd expect response rates to be different.


• A sales discount offer is one of urgency with a deadline/expiration date. Sure more people will click and look - just to be sure they're not missing out on anything. Or perhaps because they've been waiting for a sale to buy.

Nurturing programs are based on soft-sell, educational and thought leadership content - hopefully matched with stage in the buying process. They are also designed to engage over the long haul of a B2B buying process.

In other words, are you really suprised that early stage leads aren't replying to ask for a demo or submitting an inquiry on your website? Seriously?

One of the things that continues to confound me is the obsession with quantity. Based only on the number of what's considered a low-volume response, many marketers will equate that to an unsuccessful campaign.

Here's a challenge to marketers who think that way - or those under pressure to produce quantity based on ill-perceived corporate expectations:

How many of those leads or "opt ins" are actually ideal prospective customers?

How many of them actually close?

If your campaign produces 150 leads, but only 20 are quality matches to your ideal customer profile, is it better than a program that produces a solid 20 high-quality leads?

Here's a hint: Everyone is NOT your customer.

When your programs produce higher quality leads, you're actually providing better service and enablement to your sales team based on higher marketing effectiveness.

Some of the benefits include:

• Sales spends less time sifting and filtering to find the "good" leads.
• Sales begins to believe in and rely on marketing to provide leads worthy of pursuit.
• Marketing can track cleaner ROI from initial contact to close - not to mention higher levels of sales accepted leads.
• Your marketing database stays nice and clean and is more effective for segementation and analysis.
• You can determine just where the best leads are coming from/found.
• Marketing can start to identify patterns in how your ideal customers buy, such as the frequency of messaging they respond to best, the types of information they prefer, which information is needed when (think mapping content to buying process), etc.

The upshot is that content marketing expectations must be calibrated differently than some traditional marketing tactics, batch and blast email campaigns, and sales-focused "marketing" campaigns.

Where the expectation really needs to refocus is from quantity to quality. I'd rather have 10 great leads any day of the week than 1,000 that I have to sift through to find the 10% that are actually viable.

If marketers can define, attract and concentrate on leads that have the highest potential to become customers, then the results they create for their company will not only contribute to downstream revenues, but become repeatable and consistent in delivering that impact.

If, instead, marketers continue to go after getting clicks from as many people as possible, regardless of who they are, they'll have to work twice as hard to identify patterns, determine frequency preferences and convince sales to follow-up.

I mean, it's got to feel good to tell your boss that you generated a gazillion leads from your last manifesto download offer. But what happens when you actually need to equate those gazillion leads to customer acquisition and revenue contribution? What do your percentages look like now? How are those numbers perceived by your boss and company? Impressive?

How do you think marketers' expectations from content marketing need to change to help better prove the value it can deliver for B2B companies?

The "Why" for Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. I often hear lead nurturing talked about as an email campaign designed to turn prospects into buyers through the use of compelling content over the course of their buying process. And, they're correct. That's exactly what lead nurturing should accomplish.

This said, lead nurturing comes in more than one flavor. And, yes, it all starts with your buyers. The type of lead nurturing program you develop should be based on the "why."

Why are you nurturing a specific group of prospects?

The answers could be many, such as:

• They attended a webinar about problem X that our product solves.
• They downloaded a white paper on a new trend our solution addresses.
• They downloaded a trial version and we need them to opt to buy during that period.
• They're in a specific industry.
• They match a demographic that mirrors our ideal customers.
• They were interested once but have been dormant for a period of time.
• They're following us on Twitter.
• They used search term X to find our website.

Some people would say that nurturing is based on a marketer's goal such as building brand awareness or your company's reputation for thought leadership. I say those are integral parts of lead nurturing but that neither is valid as a standalone goal. The end-goal should always be focused on new customer acquisition or existing customer lifecycle extension, upsell or cross-sell.

In other words, we don't just want cursory attention, we want intentional attention.

For example, I subscribe to a number of newsletters. Not because I ever intend to buy anything from the company but because I value their content. It gives me ideas I can use for my own selfish purposes. I'm not their buyer and I won't ever be their buyer. I am, however, aware of them and consider them thought leaders on their topic.

That's not what marketers want from a lead nurturing program. It won't move the needle they're responsible for.

Once you've defined the "why" for a nurturing program, you have direction for how to construct it. The "why" will dictate your starting point. If your "why" doesn't include source then that information can also be helpful for identifying the appropriate starting point.

Here are a few examples:

A trial user doesn't need to be educated about the problem. They are a late stage buyer and need to quickly understand how to use the product to meet an objective. You have a limited period of time to influence their purchase decision. Think tutorials, tip sheets and directed use examples that will demonstrate quick wins.

A webinar attendee has told you what they're interested in by indicating they're willing to spend an hour with the subject matter. Based on what was covered in the webinar, what stage of buying do you think they're in and what information makes a logical extension. Note that all webinar registrations are not created equally. Those who didn't attend, or those who signed on and then left after 15 minutes are in a different place than those who stayed for the duration.

A lead working within a specific role or industry will find information that's personalized to match will be of higher relevance than general information without a specific application to their circumstances.

I hope you can see that lead nurturing is not just a cookie cutter program to put on your marketing checklist. Rather it is a construct dependent upon context in order to deliver the relevance needed to build engagement and motivate progression across the stages of buying. One size does not fit all.