With today’s long buying cycles, you realize it may take quite awhile before the leads you glean from lead-generation efforts are ready to make a purchase. In the meantime, you want your company to stay on the customer’s radar screen. And in the process, you want to take the opportunity to influence the way they design their RFP—so when they’re ready to make a purchase, it’s more likely to be your product.
As a result, companies are increasingly adding lead-nurturing campaigns (some companies also call these lead-cultivation campaigns) to their marketing mix.
As with any campaign, it takes a number of touches before people become aware of and remember your message. So you want to design these lead-nurturing campaigns to expand on similar themes and messages over a period of time.
Here are some examples of lead-nurturing campaigns and the content they include:
Touch 1: Webinar from an industry analyst talking about the magnitude of the problem with a follow up paper summarizing the key takeaway points from the Webinar.
Touch 2: Thought-leadership white paper written by your company talking about the challenge, what’s missing in current solutions, and what’s necessary to solve it. This paper should describe your solution in an objective-sounding manner without naming it explicitly in an effort to influence the RFP.
Touch 3: White paper or application note specifically about your product and how it addresses the issue.
Touch 4: Case study showing a particular customer and how they addressed the problem using your product. This serves as a proof point that high-profile customers are using your product.
Touch 5: Hands-on online demo showing how the product works
Touch 6: Package that pulls out the ROI other customers have achieved from the solution to help the prospect sell the solution internally to the finance department.
Touch 7: Expanded case study demonstrating your company’s expertise in implementing the product and training users so that it creates a solution that addresses their individual issues.
While many campaigns include fewer touches—typically three to four—this gives you an idea of the types of content people are using in lead-nurturing campaigns.
As you create your touches, think about including different types of media. Some touches might be print collateral, others might be podcasts or Webinars. Different people prefer to see information differently—for example, I prefer white papers, my business partner prefers podcasts.
You’ve probably already created many of the items. The idea is to use them in an integrated manner to both reinforce your messages and expand on them, thereby keeping your prospects engaged and interested and judging other vendor’s products against yours until they’re ready to buy.
What have been your experiences with lead nurturing campaigns?
Recent Comments