January 22 WHITEPAPER: GUIDE TO LEAD NURTURING

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1 WHITEPAPER: GUIDE TO LEAD NURTURING January GUIDE TO LEAD NURTURING: HOW TO ATTRACT AND RETAIN PROSPECTS AND CUSTOMERS, EFFICIENTLY OVER THE LONG TERM BY JULIAN POULTER LAMP-360 JANUARY

2 Whitepaper: Guide to Lead Nurturing INTRODUCTION... 3 WHAT IS LEAD NURTURING? - SOME SCENARIOS... 4 LEAD NURTURING: CURRENT MODELS... 6 OVERVIEW: SOLUTIONS FOR NURTURING... 7 OVERVIEW SOLUTIONS FOR NURTURING LEAD NURTURING: CONTENT MARKETING LEAD NURTURING: DATA AND THE 360 DEGREE VIEW INTELLIGENCE AND RULES: MAKING CONTENT RELEVANT RELEVANCE: BUYER PERSONAS, PROFILE SURVEYS RELEVANCE: LEAD SCORING LEAD NURTURING: OUTBOUND & THE PHONE SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE WEB QUICK START GUIDE LEAD NURTURING: TECHNOLOGY CONSIDERATIONS SUMMARY ABOUT LAMP CONTACT DETAILS Version 2 Page 2 of 23

3 Introduction Let s jump straight in and look at some of the benefits of lead nurturing, which is why you would consider a lead nurture programme. Lead Nurturing Benefits Several recent studies have highlighted some of the benefits of lead nurturing and we include a few here: Marketing Sherpa: 80% of poor prospects go on to buy in 24 months Communication (Ed: With Content) is a differentiator during sales cycle Aberdeen Group: Lead Nurturing leads to 107% better lead conversion 40% bigger deal size Lower cost per opportunity LAMP: Overall we think lead nurturing is a vital process and neglected in many companies. According to Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, up to 95 per cent of qualified prospects on your Web site are there to research and are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, but as many as 70% of them will eventually buy a product from you or your competitors. According to his DemandGen Report, on average, nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. LAMP: A discussion on the value of lead nurturing would not be complete without exploring ROI. Let s first take a look at these compelling statistics taken from research done by Forrester, CSO Insights, and others. Companies that excel at lead nurturing: Generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead Reduce the per cent of marketinggenerated leads that are ignored by sales (from as high as 80% to as low as 25%). Raise win rates on marketinggenerated leads (7% points higher) and reduce no decisions (6% points lower) Need more convincing? Would you like your sales representatives make quota (9% higher) and a shorter ramp up time for new reps (10% decrease). Finally, anecdotal evidence suggests that nurtured prospects buy more, require less discounting, and have shorter sales cycles than prospects that were not nurtured. Overall, lead nurturing, if done well, can have many benefits. Let s explore Figure 1 - Typical Customer Lifecycle Version 2 Page 3 of 23

4 What is Lead Nurturing? - Some Scenarios Outside Funnel: demand generation Top of Funnel: lead nurturing and scoring Middle of Funnel: lead nurturing, sales qualification Bottom of Funnel: sales process Figure 2Landing Page for Conversion Nurturing the word means looking after and developing. In the marketing context it s normally applied to creating or developing sales leads. To explain lead nurturing let s first discuss the concept of the sales funnel. Sales Funnel this analogy is often a graphic used to describe the progression of leads until they become customers. Outside the funnel, demand generation activities are used to generate early stage leads, at which point the funnel is entered. The term Top of Funnel is then often used to describe these early stage leads, as the sales cycle progresses, the lead becomes a true sales opportunity and we know more about it its better qualified (hopefully). At the bottom of our funnel are a few true sales opportunities that are going to close, and become customers in the current period or quarter. If we examine each of these stages in a little more detail, we will start to see where lead nurturing becomes relevant. Outside the funnel at this point we have the world at large who are not even early stage prospects for us. Within this universe of thousands of companies or individuals we focus our attention on the suspects or Targets most likely to become leads and customers. We use demand generation activities to attract them to our web site or stand. Then we convert them to a lead, usually by the process of a landing page or registration form of some kind. The problem is it could be day, weeks, months or even years before a particular suspect becomes even an early stage lead. In other words there is a large group of suspects here whom we want to nurture until they become a lead. Top of funnel at this stage we have a lead and we will know perhaps only a name and address, perhaps a company name and a phone number. As people convert to become leads they will be contacted by our sales and marketing process and will then become one of three types: 1. An active lead: These are easy to deal with in principle at least we pass them to the sales team who does what sales do, they sell to them and show how your fantastic solution can help the prospect achieve his objectives. A % of these leads however will be rejected by sales because the prospect is not yet ready to buy. If they are not physically rejected they will likely just be ignored. 2. The rejections, those qualified out as never likely to become customers. Tyre-kickers and research students, and the like. 3. The third group, and potentially the largest, are leads who are interested in your solution, partly qualified as likely to become Figure 3 Another View of the Demand and Lead Generation Version 2 Page 4 of 23

5 Think: Words, Image and Video What is lead nurturing - Some Scenarios / cont. customers, but at this stage they are not ready for the full sales treatment. They may not be ready to move forward for up to 2 years? This rump of leads need careful handling over time, until they are ready to become true sales opportunities and passed to sales. This group is ripe for nurturing as well. In the sales 2.0 era, a lot of power is with the buyer. Because of the plethora of information available on the internet and social media, the buyer can get a lot of information (on your services and others) and needs to be carefully managed. In the early stages heavy selling does not work and softly softly relationship building is required. Studies have shown that between 70-80% of today s leads will go on to make a purchase within two years, not necessarily from you. Therefore you need a process to maintain and build the relationship with these buyers for up to two years. This is a classic application of lead nurturing. Middle of funnel these are the leads that have been qualified to at least the marketing qualified lead (MQL) level. As a result they are worthy of sales attention. Whilst the overall responsibility for a lead may now pass from marketing to sales, the time period of the lead in the middle of the funnel can be significant. Many B2B sales cycles are 6-12 months in length. Therefore, lead nurturing still has a role, but must be interweaved with sales activity Bottom of funnel at this point, the responsibility is almost fully with sales and whilst content and materials are provided (by marketing) to help the buyer along his journey, the nurturing aspect is controlled by sales input. Post Funnel customer the process actually starts all over again with building the relationship, cross selling and upselling with the customer. New long term sales cycles will result with the new customer becoming a new lead for the next proposition Summary - there are two main areas where lead nurturing can best be applied the outside the funnel attracting new leads, and the Top (and middle) of the funnel, nurturing leads until they are sales ready. Organisational structure The process of demand generation, lead generation and progressing sales opportunities is ideally one seamless process. But in many organisations this is split in some way between sales and marketing. Typically marketing generate demand and leads and then hand them off to sales. How well this works is often referred to as sales and marketing alignment. Problems arise with the leads that are not really qualified or after qualification the timescale is seen to be long term and rather than pass to sales, a long term lead nurture approach is required. Detailed discussions about organisation are beyond this paper but we refer to marketing for all the early stage activities and sales for dealing with qualified leads. Current models - so the requirement is to maintain contact with and build a relationship with a prospect over many months and perhaps years. During this time, you, the company is thinking about its sales cycle and Version 2 Page 5 of 23

6 Lead Nurturing: Current Models Figure 4 - A Buying Process Unaware Aware Interested Active Customer where in the funnel the lead or opportunity is. The buyer meanwhile, is moving through his own buying cycle and needs to receive the information to meet his changing needs. At the beginning the buyer is undertaking broad market research. How can I solve my problem, can I solve my problem? We could call him Unaware. Overtime he starts to research specific solutions and eventually needs to decide on a specific approach and supplier(s). This process is often undertaken by many people or a committee in an organisation. He is now Aware. Therefore over time we need to provide the buyer with different information. For instance at the beginning of the sales cycle or his buying cycle, if we send a special 2 for 1 offer or buy before the end of the quarter option, this will seem silly to the buyer. He will likely ignore it or more likely remove you from further research and communication. Conversely, when he s interested in detailed product information or undertaken a trial or proof of concept, then the buyer does now want a simple Hello, can we help you introducing your product. The communication, needs to be relevant. Current models The most typical model today is a sales rep putting a note in his diary (system) to call a prospect every 3 months. Over time this becomes repetitive, the sales rep does not always do it, the prospect gets annoyed, and then one day when the rep calls, the buyer has already purchased something else! Whilst a sales rep can often be the best way to qualify the deal further and generally build the relationship, the problem is its repetitive, prone to be forgotten as there will be better opportunities, and its expensive. Many organisations will tie this activity into a diary system like Outlook or a CRM system to send reminders to sales reps and their managers. Reports will be created showing how many 10s or 100s of days an opportunity has been (stagnant) at this stage of the funnel. Significant management time is wasted in reviewing opportunities, that are not really moving along the sales or buying process, because they are not ready. One of the biggest benefits of lead nurturing is ensuring you only pass sales ready leads to sales. Problems and challenges?? There are many problems and challenges when trying to configure a lead nurturing programme: Lots of data on prospects is needed to make intelligent decisions There are lots of prospects and therefore some sort of system and process becomes a necessity We need to automate much of this as the simple diary and spread sheet systems are very inefficient for the most expensive part of the process the sales people Leaving it to the sales reps means we miss opportunities and can turn off prospects. Also if sales reps leave we can lose the data/intelligence they knew about. Version 2 Page 6 of 23

7 Overview: Solutions for Nurturing You can, of course, have indepth literature on your own product, but this is not so useful for lead generation and is more relevant further down the buying process or sales cycle. At this stage we are primarily concerned with lead generation and nurturing. Nurture requirements So in simple terms we need: To keep in contact with buyers with regular outbound communication with prospects using quality content Making sure communication is relevant as the prospects needs change over time Responding to buyers information requests and triggers Learn more about the buyers requirements over time Match prospects against our view of the ideal prospect profile and qualify continually Involve sales people but don t waste the time of expensive sales resources Have agreed definitions of leads and the hand off process between sales and marketing ensuring sales and marketing alignment Solution In simple terms therefore a lead nurturing solution will involve: 1. Content for our buyers 2. Data on prospects 3. Content selected by rules and intelligent processes 4. Communications through relevant channels including , social and humans/phone Key processes need to be defined in the organisation and technology will undoubtedly be a part of this. Definitions Before we go into the details of each part of the solution, we need to agree and discuss a few important definitions and organisational issues. Issue: Sales and Marketing organisational structure The majority of organisations have separate sales and marketing departments, though this is changing. In large companies, where business units are often aligned with target markets like SMES, Enterprise or aligned with vertical markets. Within this business unit is one combined team that is responsible for sales and marketing. However, for the purpose of this document we will refer to the distinct roles of marketing and sales. Marketing is responsible for attracting the demand and generating the lead and then qualifying this to the level of an MQL. Sales then take over this MQL and do their job which will qualify the lead such that it is an SQL or more commonly a sales opportunity. The benefit of this distinction is that the generally higher paid sales executives (especially in a B2B setting) are only working with decent qualified leads. In the pre MQL/SQL stage, there may well be phone contact and selling, but in this paper we will assume this role is taken on by part of marketing. Other names for this unit could also be inside sales and telequalification, sales development reps or even tele-marketing. Organisationally it is important that the company understands where every lead is and who is responsible for it at each stage. If opportunities or leads are not followed up in time then management may be alerted and needs to get involved. Leads normally move from marketing to sales when they become an MQL, however, if leads are not deemed qualified to the MQL level then they can be passed back to marketing (for nurturing). Issue: Lead definition and lead management processes When starting lead generation you should define a group of target prospects that match your ideal profile; Version 2 Page 7 of 23

8 Sales process / qualification BANT Budget Authority Need Timescale MANDACT Money Authority Need Decision Ability Competition Timescale Overview Solutions for Nurturing companies and individuals within those companies that you would like to approach about your proposition. We can call these targets or suspects, but the defining factor is we know very little about them (usually) and they know little about us and there is little history of interaction between the parties. In our system we will have little data other than perhaps name, address, and phone number? Our demand generation activities usually bring traffic to our web site and its landing pages where they will be converted into a lead. A lead therefore is somebody who has had at least one interaction with us, usually a web site visit or content download from an , but it could be an incoming phone call or a business card from a trade show. Whilst this is warmer than a cold suspect, it s still not very well qualified. A qualified lead ensures that we don t waste time as an organisation on leads that are not going to go anywhere. For instance research students visiting a stand or web page are not good leads to pass to the sales organisation. Leads should only be passed to sales that are qualified to a level that we refer to as a Marketing Qualified Lead or MQL. Much has written about how to agree the definition of a lead and involves lengthy discussions between sales and marketing. It s true that if lots of MQLs are passed to sales and are then rejected, some review needs to be made. However, we propose that the following 5 criteria are almost always applicable to any organisation for an MQL. Issue: MQL Definition These are the five criteria that make up an MQL. The prospect: has the correct profile is aware of issue / has problem is concept educated is happy to speak to sales has a reason to move forward now If a lead meets these criteria, it s an MQL and well worthy of being passed to sales. You understand a bit about the business, not everything of course, and important they ve agreed to contact with sales and have an imminent requirement. The timing of imminent can vary but is often 3-6 months in a B2B content. At this level of qualification it s well worth a sales rep getting involved and speaking or visiting the prospect as appropriate. His job is to match your solution to their need. To undertake this he will need a combination of skills to educate the prospect, present your solution and understand their needs and qualify the deal so that they do not waste time on deals they cannot win. A sales organisation should have a methodology to qualify deals and we present one here, in brief see the side bar. Sales qualification is distinct from that embodied in the MQL. Sales qualification uncovers detailed, complex and often subtle characteristics about the sales. Acronyms like BANT and MANDACT are use to help the sales people qualify opportunities see side bar. Whilst the MQL standard uncovers aspects of the need (the N from BANT) it does not determine all the other complex criteria and it it s not sensible to define an MQL to embody detailed BANT/MANDACT type sales criteria. This is the job of sales. The split and level of qualification can be argues, but leads should not be passd to sales unless they are sales ready, but this does not mean fully qualified. Version 2 Page 8 of 23

9 1. Lead Nurturing: Content Marketing You can, of course, have in-depth literature on your own product, but this is not so useful for lead generation and is more relevant further down the buying process or sales cycle. At this stage we are primarily concerned with lead generation and nurturing. Now let s look at each of the four main components of lead nurturing starting with: Content marketing is more important than ever before and as a company it s something you should embrace, or get left behind. This is because there is increased awareness of this strategy and more and more companies are starting to create content. Content cannot just be about your products or services, but instead you need to share topics such as best practices, problem specific information, industry trends and the benefits of utilising them. This approach will build trust and awareness with prospects and customers, making it easier for them to justify purchasing your product or service. Some key Content Types Figure 5 Typical Content Types Blog posts - Post your whitepaper as a staggered series of related blog posts. You can create at least 3-10 posts from a single whitepaper. Web pages - if the subject is something that relates to your key value propositions, then consider using static web pages to host this content, taking the opportunity to redirect visitors elsewhere within your website. Slide show create a slideshow using PowerPoint or Prezi. Ensure you include full details of the slide notes/script. Video Simply dub a voice over your slide show using PowerPoint or Camtasia. You can be more adventurous if you have the time and tools. There are two main types of content: Own produced: content can take many forms (see graphic at the bottom of this section) and includes video and e-books or whitepapers. Curated: any other piece of content such as 3 rd party video, papers or blog posts that might be useful to your readers. Content is king in today s successful marketing strategies. Producing original, high quality, and informative content is key to engaging prospective customers right at the very start of their buyer s journey (leads). Good content engenders trust and promotes interaction, whether that is on the telephone, face to face or more likely via a web site or Social Media outlet. Podcast Using audio from your video or creating new audio you can produce handy podcasts that prospects can listen to via the internet or mp3 player. Images Photographs, diagrams and charts can all be hosted and discovered, on image sites like Flickr, Instagram and Pinterest along with associated, keywords, tags and descriptions. Infographic - a popular blend of image and slideshow creating a visual flow of information. Easy enough to recreate a basic infographic using existing content. E-Book - The whitepaper can also be converted into an e-book format and made available on free and paid sites, for example Kindle or other e-readers. Version 2 Page 9 of 23

10 1. Content / Cont. Once this initial contact is made, prospects will want to learn more about you, typically via your web site and your s. This process can be made ever more efficient through the careful use of embedded links and calls to action images throughout all published content. In simple terms, content is created and distributed mainly through , social media and your website. Though of course there are specialist sites for certain types of content; YouTube for videos and SlideShare for slide presentations. Prospects find (SEO helps here) and view the content and follow embedded links back to your web site s landing page where they can learn more about a product and, crucially become leads through signing up via registration or subscription forms. Content can take many forms and use many types of media. In the B2B world, one of the most popular forms is the whitepaper and this is a good place to start. Whitepapers and e-books tend to be lengthy documents that analyse a subject t in depth from many angles. The beauty of the whitepaper / e- book in your library is that you can then re-purpose them and extend the leverage of the paper and take extra value from the effort involved in creating them. A whitepaper can be turned into multiple blog articles, a slideshow a video and podcast quite easily. All of the content you create should be stored along with the appropriate titles, keywords and tags to help users find your content both on your own web site and the wider internet. Always remember that each item should contain links back to appropriate Landing Pages on your website. Relevance as we ll learn in section 3 the content you create needs to be relevant to the buyer. Over time the buyers requirements change as he becomes more knowledgeable on the subject of interest. Version 2 Page 10 of 23

11 2. Lead Nurturing: Data and the 360 Degree View Data Sources Demographic Behavioural Internal External Organic Social Data is the second of the main components. Let s look at the sources of data available, that could be useful in lead nurturing: Demographic this is typically the basic information about a company or person. Their name, age, address, job title etc. Behavioural this relates to the interactions that a contact has had with your company. This normally relates to s that have been opened and read, or content that has been downloaded such as e-books and whitepapers. It could also be events attended like seminars / webinars. Internal companies often have a lot of data on their customers, from which products they have purchased to that in an existing CRM or other operational system. External data can be sourced externally form a list provider or data broker. However, whilst often used to prime campaigns, the data quality can be very variable. There are also data aggregators that pull data together for unique contacts with many hundreds of sources of useful data. A detailed picture of a lot of a contacts external activity can be purchased in this way. Organic this type of data is collected from your registrations forms or landing pages on your web site. This is the best way to grow your database as the list is opted in subscribers. Social & other in recent years the advent of social media data has become very useful and important. Whilst social data can be hard to obtain automatically (via software ), used manually and with some intelligence, it can be very useful Silos to make sense of this data, ideally it all needs to be in one system. As this is customer and prospect data this is often the company s CRM system. Whilst a CRM system will have default fields for many items like demographic data, most, like LAMP allow custom fields and also custom modules to be built and integrated. Interpretation - once we have the data organised in one place we can say we have a 360 degree view of the prospect and customer. For leads we will have very little information, but as they become better qualified leads and sales opportunities, and eventually customers, we can collect and store significant amounts of information. Version 2 Page 11 of 23

12 3. Intelligence and Rules: Making Content Relevant Unaware Interested Aware Active Intelligence and rules now we have all the data together we can start to make decisions on what content we can send to prospects and customers. For lead nurturing we want to keep a steady stream of relevant content being delivered to the buyer/prospect. To do this we need to take account of the buyer persona (see next section) and where they are in their buying cycle. A buyer starts off his process by being unaware and progresses to being a customer see table at the bottom of this page. Another common terminology is to describe a prospect as top of funnel, middle or bottom of funnel. At each point the buyer requires different information. See table in the next section for description of relevant content for each stage of the buying cycle. So our challenge is to create enough content and then to continuously match it to the buyer s needs. Logically, better decisions about matching the content for the buyer can be made if there is more data available. More advanced analytical techniques like prediction usually require many fields of data on the contact. regular stream of outbound s are sent that as far as possible match where the buyer is in the buying process. Our objective is to nudge the buyer along his buying cycle, providing him the information he needs. The process should change the type of content as the buyer moves along his buying cycle. It should also be alert to opportunities for additional content. Transactional s that relate to a request or previous interaction can be very powerful. They are ways of continuing the engagement especially if this is in response to an expressed interest. i.e. a form is filled out and a related is then immediately sent with links to related content. Over time, more data will be captured by the system (see progressive profiling) and by human interaction in meetings or phone calls. The process should then take account of this and change and adapt the type of content that is being delivered. As mentioned previously this process may go on for several months or years. General rules suggest that for every 3-4 items of content that are educational and informative, one piece can be used that is promotional or contains a special offer etc. Customer So in a typical nurturing programme a Stage Unaware Aware Interested Looking Customer Description They have no concept of who you are or what you do, they may not even be are or acknowledge they have a problem The buyer responds to one of your marketing campaigns and becomes aware of who you are and what you do, he recognises he has a problem If the buyer recognises a need for your solution, they may show interest and request information about your product. He recognises he has a problem and may be interested in finding out more about the issues and ways of handling them The buyer starts to actively research solutions. If the buyer is impressed with your solution, then they may consider actively looking at it. At this point, pricing, case studies and implementation issues are of most interest The buyer purchases and becomes a customer and you need to service and educate them Version 2 Page 12 of 23

13 3. Relevance: Buyer Personas, Profile Surveys According to research from Merkle, three quarters of consumers (74%) actually prefer to receive commercial communications via over any other channel Can you send an ? Do you have all the skills listed on the right?? One additional method to consider in nurturing is that of trigger events. The simplest case is an auto-responder, when somebody downloads some content, a confirmation or additional is immediately sent, often containing the content. Careful use of trigger and event s can result in much higher response rates. This responder is often a simple confirmation, but careful thought can result in an opportunity for providing additional information or offers, used to nudge the buyer along the buying cycle. Buyer Personas A proposition is targeted at a specific buyer, who has a persona. In the B2C context this can be quite a complex description of the ideal target individual. In the B2B space it typically relates to an industry and job function. NB. Its often better to have 2-3 job functions to target in the same organisation rather than just one. The story you tell with your content needs to have the buyer persona in mind, as well as his position in your funnel and his buying cycle. Progressive Profiling When leads are generated from marketing you run the risk of obtaining poor quality leads. Therefore qualifying the leads is an important part of the process. Obviously this can be undertaken by tele-marketing but this is relatively expensive. Therefore we need a process to do this for us automatically. When users click on an link to obtain the collateral they are interested in it is possible for the user to complete a short survey. This is not an in depth survey of user needs, just a few simple questions trying to determine the prospect s interest level, usually with simple check box options for quick answering. Typically a system can ask for fields that are not completed at this stage, like job title or industry. Each time the contact visits a landing page or form, they are asked for additional pieces of information. So start with ty to build up the demographic profile is this the right prospect. Then try to tease out information on their issues, pains and even plans. Awareness Stage Unaware Aware Interested Customer Suggested collateral Whitepapers industry news and information useful to the suspect and his role Events keynote speakers/analysts White papers Product demos Events Product specific/role specific brochure Special offers, trials and proof of concepts Price Lists Case Studies and references Brochures and fact sheets User group events Newsletters Upsells offers Education in use of product/service Renewals Loyalty programmes User groups Version 2 Page 13 of 23

14 3. Relevance: Lead Scoring Depending on the answers given and the resulting qualification, the prospect can then be placed into an alternative treatment or communication Stream. For instance, the Aware campaign could have two different campaign Streams, one for each of product A or B. Traditional sales qualification such as Budget, Authority, Need and Timescale (BANT) but we recommend that this is largely left to the sales and tele-marketer roles to achieve when in a conversation. Asking questions such as how much is your budget? can be seen as rude and lead to drop out. In addition, the responses will often provide conversational opportunities or topics for telemarketing to speak to the prospect about, and get the conversation going. Lead scoring gives a score to each lead and you can get a ranked list of leads. But a high lead score really means this lead has a higher priority, because they interacted more or more recently. Lead scoring is not necessarily the same as qualification. The scores are typically worked out on a combination pf demographics (job title, industry) and interaction or behaviour (which s they responded to and which whitepapers they downloaded). As software and techniques become more sophisticated then software will be able to qualify prospects rather than just score them. Summary - so let s return to our lead nurturing process, now we have a definition of a led and an understanding of the sales and marketing process. A recap, the overall solution should involve some or all of the following: Regular outbound communication with prospects Making sure communication is relevant as the prospects needs change over time Responding to buyers information requests and triggers Using appropriate channels: , social media and human contact Having agreed definitions of leads and the process between sales and marketing Now lets examine the fourth and final pat of the lead nurturing mix, how to get the relevant content in front of prospects. Version 2 Page 14 of 23

15 4. Lead Nurturing: Outbound & the Phone Figure 6 Example CTAs Humans (phone and meetings) The important human element in the LAMP process is the telemarketer/inside sales, sales qualifier he goes by a plethora of different names. Whilst there are people involved in planning and executing the campaigns and in the sales process itself, the most critical element in generating leads is sales and marketing who initially contacts the prospects. It s true that even with the best processes, data and systems, if the people involved at the front end are not knowledgeable, professional and have all the relevant interpersonal skills, then the investment could be wasted. The sales or marketing sales role, depending on the organisational structure chosen, is a difficult and skilled role. In the early stages this role is about softly softly building the relationship, ensuring any system or process is providing the information the buyer needs. A hum can probably do this better than a machine (now!). They can also gently probe to qualify and tease out information that an and a web form cannot what is the decision making process? for example. Follow up time With lead generation there s no excuse for not following up in a timely manner. Some interesting research from insidesales.com and others shows that: The best ROI in follow ups occurs when around 9 attempts are made to contact a lead. This is a lot of effort but if your reps only try 1 or 2 times they are likely not to get through and disregard the lead. 9-9 attempts should be spread out over 2 weeks, including phone and contact. Response rates to follow ups made within a few minutes to an hour of a lead downloading or clicking on some content is far ahead of the response rate after 3 hours, 24 hours or several days. Best practice dictates that follow ups should be done within the minutes. Outbound is perhaps currently the most widely used method of lead nurturing. As long as it s used carefully so that messages are personalised and relevant to the buyer, it s still an effective tool. Figure 7 More Complex Buyer's Journey Lead Nurture Process Version 2 Page 15 of 23

16 4. Social Media and the Web Companies must move away from the batch and blast method it s the end of the month, crikey! Let s get a mailer out. Mails Streams for nurturing need to be carefully thought out and relate closely to the buyer s needs, at that particular point. is a complex topic in its own right, with many issue to consider that affect quality Social media and the web Once a lead has been generated by the system the telemarketer can call the prospect and has the benefit of the results of the profile questions to obtain conversational hooks or topics. Using the tools at his disposal the telemarketer can be well prepared and appear professional and informed, leading to a better result on the call. In addition, the normal process in the age of social media is then for the software to look for connections in social media about the prospect. In the B2B world Facebook can be useful but the first choice is currently LinkedIn. LinkedIn can be used for all sorts of things but at least will show you some of the prospects history and you will usually garner some additional contacts, which should be added into future communication Streams. Your nurturing software should also generate leads using social media. When items are posted on social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook they should be posted via the LAMP system which then tracks the clicks on any link for instance to a whitepaper that you have announced on social media, but more importantly it should collect that lead, if the prospect converts. When an anonymous person follows a link the system can track a click and also which pages they visit on the web site, but they will not be able to be identified. However, if this same person responds to one of our s, the cookie on their PC will link the items together. When a sales rep views their contact record they will also see evidence and an audit of their web browsing history and social media interactions. Conversation So rather than a cold call, a sales rep can follow up a lead with the following information at his fingertips: Demographic information on the prospect Links to social media profiles and whether the prosper came from posts on a social platform Which content and topics the prospect was interested in Which s they were sent a, opened and responded to Which web pages the user visited The buyer is still in control, but the sales rep can be knowledgeable and professional. This will differentiate you from the competition. Version 2 Page 16 of 23

17 Quick Start Guide Complex vs Simple some of the concepts we have discussed are not difficult to understand, but for an organisation with limited content limited data and limited expertise in , social and digital marketing in general, the benefits of a lead nurture campaign can seem a daunting prospect. We suggest you keep it very simple to start with and then over time your main focus is to add in compelling content and if required you can increase the sophistication of the programme. The basic steps to get going are: 1. Identify your buyer persona. In B2B this could be as simple as a job function ie A finance director or similar senior finance role, in a company of 200+ employees in a specific industry 2. Review what content you currently have available. Is there any you can use, can we repurpose, if not make a plan to determine what we need 3. If content needs to be created priorities, it, or outsource it. Ideally recruit a part time journalist to start with ½ day per week, to control content 4. Start with 3 pieces of content for a top of funnel or Unaware stream. Package these as e-books or slides or videos and also write corresponding text looking s. Ensur3 there is a clear subject, and a call to action to download the content 5. Ideally write a 2nd for each piece of content for the responders in the Aware stream. They will get the same content but the refers to previous contact / download and can include a little branding 6. For anybody that response to an , writ e a simple auto responder . With links to some of your key landing pages or offers and alternative resources 7. Set up target list in you CRM/ programme of the buyers you determined in step 1. Buy a quality list if necessary 8. Ensure there is a lead capture / contact us form on the web site / blog asap 9. Send the s ideally in small batches daily, to your target list. Repeat this every 2-4 weeks with successive content / s 10. For responders move them out of the Unaware stream and try to contact them, at least 8 times over 2 weeks. 11. If contact is not made put these responders into the Aware list and send them aware s for the same content 12. Ensure your inside sales can access the new leads and agree to follow them up, ideally within 30 minutes of a lead responding Version 2 Page 17 of 23

18 Lead Nurturing: Technology Considerations Processes are repeatable and scalable Get the business process correct, then think about the technolgy Many CRM and related projects have failed (up to 60% in some reports from well known analysts like Forrester and Gartner) Technology - there are several areas where the technology to support the process is probably different from standard CRM or marketing tools available today. These include: scheduling of Streams Any marketing system and most CRM tools will allow you to send s out in batch using some sort of selection criteria or target list and templates. Most will also allow you to track who has opened or responded to a campaign etc. However, please check as even market leading products such as Salesforce.com do not provide any marketing capability out of the box without purchasing additional add-ons. However, the challenge with LAMP and dealing with each individual and moving them automatically through the Awareness Cycle at their individual speed means the normal batch operation does not work. Any decent tool in this space will need processes or agents, normally residing on the server, that will examine each individual prospect and determine what communications he is due next. Of course if for some reason, the prospect has already been sent a specific mail he should not normally be sent it again. With a batch and blast approach you are normally list and specific centric and that approach does not work with multiple s, Streams and the Awareness Cycle. normally cumbersome and hard to use for sales people. Telemarketers have their own unique needs and a marketing system needs to be optimized to their workflow requirements. A tele-marketer needs to make a significant volume of calls in a largely repetitive manner, whilst also taking input from any intelligence the nurturing process has thrown up. As well as the normal contact details the system must include and show: Any web interactions the prospect has made on your site(s) Which s he has been sent and the responses to these Allow changes to future communication Streams Allow specific s or campaign to be sent or registered Provide access to, on a daily basis: o New leads o Follow-ups from previous activities o Cold calling lists The system must record the result of a call and give very quick mechanisms to achieve o Log a call and the result o Schedule follow on call o Create an opportunity if required o Manage which Stream of communication the prospect receives in the future o Log any additional intelligence that may be relevant in the future Inside Sales workflow Most systems provide a crude, if any, interface for tele-marketing users. CRM systems provide the generalised toolkit and 360 degree view of the prospect but it is not usually optimised for use by tele-marketing. They are Profile questions In clicking through from the to a landing page the system must be able to intelligently select profiling/survey questions for the prospect to answer in a simple fashion. Version 2 Page 18 of 23

19 Technology Considerations cont/.. Activity recording All CRM tools allow recording of activities (calls and meetings) and the creation of opportunities. When there are many campaigns underway simultaneously it is important that any opportunity or activity that is created by the system, tele-marketer or sales, is logged against the appropriate campaign. This is to allow tracking and reporting by campaign and Stream. As this is happening on a frequent basis with multiple campaigns it should also be automatic. Sales and marketing integration As well as providing for tele-marketers the system must also provide normal CRM opportunity management for sales and the managed interaction of leads as they pass between marketing and sales and potentially back again, several times. Sales and marketing should be working on a seamless process the buyer does not need to know or care who is providing him with the information he needs at the appropriate time. Opt-in and Opt-out Opt-in and opt-out are particularly important in some jurisdictions and the software must record why opt-in has been granted, and when. Data provenance and s It is important that the system can track exactly where a record of data came from, who owns it, what privacy and potentially licensing issues there are in using the data. Obviously an automated marketing approach needs addresses to function. Often these are available and can be professionally researched, if required. No single approach will always work and the automated marketing approach works best with a larger population of prospects with accurate addresses. A company should use all methods at its disposal to collect and cleanse s coupons, fax backs, web forms, campaign profile forms etc etc. Over time a large, qualified and opted in database will result which will gradually achieve higher returns from your campaigns as the messages are more and more relevant to the contacts in the database. Technology Summary We believe that that are many tools out there that typically cover part of the sales, marketing or automation process. Our belief is that the lead generation to closed deal, the sales process, should be as streamlined and integrated as possible and that a single tool will be the best way to achieve this. CRM tools with add-on marketing automation (MA) or marketing tools with add on CRM are not usually ideal. Version 2 Page 19 of 23

20 Summary As mentioned in the introduction to this paper there are many tangible benefit to lead nurturing. 70% + of today s lead swill go on to purchase within 2 years, but you have to work at it (nurturing) to make sure it s you!! At its simplest nurturing could be considered a drip feed of regular s and a rep on the phone. This is certainly an improvement on doing nothing but today s buyers are extremely sophisticated and have access to detailed information from many sources. In order to get and maintain their attention over extended periods of time, you need good quality content. You need to make sure this content is given to the buyers when they need it and make it relevant In order to achieve this with a large number of prospects, all at different stages in their buying cycle and your sales cycle, requires a well-structured process. It also requires software to enable and automated many of the aspects of this process. We recommend using a technology like LAMP-360 the combines the functions of CRM, , social and content. Having everything in one place allows more intelligent decisions to be made using one set of data 0ne version of the truth. We also recommend starting simply with a few key pieces of hero content. They will demand and attract attention. Over time you can increase the sophistication of your programme, provide more triggers more options etc. One thing that you need to consider though is that the role of content is increasingly important. You don t just need ti for nurturing but for demand and lead generation, attracting traffic to your business and providing the key reason for people to visit, via any channel your company and its propositions. You will need to budget more than previously for the constant creation of content. Over time a lot of effort will be expended but the benefits are more efficient ways of working allowing you to do more with existing resources? From a sales pipeline point of view as better visibility and understanding of the pipeline, you should have more, better qualified deals. Version 2 Page 20 of 23

21 About LAMP-360 LAMP is primarily a technology company providing the LAMP-360 software and a variety of marketing and lead generation services to our clients. LAMP-360 is our technology and its main applications are lead generation and lead nurturing and other customer and prospect facing processes. LAMP unifies the functionality of CRM & Marketing Automation along with content using and social media, to tackle sales and marketing challenges. The key differentiators of LAMP are: LAMP is a Process not just a complex tool kit to do anything with. Benefits: very relevant for SMEs, reduces cost of lead/customer acquisition & reduced complexity increases speed of adoption and ROI - increase deal value size and profitability LAMP solves and includes all the functionality to generate demand, convert & close leads 1. Benefit: efficient use of resources, reduce costs of the process, less license and subscriptions and staff Intelligent sales and marketing automation - efficiency and alignment in sales and marketing - lower cost of acquisition CAC, higher LTV, happier prospects, effective handling for (new products and services) lower value solutions All the data degree view in one product. Benefits: no synchronisation between tools, intelligent decisions can be made easily and a solid platform for future developments is in place Cost effective subscription for just one product is cheaper than a combination of tools and makes the price point attractive to a larger market of SMEs. Also a Price Per Lead sales model. Benefits: reduces risk and unique in this section of the market. Cheaper to run on both cost and resources Unique features (targeted at niche markets of marketing consultants & agencies) allowing multiple clients data and multiple relationships with contacts in one system. Benefits: less systems & subscriptions required, no data duplication On this page we detail some of the reasons why to choose LAMP and why it is different from other CRM, lead generation, content and marketing automation packages in the market. Ensuring sales and marketing alignment LAMP has built definitions for leads and processes to manage them through the process of attraction, conversion and closing. This ensures that you know who is responsible for a lead at any given stage and the hand off between sales and marketing is clear. In the average SME little time and thought is given over to this, and LAMP provides this out of the box and will be attractive Integration the key issue with marketing automation is that you have to buy/rent a CRM and a marketing automation tool, a social media publishing tool and something for managing content. They were never fully integrated. LAMP unifies these functions into one product and pr0cess reducing subscriptions, administration and improving simplicity and the efficiency of lead generation and nurturing Cost effective and SME price point LAMP provides all the required functionality, integrated in one packed at an attractive price point. Having two or more products also doubles the admin cost and time and increases subscription fees and overall complication for the SME. Typically an SME would need between 4 and 6 products to undertake the range of functionality offered by LAMP Risk free pricing - the pricing model is designed to provide full CRM and MA functionality at a price point attractive to SMEs. There are two pricing models a traditional pay per user subscription, attractively priced and a Pay Per Click Model (PPCM) - with this model you only pay for results and leads Version 2 Page 21 of 23