Research has shown that up to 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. This represents a large audience of potential buyers that should not be ignored simply because your sales team is solely focused on short-term gains. A strategic lead nurturing campaign enables you to stay engaged with these prospects until they are ready to purchase.

Lead nurturing allows you to more effectively reach these leads by mirroring the natural progression that they go through during the sales cycle, therefore not overwhelming or annoying them with “salesy” tactics when they are not ready to purchase. The process of nurturing leads can seem tedious at times, but it is important to keep building the relationship in order to stay top-of-mind.

While the process of taking an inquiry from a cold lead to customer will vary according to the characteristics of your specific industry, here is a simplified framework that most lead nurturing processes follow:

1. A Cold Lead is Acquired

Whether it’s through a list purchase, tradeshow booth visit or white paper download, the lead nurturing process begins by making an initial contact with someone. It is important to begin with a softer sales approach in order to gradually introduce the lead to your company, since it is likely that many of them will know only a little about your company, if they know anything at all.

Some companies’ first instinct is to immediately send a new lead to a salesperson, have them make contact and ask for a purchase. While this method may result in a few sales, more than likely leads will be annoyed and stop engaging with your company. A better practice is to place leads into a nurture program, during which it is possible to learn more about their specific pain points, needs and processes. This enables you to more effectively reach them throughout the sales process.

The goal during this stage of the lead nurturing process is to drive awareness of your company and products. This can be achieved by leveraging thought leadership content that illustrates your knowledge and expertise. Doing so creates a sense of trust among your prospects; seeing how knowledgeable you are reassures them that engaging with your company will be successful.

2. The Lead Becomes Engaged

A lead nurturing plan is a strategic way to ensure that you stay top of mind with prospects throughout their progress in the sales funnel. Through continued interactions with your company, a lead will become more engaged with your company. Typically, the type of content they consume will become less thought leadership focused (such as blogs and webinars) and more sales focused (such as case studies and price sheets).

The more the prospect engages with your company, the more you can learn about them based on their activity and the information they share with you. Lead scoring, the process of ranking leads to determine their sales-readiness, is an effective method to understanding the qualities of a lead. The more data you use to build a lead profile, the more it will accurately reflect a true picture of the lead. Therefore, both explicit and implicit lead scores should be used in order to develop a well-rounded picture. Explicit scores come from information that a lead gives your company directly, either by filling out a form or when speaking to a sales rep, while implicit scores are those that you infer from a prospect’s behavior using tools such as analytics or marketing automation software on your website.

The duration of this phase in the lead nurturing cycle varies depending on multiple factors such as the number of internal parties involved in the decision process, the monetary investment required or the contract renewal cycle length. It is important to pay attention to cues that prospects give you in order to determine when it is appropriate to move them to the next stage. If you sense that they are becoming annoyed or overwhelmed, it would be wise to take a step back and lower the frequency of your interactions with them. On the other hand, if you see that they are expressing interest in content that is sales focused, you may want to have a salesperson reach out to them directly.

3. The Lead is Converted to a Customer

Ultimately, the goal of any sales campaign is to convert leads to customers. If executed correctly, lead nurturing increases the conversion rate of a sales campaign since the process keeps your company top of mind. Thus, when a lead is ready to purchase, your company is at the forefront of their consideration due to the relationship that has been built over time.

It may seem like the lead nurturing process is never-ending. However, although the process may be lengthy, ultimately your sales team will be more successful than if they solely focused on trying to convert the small percentage of sales-ready leads that you receive. Companies with best-in-class lead nurturing programs have been shown to have a greater win rate with marketing-generated leads, as well as more sales reps who make quotas than companies without lead nurturing programs.

Need help with your lead nurturing strategy? Contact Launch today and be sure to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest B2B marketing best practices.

What is a Meme?

Memes are simple ideas that spread quickly through the internet. They typically take the form of videos or photos. Here are a couple of popular memes:

Grumpy Cat                                                              Success Kid
                    

 Double Rainbow

Memes and Marketing

While memes are typically thought of as a funny image to share with friends, they can also be utilized as part of a marketing plan to generate buzz and word of mouth. They are a great way to reach an audience, especially through social media. The light-heartedness and easy sharability of these images increase their likelihood of going viral. This is especially useful on Facebook, as this helps to improve your page’s Edgerank, increasing the organic reach of your posts.

Memes can also be a useful way to generate leads. One method for generating leads from memes is by using them to drive traffic to a landing page featuring a valuable and relevant resource, such as a white paper or an eBook, behind a simple, short form.

As with all other marketing tactics, it is a best practice to continuously test in order to derive the greatest results from a meme campaign. We have found that memes related to popular culture posted around lunchtime or after 5:00pm have the highest engagement. While this is true for our page, it may not be true for yours. Test different calls-to-actions, formats and posting times to find the best combination for your Facebook page.

Marketo does a great job of this on their Facebook page:

Launch’s B2B Marketing Memes

We recently created a series of memes focused on B2B marketing and lead generation. Here are a few examples:

As discussed above, we always link the memes to a relevant piece of content, in order to use the memes to drive traffic to our website.

How can you use memes in your company’s marketing campaigns? Be sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook for more B2B marketing best practices.

In-person marketing events are a useful tactic for B2B marketers, as they allow your organization to interact with attendees and spread awareness of your products and services. With so many events occurring in the marketing world, it is important to stand out and create an event that caters to your audience. If you position your event as merely promotional – “come and see our demo” – not many people will be willing to spend the time and money to come. Instead, focus on giving attendees valuable content and insight through thought leadership.

In order to have a successful event, there are four “P’s” that you should keep in mind: purpose, plan, promotion and post-event.

1. Purpose

Before you begin planning an event, it is important to take a step back and think about what your organization ‘s goals for the event. Are you looking to generate as many qualified leads as possible? Or maybe you want to use the event to better reach your existing customer base. Whatever your goals may be, it is important that they are set in place and are able to be measured once the event is complete.

2. Plan

With your organization’s goals in mind, the next step is to begin planning your event. First, determine the format of event that you wish to hold. It can take place as a large conference, a seminar, a user meetup group or a “lunch and learn.” Each of these formats have pros and cons depending on your specific goals.

In order to attract a larger number of attendees, it can be useful to host a guest speaker who is well-known in your industry. An industry expert will not only bring credibility to your event, but you can also leverage their influence to promote your event to their own audiences.

Also consider what you can do to entertain your attendees and create a unique experience for them. Perhaps you can have a social event the first night of your conference or maybe you invite prospects to attend a live performance hosted by your company.

3. Promotion

Promotion of an event is essential for successful registrations. The earlier you can begin promoting it, the better, especially if it requires a large commitment of time or money. Additionally, schedules fill up quickly, so it is important to get your event on attendee’s calendars early.

There are many ways to promote your event. For the maximum impact, implement an integrated marketing approach utilizing multiple tactics such as email, social media, direct mail and phone calls from your sales team. Tip: Use a unique registration code for each marketing vehicle to track which performed best for future events.

4. Post-Event

While the activities before and during an event are important, the next steps after an event can help take your results from good to great. It is essential to follow up with any leads that were generated during the event (the sooner the better). Doing this soon after the event ensures that your company is still top of mind and that you are able to answer any questions that they may have.

Post-event activities can also extend the reach of your event. Utilize content that you gathered during your event such as photos, videos and presentation decks to further promote your event and attract more attention. Publishing this content online and promoting it through social media is a great way to extend the reach of your message. Additionally, this can encourage others to attend your next event.

To have a successful event, it is important to be strategic before, during and after the event. There are many components that go into planning an event, so it is important to be well-organized and, if needed, consult an outside event planner. While hosting an event can take many hours of work, by focusing on the four P’s of event marketing, you are more likely to have your efforts pay off by reaching and even exceeding your event goals.

Contact Launch Marketing today to learn how we can help make your next event a success. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date with our insider marketing tips.

The adoption of marketing automation software is steadily increasing, and SiriusDecisions expects the adoption rate to be at 50% by 2015. However, many companies are still unsure of the value that marketing automation can bring to their company, while others are not even sure exactly what it does. We at Launch Marketing believe in the capabilities and benefits of marketing automation, and have developed and maintained successful marketing automation programs for several of our clients. In this blog post, we will present a simple explanation for what marketing automation is as well as the benefits that we have seen from the implementation of marketing automation software.

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is, in short, a comprehensive lead management and nurturing software solution that determines the level of interest of leads along with their stage in the buying process , allowing you to effectively move them through the sales funnel. The software tracks these individuals throughout the purchasing process, allowing marketers to interact with them on a more personal basis by matching their needs and interests with relevant content. This automated system also allows you to more accurately score these leads and alert your sales team when a lead is determined to be sales ready, based on their score.

Why We Believe In It

There are several distinct advantages that companies gain by utilizing marketing automation. Here are a few:

“Listening” to the Buyer

Marketing automation enables two-way information flow, as opposed to the one-way information flow that occurs in traditional sales conversations. This allows marketers the chance to “listen” to the buyer and respond appropriately based on their preferences. By listening to and understanding the preferences of individual prospects, marketers are better able to keep them engaged throughout the buying cycle without overwhelming or annoying them.

Staying Top-of-Mind

Since leads will rarely be sales-ready the first time they are engaged by a company, it is important for a company to stay top-of-mind and build relationships with these prospects so that when they are ready to purchase, the company will be included in their consideration set. Ongoing, multi-touch campaigns are key to achieving this, and marketing automation software allows marketers to better deliver this type of campaign to prospects.

Painting a Complete Picture

Marketing automation also helps marketers and sales teams build a complete picture of a lead, one that is composed of both implicit scores (those that are inferred about a prospect such as downloading a whitepaper or viewing a webinar) and explicit scores (things that a prospect explicitly tells a company, such as their job title or budget). Understanding both of these components of a lead is essential in determining a prospect’s level of interest and stage in the buying cycle.

Aligning Sales and Marketing

A critical step in the marketing automation implementation process is ensuring that both the sales and marketing departments are in agreement as to the goals of the implementation. It is also important that both departments agree on the scoring methods that will be used to determine when a lead is sales-ready. Once this is achieved, both departments are able to collaboratively work together to best meet the needs of prospects.

Marketing automation ensures a smooth transition of leads throughout the sales funnel, and also ensures that leads are only given to sales when they are truly sales-ready (defined by the scoring methods agreed upon before beginning the implementation). This reduces the common frustration among sales teams of being given leads from the marketing department and discovering that they are not truly sales-ready.

Working More Efficiently

Marketing automation frees marketing teams from having to manually conduct the lead nurturing process, allowing them to devote their time to more strategic tasks. In other words, they are able to do the work of a much larger team.

Ready to Automate?

Are you ready to experience the benefits of marketing automation? Contact Launch Marketing today to learn how marketing automation can improve the lead management process and drive revenue in your organization. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date with our insider marketing tips.