So you’ve managed to create a marketing program that is generating leads.  Real, ready-to-be-qualified, hopefully big budget leads.  Fantastic.  What do you do next?

If you’re structured like a lot of organizations, that lead is entered into a CRM system, perhaps assigned to a sales or marketing representative, and the dance begins.  A small percentage of those leads will become hot, sales-ready, take-the-next-step type leads.   A larger percentage of those leads will become qualified but not ready to fully engage type leads.  An even larger percentage of those leads will not be ready to engage with anyone at all.  That could indicate a host of different things, but never assume that means the lead is unqualified.

All three categories – the hot lead, the warm lead, and the cold lead – require lead nurturing at this point, yet the average organization fails to nurture leads effectively.  Why?  Too many organizations still assume that their primary lead nurturing weapons are a salesperson and a phone call.

Let’s take a look at a 4-step lead nurturing plan, and briefly describe why each step is important and how you can begin to address each one.

1. Understand why lead nurturing is important.

It’s no secret that the average B2B buyer prefers to work with someone they perceive as a trusted advisor, as opposed to just a sales representative.  So how can your sales representative become that trusted advisor?  The trusted advisor is able to prove the following over time:

• That the advisor – and the company in general – is an expert in the field being considered.
• That the advisor – and the company in general – understands the problem or issue facing your company, and can help solve it.
• That the advisor – and the company in general – will be easy to work with.

You think all three of those things can be established in a single phone call?  No chance.  Those three components are generally proven out over time.  Sure, referral business may move quicker through this process, but they still need to check off all three stages.

2. Identify the tactics you can use for lead nurturing.

This is typically the area where sales/marketing organizations sell themselves short, and ultimately revert back to using phone calls and email as their primary lead nurturing tactics.  If you’ve read this blog previously, you know that content is king in marketing.  Here’s a partial list of all the different forms of content that can be used to nurture leads:

• Case studies
• Press releases
• Free trials
• Whitepapers
• Webinars
• E-Newsletters
• Printed newsletters
• Events
• Third-party articles
• Phone calls
• Emails
• Research reports
• Blog posts

The list could go on and on.  Make your own list.  You likely have some of these materials already, and some you’ll want to develop.  Next comes the easy part – use them, and use them without abandon.  If your content is well-developed, most prospects will appreciate you sending it.

3. Schedule your lead nurturing activity.

You understand why lead nurturing is important, and you’ve now identified the materials you have at your disposal.  What now?  Make a schedule for when and how you will touch each lead.  This doesn’t have to be complicated.  It may be as simple as the following:

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Seth Godin blogged Friday on Things to Ask Before You Redo Your Website, and like most of his posts it was enlightening and made you think.  Seth provides just under 25 bullet points on the difficult and most important questions you have to ask before you redo your website.  While it’s a great post, I do have a small difference of opinion on one part.

The questions are right on track, with the focus on the strategy of the website vs. the technology.  Too many folks go wrong right out of the gates by making their first website conversation about the technology requirements or having the website look JUST LIKE a website they like, vs. the strategy and business objectives.  Once those are in place, the other items can fall out of that next.

So I think the approach and the questions are right on, and taking the time to do this is the right first step.  However, there is one place where I differ slightly with Seth.  Many companies will be able to ask and answer these questions themselves.  In my experience though, many more need additional outside assistance to help them step through this process.  In many organizations there is still a deer in the headlights look as we start talking about the web.  In the best ones they realize this and bring the right folks onto their team to help to navigate this.  A client recently described themselves to me as “They don’t know what they don’t know” when it comes to the web, and I think that is often an accurate assessment.  While these questions should serve as the starting point for redoing your website, I think it’s just as critical to make sure you can provide the right answers – or get somebody on the team that can help you get there.

If you tried to plan a new home from the ground up without an architect, I’m sure there are things you would miss.  Making sure you have the right plan in place out of the gates is the only real way to succeed in your website project.  Understanding what is important and what doesn’t need to be a focus right up front is critical.

After all, as Seth closes, everything is not an option.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow Will on Twitter for more commentary like this.

Admit it marketing people.  You dread the moment when you realize your website is down.  You refresh your web browser 38 times in 90 seconds.  Nothing.  You reboot your computer, thinking it’s a problem on your end.  Nothing.  You check with junior level marketing staffers (the ones that won’t freak out at you if they discover the site is – in fact – down) to see if they’re having the same problem.  They are.

You dread this moment for a couple of obvious reasons, but it’s the least obvious reason that really frightens you.  It’s now your problem, and that means you have to walk down the hall and talk to the “IT Guy”.  You know the guy I am talking about.  He lives in a deep dark corner office, where very few dare to venture.  He is always “maxed out” in terms of responsibility and resources.  He is represented as invaluable, even though only 2 other people in the entire organization know what he does.

And based on what we’ve seen lately, he is being empowered to make marketing decisions that he is not equipped to make. 

You’d never ask your financial advisor to treat your high blood pressure; you rely on the advice of a physician for that.  You’d never ask your accountant to double up and help you find and negotiate a new home purchase; you rely on the advice of a real estate agent for that.  You’d never ask your golf instructor to do your interior decorating; you rely on the advice of – well, an interior decorator – for that. 

So why do organizations put critical marketing decisions in the hands of the IT department, or at a minimum allow the IT department to exert too much influence on the marketing decision making process?

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We’ve written on this blog previously about the importance of content and how writing is often undervalued, whether for a press release, website, social media, email or really anything else.  Just as important as having the right content and writing well is having the right tone.

People connect with – and buy from – people, or at least the brand’s personality.  Make sure your approach to your content represents your company’s personality.  If you are a creative services company and a bit irreverent, your tone should reflect that.  At the same time, you probably don’t want your medical institution to attempt to be hilarious.  And, if you don’t know what your company’s personality is, this exercise did a great job fleshing out a bigger issue.

Then, make sure you are consistent.  Mike talked about this a bit earlier this week in his post Fall Cleaning: Clean Up Your Online Brand.  Ensure your content and tone carry over from one vehicle to the next, from your website to your emails, to your interviews.  Too many times we see this sacrificed — the classic mistakes of needing to get an email campaign out now and not having  the time to make sure it’s written right, or the belief that you need as much content as we can throw up there to help our SEO, it doesn’t matter how it reads are just two common examples.  Make sure you take the right approach and stay consistent.

Earlier this week we had a great meeting with a firm.  One of the first things they mentioned was that they wanted to meet with us because our website read just like it was written by them, that the tone was right in line with theirs.

Too often I end up reading content that reminds me of the boring guy in the corner at a party.  Sure, that person may have a lot of facts and information, but with zero personality it’s tough to really make an impact.  Think of that next time you write content yourself or hire a writer, it demonstrates that the tone is often even more important than the content.

After all, didn’t everyone like Norm better than Cliff Claven?

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow Will on Twitter for more commentary like this.

As part of my normal procedure before meeting with a prospective partner, I explore as many of the company’s marketing vehicles as possible.   Sometimes that list is short – a website and a brochure.  Sometimes that list is longer – a website, brochure, blog, social media profiles, search engine listings, executive LinkedIn profiles, etc.

Over the weekend I went through this process to check out a prospective partner, and ran into some good news and bad news.  The good news is that this company has clearly embraced the idea of expanding its footprint by using a variety of offline and online marketing tactics and properties.  The bad news, however, is that as the company has expanded that footprint, it seems to have lost control of its brand and core messaging.

Here’s a sampling of what I found:

• Archaic website design
• Outdated content on all properties
• Disjointed messaging and copy
• Inconsistent color schemes and logo usage
• Mismatched fonts
• Broken links
• Blog created from “packaged” industry-specific software
• 5-6 different company descriptions on website, brochure, search engines, etc.
• Links to other poorly-branded companies
• Sporadic social media usage
• No consistency in messaging across social media platforms

You get the point.  Some of these things, when considered as individual items, might seem nit-picky.  Combining them all, however, took me from legitimately excited for the meeting to nonchalant about the meeting at best.

That’s branding folks. Or in particular, that’s how poor branding and brand management can negatively impact your chances of landing that next big account or partnership.

It’s time to do some fall cleaning.  Don’t wait for the recession to end.   Make no mistake: business people are making decisions now, and your brand and overall identity is likely removing you from consideration sets on a daily basis.  The fact that you don’t know about it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

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