What’s Your Plan for Lead Nurturing?

We spend money generating leads, but most of us do a poor job when it comes to leading them through the sales funnel since not all leads are ready to buy. I think we would all agree that if we had a process, chances are we would increase the number of leads that turn into new business.

According to Forrester Research, companies that excel in lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% of the cost. This is especially true when it comes to dealing with social media leads. How is your marketing department handing off leads?

What is Lead Nurturing?

Lead nurturing is how your business establishes a relationship with a prospect that is still in the early stages of buying. This type of campaign focuses on creating a beneficial, working relationship so that when it comes time to buy, that lead turns to your business instead of someone else. Lead nurturing is:

  • Providing high-quality content that is relevant to where the potential is in the buying cycle
  • Establishing and building trust between you and the potential customer
  • Finding the most-qualified leads from your generation efforts

Does everyone within your organization understand your different stages in the selling cycle? Most sales funnels were set up for developing traditional leads. A question you must ask yourself is whether social media leads fit into your existing process and if so where? As a rule, social media leads take longer to convert because they are engaging  you earlier in the process.
How are you moving social media leads into your sales funnel?

Nurturing social leads needs to be handled differently. This will include decision-making content designed to answer questions, overcome objections and provide opportunities that arise during the purchasing process.

So take some time to identify and implement a lead follow-up process that includes nurturing. You’ll be glad you did.

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Social Media for B-to-B Marketers

This is for those of you who are still on the fence on social media and how it might fit into your overall marketing strategy.

According to Forrester research, over 90% of B2B buyers are already using social media tools, often to research and execute purchases.

Consider these facts:

  • Facebook – There are over 500 million active users.
  • Twitter – 175 million and growing. In 2010, there were 25 BILLION tweets!
  • YouTube – 35 hours of video are uploaded every minute.
  • Flickr – 3000+ photos uploaded every minute.

Needless to say, B2B marketing needs to look at the opportunities social may bring to the table. Most B2B relationships are established through direct interfacing and building relationships. It’s amazing how many people in this arena share their knowledge and build networks. What better place to demonstrate thought leadership.

If you’re looking to buy something and you’re looking for feedback from someone who already has made the decision, social is an ideal place to get that feedback. B2Bento has a white paper, Social Media for B2B Marketing that’s worth reading. It outlines strategy and guidelines and shows examples of what others are doing.

Are you ready? Jump in the water is fine!

http://www.b2bento.com/whitepaper/SocialMediaB2B.pdf

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Social Media Catching On In The B-to-B Markets

B-to-B marketers are slowly catching up with the rest of the world regarding social media. They are finally seeing that there are opportunities to generate leads and position themselves as thought leaders according to a new report from eMarketer.com, B2B Social Media Marketing Heats Up.

Most B-to-B companies have longer selling cycles and more complicated messages to convey and that’s why they are spending more time and money on podcasts and blogs. 2010 activities also include creating a branded profile page, managing promotion and PR outreach within the social networks.

Marketing on social networking sites are estimated to grow 43% in 2010. Forrester Research predicts that B-to-B firms will spend 54 million on social media marketing by 2014.

Change in Interactive Marketing Spending for Select Tactics in  2010 Among US B2B Marketers (% change)

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Mobile Marketing for B-to-B: Change in the Air(waves).

Guest post from Aylie Fifer, a Relationship Architect at Sonnhalter.

There is a revolution starting in the world of mobile marketing and it isn’t just for B2C – it is for everyone, including B2B. According to a recent article in Mobile Marketer, B-to-B mobile marketing will go from 26 million in 2009 to 106 million in 2014 according to Forrester Research.

Every now and again a technology comes along that is a total game changer for humanity and shifts the paradigm of the world we live in. Harnessing electricity. The Assembly line. The Internet. The iPhone. With the recent influx of smart phones and smart phone technology, we are seeing a whole new world – the world of mobile marketing.

Two-thirds of the world’s population has a mobile phone subscription—4 billion people—and by the end of 2010 there will be 5 billion wireless subscribers worldwide, according to some estimates. And a majority of these phones are now moving to the smart phone platform. From the Apple iPhone to the Motorola Droid to Blackberrys…the trend for mobile is to go to a smart phone or lose market share.

As a result of this new use by consumers, no longer are we capturing people in context – the trade magazine, the TV show – not to say that these mediums are dead, but we now are faced with thinking differently. With smart phone usage on the rise, people check it at different parts of their day – not just at work or at home – but several different parts of their day. This has shifted the traditional approach to marketing as now we are faced with catching people’s attention throughout the day.

I would argue that advertising to your target and catching them at a time of day when they might not being thinking about work makes the message resonate even stronger because it IS out of context. For instance, if a carpenter goes out over the weekend and sees an ad through his phone about a certain type of tool, this stands out to him because it is unexpected – he is out socially and may not be in “work mode.”

People have become more immune to advertising, so one way to catch their attention – and make your brand stand out in their minds – is to catch them when they AREN’T thinking about work, and to do it in an entertaining way.

Mobile advertising has furthered this push and while I am a firm believer in a good segmentation strategy, it is also true that everyone is a consumer. When people hang up their clothes at the end of a hard day, they turn off their work mode and begin the “home” mode. Thus, I would argue that you can’t just segment into demographics or ethnographics, you now need an added dimension – what I call parallel-ographics.

You live your life in parallels – you may talk to your husband (or your wife) during the day and realize that you need to pick up diapers so you pick up your smart phone and you search for a coupon. In your work day, you are a plant manager, but through the use of mobile, you just dipped into your parallel life – that of mother and wife. And while you are at the store after work hours picking up those diapers, you get an email from work and you are instantly transferred into your parallel life – that of plant manager. Your context shifts constantly and instead of having separate times for work and home, this use of mobile and smart phones has made us increasingly blur that line and we run our work and home lives as parallels instead of separate.

As a salesperson for a B2B company, you may be able to show a product demo from your phone when you are out socializing and happen to meet a potential customer. The lines between social and work life have become even more blurred with the onset of mobile. Think of mobile as your portal to the Internet and the beyond – where you might have in the past only done on a laptop computer, you can now access – at any time – on a smart phone.

The onset of mobile marketing means that you never fully turn off your roles throughout your day, which changes the way a marketer catches you and keeps your interest. And as a marketer, to attack this new paradigm of living, you have to approach it from a parallel-ographic standpoint – knowing that the message needs to appear in multiple places, at multiple times and that yes, everyone is a consumer.

What are your thoughts on mobile marketing? Do you think it will be the next big thing?

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B-to-B Marketers: Social Media Numbers Increase Significantly

According to an article on www.mashable.com by Adam Ostrow, a new report from Forrester Research shows the number of social networking users have doubled since 2007. There are 55.6 million adults (about 1/3rd of the U.S. population) that visit a social networking site at least once a month (up 15% from 2007 to 18% in 2009).

In the B-to-B community, a new report being unveiled this week at The B-to-B and ANA Conference in Chicago shows significant increases by B-to-B marketers in using social media. Marketers are using social as a marketing tactic for generating demand. Here are some highlights:

  • 66% of marketers are now using social media up 20% from 2007.
  • 57% are now using social media channels up from just 15% in the earlier survey.
  • Among the newer media tactics, blogs top the list.
  • 81% of B-to-B marketers are currently using LinkedIn compared to 25% in B-to-C.
  • Twitter ranked highest among B-to-B (70%).
  • Facebook is the most used overall site (74%) and among the B-to-B marketers (60%).
  • Social media objectives have changed – brand building has decreased in favor of demand generation.

This is good news that the B-to-B community is getting their arms around social.

What are you doing?

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