Tweet

What is Lead Nurturing?

Guest post by: Jeff Ogden

Article Overview: "Marketers rank lead nurturing highest as under-funded relative to value potential."Lead Nurturing Lead Gen ROI Report 2010, Lenskold Group

What is Lead Nurturing?

In simple English, Marketers believe they will get the biggest bank for the buck from lead nurturing. Unfortunately, few companies do lead nurturing well today. According to Forrester Research, only about 1 in 5 is doing it at all - and far fewer are "best practices."



Those marketers are right. I'll not bore you with the details of ROI - we've done that in earlier blog articles. In this post we want to give you the basics to help you understand how to do this in your company.

Let's start with a definition. This is the definition of lead nurturing Find New Customers uses:

"Lead nurturing is the process of sharing relevant content with target buyers, regardless of their timing to buy. The goal is lead nurturing is to earn their trust, so they see your company as a solution to their business problems."

To do lead nurturing, you first need to collect some good information:

1. Deep and comprehensive buyer personas
   
   The principle is clear. The better you know someone, the better you can talk to him or her.
2. Highly relevant content mapped to buyer variables
   
   Seth Godin once said "I don't want email, I want Me-Mail." The more you can personalize your content, the more effective it will be.
3. Segment your marketing database
   
   The more you refine your messaging, the more effective you will be. Group like prospects together by buyer variables - industry, title, etc.
4. A written content map
   
   Carefully map your content to buyer variables, stage of buying process and questions they need answered. Find and fill the gaps with new content.
5. Make it comprehensive
   
   Think though your messaging. Have you made it relevant? Is there as sense of urgency? What do you want them to do? (Call to action.) Do you have a landing page with further information?
6. Design it on white board
   
   Don't even think of using marketing automation now. Go to a white board and sketch it out. If it does not 'run on your white board', it won't run in marketing automation.
7. Measure results
   
   Measuring results lets you prove the value and tune the program.

To learn how Find New Customers might help your company craft strong lead nurturing programs, please visit our Lead Nurturing services.

Related Articles
  3 Reasons You Should Outsource Lead Nurturing and Scoring
  50% More Sales-Ready Leads at 33% Lower Cost Per Lead - the Power of Lead Nurturing
  Lead Nurturing Overview
  Align Sales & Marketing with Lead Nurturing
  How to Improve Lead Nurturing using the LSL Model
  Lead Generation Best Practices: Dedicate Qualifying Resources
  Medium Sized companies struggle with B2B demand generation too
  Filling the Gap Between Generation and Conversion
  4 Great “Cheat Sheets” on B2B demand generation from Find New Customers – no registration needed
  The Current State of B2B demand generation
  Mad Marketing TV featuring Steve Gershik of 28Marketing
  The Power of Story-telling in B2B Marketing
  The importance of story-telling in lead nurturing
  Lead Generation Best Practices: Multiply Touches/Media/Cycles
  Why you will never see an ad for Find New Customers
  5 Keys to Successful Lead Nurturing
  Judicial Branch Needed to Keep Sales Lead Management Honest
  Why Your Website Needs to Be Grand Central Station
  Marketing automation starves without a Content Marketing strategy
  How to Generate Leads For Your Internet Business

Article Tags: b2b demand generation, b2b lead generation, btob demand generation, btob lead generation, demand gen, demand generation, demand generation companies, demand generation company, find new customers, lead gen, lead generation, lead generation companies, lead generation company, sales lead generation



Related Forum Posts
Re: My Favorite Book For Entrepreneurs In 2010 - Lead The Field. By Earl Nightingale. I have read the book more than 7 times, since I bought it in 2008
Re: Books for the Entrepreneur - Lead the field by Earl Nightingale is a winner everyday. Though it is original audio messages, but I read the book every month. Every Entrepreneur should have it.
Re: Review My: Trump 4 President Site - Trent, Thanks a lot. I appreciate the comment about run win lead. I changed it to Will he Run-Win & Lead. It's kind of a tag line meaning of course, will he run first off. Will he win second. And then will he lead us out of the mess the countries in right now. It's also the name of my newsletter. But above that, it kind of gives an overview of what the site includes. I thought of using it since it has longer legs than just will he run etc. as even if he does and wins, that phrase will be relevant still. I know, I can't help myself with the SBI banners, LOL But 70+% of the public is interested in earning some income from home and I hope to have a bunch coming there who have their personal economy in mind and looking for answers etc.
Re: Review My: Trump 4 President Site - I think the site is great. You've done an amazing job already in the short time since you started it. The thing I would probably change right now is the SBI banners in the sidebar. They clutter it up a little too much and they have nothing to do with anything the site is about. I don't see any visitors caring about building a website. Another thing that has me baffled, and maybe I am just reading it wrong, but there is a line in the middle close to the top that says this... "Will He Run Win Lead?" That makes no sense to me. Is there supposed to be some punctuation in there or did you write it wrong and just haven't noticed to correct it? I don't know.
The 7 Greatest Truths about Successful Women - Picked up a few books on my weekly trip to the library, thought I'd share their tables of contents. The 7 Greatest Truths about Successful Women: How You Can Achieve Financial Independence, Professional Freedom, and Personal Joy, by Marion Luna Brem. From the inside cover: In 1984, battling both cervical and breast cancer, and facing $500,000 in medical bills and a disintegrating marriage, Marion Luna Brem was desperate to find a way to support herself and her two young sons. With more than a few strikes against her, she started knocking on doors, looking for a job. Seventeen doors later, the blunt speaking manager of a car dealership in central TExas declared, "I've been thinking of hiring a broad." And with that invitation, Marion took her own first step on the road to financial independence, yada yada yada Today, this "broad" owns two automobile dealerships, an advertising agency, and a stake in a local bank. She sits on the boards of several businesses, etc. etc. 1. Who Wants to be her own boss? 2. Ladies, Start your engines 3. Resiliency 4. Nurturing 5. Intuition 6. Creativity 7. Passion 8. Self-Value 9. Sensitivity 10. Leadership 11. Balance


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Igniting Your Unstoppable Business Destiny

The OLD Way of Advertising, May Not be so OLD

Intro to Search Engine Optimization

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.