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:

Read the rest of this entry »

A colleague of mine often says “Your website should be as good as your best salesperson” – which for many organizations is easier said than done.  Those of you who read this blog regularly know we always advocate looking at your overall marketing strategy, your web marketing strategy as a set of that, and your website itself as a piece of that.

In addition to looking at the big picture, sometimes it helps to slice off a few clear and actionable improvements you can take.  Some organizations have never done all 3 of the steps outlined below, while for others this is a chance to get back to basics and make sure you haven’t lost site of these 3 keys.  Here’s 3 key steps you can do to make your web presence work harder.

1). Take an Honest Look at Your Search Presence

We all know that search engines play a huge role in the web — In fact, 80% of online session start with a search  engine (via  PC Magazine).  So, even if you are doing everything you can to get the word out on your brand and website in other media, if you don’t have a significant presence in search you may be sunk.  Since search is where people go first when they go online, you need an effective search strategy — both paid and organic — to make sure that you will be found.  So take an honest look at your search presence, look with a keen eye and really re-evaluate everything.  Once you ahve done that and reformulated your strategy (or confirmed it was right all along), start working on keyword testing in paid search and SEO (learn more in a  previous post The Obvious Yet Underused Way to Build an SEO Program) and continue to monitor and adjust as you go, utilizing your analytics systems as a guide for what’s working and what isn’t.

2). Segment Your Audiences and Match Their Expectations

Too often we see campaigns where all visitors are sent to the same generic homepage, which may not speak to a segment’s particular needs.  One of the things we love about the web as marketers is it is trackable and customizable. So, for example, if you are a bank and know you have a prospect looking for CD rates, make sure you take them to a page about CDs.  If they are looking for mortgage refinancing make sure you take them to a page about refinancing, not new loans.  Utilize targeted landing pages and microsites in order to better match the prospect’s expectations and you’ll see much better results (see our previous post Microsite or Landing Page? to learn more on when to use landing pages and microsite ).  While these examples seem obvious, I’m constantly amazed by how many organizations aren’t doing them.  This feeds right back into #1, if you match your customers expectations when they come to your site, your campaigns — whether search, social media, print, or anything else — are just about guaranteed to perform better.

3). Optimize your Conversion Opportunities

So you’ve knocked down items 1 and 2 – what’s next?  Well, some people still think getting traffic to your website and getting a few leads is doing the whole job.  Getting visitors to your website is really just the first step, what we really want to do is convert those visitors by making them take your key actions.  That generally means converting them to leads by an activity such as filling out a form, converting them to customers by an activity such as an online purchase, or sometimes by an activity such as viewers of key information like using a retail locator to the nearest store.  By reviewing your analytics, you can develop a baseline for your conversion activity.  Then, begin to test different variables against this baseline, including copy approaches, offers, calls to action, imagery, landing pages, form fields and other variables.  By understanding and continually optimizing your conversion opportunities you’ll get much more value out of your marketing activities.

Whether you are new to online marketing or a seasoned veteran just circling back to make sure you are still doing the basics right, these 3 steps will make your web presence work harder.

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.

So you’ve gone ahead and set up a blog for your company.  Or maybe you are just starting to think about it but aren’t sure what to do – or whether you should even have a blog.  No matter which of these camps you fall into, it’s critical to your success that you don’t just create a blog, you nurture it.  While an exhaustive list here could be a few hundred tactical points, these are the big keys that will help you to be more successful with your blog:

1). Start with a Strategy

This sounds incredibly obvious but amazingly isn’t usually the case.  Most blogs fall down because there is no strategy in place on how and when to communicate, what you want to say, who you are trying to reach, and all the other crucial elements.  All too often, businesses start a blog without a well-defined strategy and it all falls apart from there.  Make sure you have a plan in place for what you will discuss (more below) how frequently (at least enough to keep your audience’s interest) and that you have the time and people to write well.

2). Write What You Know, And Please — Don’t Sell, Educate

One of the basic tenets of writing has always been to write what you know.  Hand in hand with that, on your blog make sure you aren’t just pushing a sales agenda.  Use the blog as a forum to educate visitors on your area of expertise rather than a hard sell pushing your company.  Nobody wants to go to a cocktail party and listen to someone talk about themselves the whole time, and nobody wants to read your blog if it’s just a hard sell for your company.  Instead, be interesting and educate your visitors.

3). Make Your Blog Accessible

This really spans a variety of items on your page.  On your page, make it easy to search by having items such as a prominent search box, categories, tags, easily sorted archives and clean design and navigation  – it’s really surprising how often that basic is missed!  If visitors can’t figure out what to do on your blog because your design is screaming at them then your content is nearly worthless.

4). Make It Easy for Visitors to Interact and Share

The whole idea of a blog as a social vehicle is to be, well, social right?  So, make it easy for visitors to do just that by providing easy access to tools that let them share your post with their networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Technorati, social bookmarking etc.), post comments, and contact the authors.  Link to other interesting blogs in your blogroll so your visitors get even more value out of your blog.

5). Let People Know You Are Out There

Again, this covers a number of items.  On the simple side, make sure you are submitting your blog to search engines, relevant directories, industry specialty sites, providing visitors an easy to use RSS feed, and promoting it on your website and in email.  Additionally, consider utilizing your online and offline networks to make folks aware of your blog and latest posts.  Share a new post if you are on Twitter, but also tell people at your networking meeting if it is relevant.  Add a blog app to LinkedIn (such as the WordPress app if you are using WordPress) but don’t be afraid to mention and send a link to a relevant post to a client or prospect.

While there are hundreds of additional tips to enhance your blog, make sure you are first nurturing your blog with these 5 easy keys.

Have other key steps you would like to add?  Add it to the comments below.

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

Had a discussion with a professional services firm today regarding a problem they’re experiencing.  The problem revolves around a very simple yet often overlooked page on the typical company website – the contact form.  This company recently redesigned their website, and while site traffic has been rising, their lead volume from these site contact forms has been declining.  As a matter of fact, the numbers from their web analytics package were pretty staggering – in the last month alone, 476 page views of the contact page, and only 3 form submissions.

While we looked under a bunch of rocks to rule out other problems, one look at the contact page told me everything I needed to know.  Here are the problems, and the prescribed medication:

Problem #1: The page is waaaay too crowded.  Lots of links, lots of imagery, lots of reasons to leave.

Solution #1: Treat someone sitting on your contact page like someone sitting at your cash register ready to make a purchase, except in this case remove the Snickers bars, the US Weekly and the Chapstick display.  Remove all clutter other than the essentials.

Read the rest of this entry »

I sat in on a particularly terrible webinar today, and it left me scratching my head.  The host company usually nails these types of events, but today was a complete mess.  A mess at the beginning, a mess in the middle, and a mess at the end.  Makes you wonder why I stuck around, doesn’t it?  Me too.  Nonetheless, it inspired the following simple list of reasons why webinars fail:

• Technical problems: Come on folks.  If you’re going to run a webinar, test the technology beforehand.  Use a reputable vendor.  If attendees can’t join your meeting or can’t view your presentation, it’s over before it even started.
• Too Salesy: We all understand that webinars are designed to start or continue a sales cycle.  But if you advertise the webinar as educational, don’t beat us over the head with 10 “About Us” slides to kick things off.
• Content Isn’t As Advertised: The simplest one of all.  If your webinar was advertised as “Best Practices in Email Marketing” and the title of your actual presentation is “Social Media for 2009 and Beyond”, that’s like buying a ticket for one movie and being forced to watch another movie instead.
• No Concrete Examples: Educate me on the basics, then provide me with real examples I can latch on to.  I may not remember the basics, but you can bet I will remember that Aurora Widgets Company used the solution to increase revenue 10x in 2008.
• Don’t Read the Slides: Presentation 101.  Inject some enthusiasm.  Pretend you’re going off script even if you’re not.  Do anything to make me believe you’re thinking while you’re presenting, and not just reading slides.
• Don’t Run Over:  If the webinar is advertised as 45 minutes, make it 35.  If it’s advertised as 30 minutes, make it 20.  Many webinar attendees are interested in the typical Q&A session that occurs at the end of the session, but if you run over on the standard part, they may miss the only portion they really cared about in the first place. 

If you provide compelling content, market your webinar appropriately, and avoid these mistakes, the webinar can be a very effective lead generation and nurturing tool.  If you aren’t willing to pay enough attention to these areas, then don’t run webinars.  It’s that simple.