The popularity of Lead Nurture strategy and program within B-to-B marketers stems from the fact that we are all being tasked to do more with less. Produce more leads and create a sales funnel with the same or smaller marketing budgets.
Below is a holistic model of a lead nurture system broken up into 3 crucial areas. We will be focusing on the Lead Nurture Program here.
Lead Nurture Program
1) Target Personas - Create your content and messaging based on the actual person who needs your product. A broad way to segment this is via industry, company size, job title/role and timeline to purchase. A further segmentation would be, age, college education background, preferred style of communication, offline and online activities. This will give you a good indication on how to prioritize your buckets for lead scoring and lead segmentation purposes.
2) Lead Scoring - This process done right can produce an amazingly high quality of leads. How you are targeting your lead's online and offline behavior and by using negative scoring attributes will help refine the quality of your leads. However, marketing departments feeling the squeeze in budgets and shrinking staff numbers may not have the expertise, bandwidth or automation tools to do ensure this area is done right. Ultimately, it's about the People, Process and Automation.
3) Content Strategy - Decide on what your offerings are going to be. Are you going to be generating white papers? Offer webinars? The one crucial component here is relevance. Keep that in mind when targeting your personas. Understand their profiles and offer accordingly. For example, a CEO of a Fortune 100 company would probably be less likely to attend a series of webinars and more likely to download a white paper so he can read it on the plane to his next meeting destination. “Content strategy will help you deliver content that inspires trust. Drives action. Builds loyalty. On time. One budget.” (Source: Kristina Halvorson)
4) List Segmentation - Are you going to be segmenting your list according to industry, job titles, size of company and timeline to purchase? Or is everyone going to get the same offer? Bottom line is the same - The more segmented your list is, the better you can tailor your offerings and messaging to your target audience. It’s often good to start simple. Start by segmenting according to most recent sign ups, segment by inactive subscribers and segment by those who opened your email but did not click through. Once you have this area down, the information gathered from your recipient’s email will help you refine the process.
5) Website & Landing Page Optimization - Is one of the most crucial aspects of lead generation. Keep in mind that landing pages are read like the way we would glance at a magazine - Left to right, down and back up to the top within 3-6 seconds before taking action or vice versa.
a) Clear offer or message – Present the offer or your message clearly and place it as the first thing a reader sees the moment they land on your page. Use simple English because most people scan pages before making a decision to read further or commit to an action.
b) Keep a simple page design - Include some images but ensure that your images do not drown your text. Readers need to see your one clear key message so some amount of white space is encouraged.
c) Have one clear call to action - As a general rule of thumb; you have 3-6 seconds to grab the attention of the reader. Too many offers will confuse the reader which will result in no action and leaving your page.
d) Conversion form placement - Simplify your form, put it on the right side of the page and keep it to the minimal but crucial information you need to help you in your lead scoring. Bear in mind that with each question you pose, the drop-off rate increases. If you never use snail mail to follow up with customers, don’t ask for the company address.
6) Marketing Automation - Encompasses all the areas we have discussed here. Advances in marketing automation and CRM software is making it easier to collaborate and streamline the process internally between the sales and marketing departments. The 4 main areas of marketing automation:
i) Data from lead scoring and lead segmentation
ii) Developing your content
iii) Executing your campaign
iv) Tracking your results
7) Tracking Results – Before tracking and starting your lead nurture program, you should have a goal and target in mind. Being able to work backwards from a set number would make your marketing automation and lead nurture program more effective.
Click on link for more information and help on how to tailor a lead nurture program to your company.
With shrinking marketing budgets in the last few years, it becomes more pertinent to have comprehensive lead generation program to maintain the sales pipeline and leadflow for your business.
To be effective in any campaign, tracking, measurement, testing and optimization is crucial to your campaign's success.
If you are transitioning from traditional media advertising, direct mail and cold calling, here are some online methods which you need to adopt into your overall marketing strategy.
These are the areas you want to consider for a developing an effective lead generation program.
1) Paid Search Marketing or Pay Per Click
Will yiel d instant results with the ability to bring in very highly qualified leads based on the messaging of your ad campaign and your landing page's call to action.
2) Social Media Optimization
With over 500 million users on Facebook and 190 million on Twitter, social media is no longer something any business can afford to ignore. Your customers and prospects are using these sites to interact, look up peer reviews and most importantly look for more information on products and services.
The collaboration of social media and search marketing has brought about Social Search - Real time results showing the latest Tweets, videos and blogs based on the keyword typed.
"42% of Twitter's 190 million users use Twitter to learn about products and services" (source: Edison Research April 2010)
- Ensure you have a Facebook business page and strategy to get more "likes."
- Create a Twitter business page and strategy to acquire a larger fanbase.
- Set up a LinkedIN business page and a strategy on getting into the conversation and being involved with the business community.
- Create a company blog and share information on your products and services. When you share information and pull/engage your audience, it becomes a great way to gain qualified leads instead of push/outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is becoming less and less effective so think carefully before you decide to purchase an email list of non-subscribers or hire telemarketers to do cold calling.
3) Organic Search Marketing
Organic search is still the most credible way to build a website. The main drawback is that it takes time. Anywhere from 3-9 months for it to actually yield results. As a long term strategy however, having a well structured website for search engines to fnd and crawl your site is absolutely necessary for your overall lead generation program.
- Ensure that your on-page SEO of your website has a content strategy and is filled with the necessary kewords, links and fresh content.
- Compliment your on-page SEO efforts with off-page SEO via continuous efforts in building more quality inbound links.
- Create videos of your products or services. The viral aspect of vSEO is a great component to your lead generation programs. Remember the Blendtec/iPhone viral video?
4) eMail/CRM Marketing
Your current database of email subscribers can be an incredibly powerful tool to turn them into customers. Assuming that you did not purchase your email list (yes, companies actually do that!), email is still an incredibly effective way to communicate with your fanbase and potential customers.
Your subscribers already want to hear from you. Emails you send will have a high open rate. Recently a friend of mine who is a curator of an email list of Silicon Valley start up events sent an email out. He wanted to improve his newsletter to serve his community of subscribers. There was an 81.3% conversion rate of subscribers who actually filled in the survey.
If you send emails of value looking to serve your customers, email is a great way to build a lead nurture program.
"90 Trillion emails were sent in 2009" source: Hubspot
- Create a lead nurture campaign with different offerings based on your customer's activity.
- Use an email platform which allows you to track and measure your potential customer's level of activity based on your email offerings. This will allow you to tailor it to their needs while providing your customer with more relevant information and offers.
We can help you develop a lead generation program tailored to your needs. Have a look at some of our core expertise as a digital search agency for lead generation purposes.
Most companies convert web traffic to leads at 0.5% to 4%
This inherently creates:
- Lost opportunities
- Lost customers
- Lost leads
- Wasted acquisition spend
For the marketer, these small numbers create an incomplete picture of what’s really happening in the acquisition funnel and can lead to misinformed decisions and further wasteful spending.
ymarketing has licensed technology for a proprietary lead conversion platform that enables clients to get a 16% conversion rate of web traffic to lead.
When compared to the typical 0.5%-4%, this platform increases lead conversion by 400% to 2400% on average. (No, that’s not a typo by the way.)
This is accomplished through a direct response-driven online infomercial .
- Typically 3-4 minutes long for lead generation purposes
- Custom tailored and recorded for each client
- Tracks user behavior and engagement with the message
The secret is the patent-pending technology that measures and provides emotional and logical incentives for prospects to take action. (Some call it the “information shopping cart”)
Lead Conversion Platform Overview
- Dynamically deploys conversion application
- Fully tracks web and conversion analytics
- Flexibly integrates with third-party CRM, ad server, affiliate, and other systems
A typical customer reaction:
“Yeah, I can see how that would work for others, but my value proposition is complex”
Fact:
Complex product and services companies represent the majority of the clients using this platform.
Customer Testimonials:
“We sent an email to 98,000 customers and partners and generated a 22.5% response rate” – Symantec
Before: 2-4% web traffic to lead conversion rate
After: 27% web traffic to lead conversion rate
Result: $1.3M in revenue gain
- Corda
Before: 2% web traffic took a trial
After: 18% of web traffic takes a trial (9X increase)
Result: 25% sales increase
- Doba
Take a look on how we can help improve your online conversion.
PPC Paid Search Engine Marketing is a quick and effective way to bring traffic to your website and generate sales immediately. Some people call it direct mail 2.0, as it has the ability to precisely target individuals and generate high response and conversion rates - but at a fraction of the cost (and waste).
It's effective because the ads are precisely targeted at individuals and businesses already looking for your product or services. The ability to track every conversion and origination point of the sale is exactly what makes PPC or paid search marketing the most cost effective and efficient way to create brand awareness and generate sales.
Industry Statistics
According to MAGNAGLOBAL paid search is the leading form of online advertising, accounting for nearly 50% (actual 46.3%) of all online advertising. To Internet marketers this is not much of a surprise but it is something that many businesses still don’t grasp.
The study predicts a steady path of growth in overall online advertising spend as seen in the chart below.
"Paid Search has quickly become the most important component of online advertising, and in 2010 this segment will account for $29.8 billion, up by 16.5% over 2009 totals on a constant currency basis. Google remains by far the global leader in Search, although a handful of other suppliers of search advertising are dominant in certain countries.
Unfortunately for Google, China and Russia – the fastest growing large markets for online advertising – pose a challenge for foreign-based search engines. Separate government actions have led to Google closing its operations in those countries. However, domestic players (Baidu and Yandex in particular) have instead become dominant.
The enormous influence – and profitability – of Paid Search increases the probability of governmental involvement in many countries in the years ahead. Such actions are unlikely to constrain the medium’s growth."
Source: Magnaglobal June 2010
ymarketing developes and manages all aspects of a paid search campaign, ensuring that our clients are only bidding on keywords that generate the highest ROI. We incudes the following for our PPC services:
- Campaign setup
- Keyword list creation
- PPC search engine account setup(s)
- Creation of search engine listings
- Langing page selection (and/or development)
- Conversion tracking software integration (and/or setup and implementation)
- Daily/weekly bid management
- Real-time ROI / sales conversion tracking and reporting
- Addition of new listings, testing and optimization
- Weekly sales analysis / conversion tuning
- Weekly reporting, executive summary and recommendations
Contact us for more information on how we can help you increase your sales by 50% like all our typical clients.
Facebook has over 500 million active users and Twitter has over 190 million. There are currently 126 million blogs on the internet and growing daily. There is no better time than now to start reaching out to your potential customers.
Facebook fan pages let businesses interact with customers and prospects while Twitter is a great tool to converse with prospects, provide customer service and drive website traffic.
If you are looking to start from scratch or to increase your fanbase and leads, we have custom packages to help you reach a broader audience to communicate with and grow your business exponentially.
Social media should not be daunting or tedious. We can show you how it can be done effectively by setting up your social profiles for you and providing you with a complete social media marketing campaign.
Our social media growth packages include the following:
Twitter Growth Program 
Facebook Growth Program
- Join Related Groups
- Pull Tweets into Business Page
- Recruit Relevant Friends/Fans
- Photos With Keywords and URLs
Take a look at more information about our social media optimization packages and let us help you grow your business.
