INGENIUS REVIEW. Two secrets of highly successful lead nurturing. Best Clients. Worst Problems. A REVIEW OF GREAT THINKING VOLUME 11 ISSUE 2

Transcription

1 A REVIEW OF GREAT THINKING VOLUME 11 ISSUE 2 INGENIUS REVIEW Two secrets of highly successful lead nurturing By K R I S T Y G U S I C K Growth Consultant High quality lead generation was by far the top marketing challenge cited by organizations surveyed for the MarketingSherpa 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. In 2009, 69 percent of organizations surveyed said that generating high quality leads was a top challenge; in 2010 it rose to 78 percent of organizations. A similar jump occurred in generating a high volume of leads, which went from 35 percent of organizations in 2009 to 44 percent in Many professional service firms have a scatter-shot approach to lead generation. They put information into the world through newsletters, direct mail, e-blasts, trade shows and other stuff in hope that it falls on the right people at the right time. If you throw enough information out there, you can get limited success. But should you really spend precious money to blanket the world with information about your firm? Two secrets of highly successful lead generation are these: know your ideal audience and know their pains. Best Clients. Worst Problems. If you re not excluding a lot of people from your list of potential A clients, you re not being strategic enough. Review the last few years of financial data for your firm, and identify which clients consistently bring your firm (or you personally) consistent revenue and great experiences. Your best clients aren t just the ones with the most money; they re the ones who result in the most profit because: they value the work you do, your people enjoy working with them and are more creative, the work is something you do well, and the clients trust your team and pay promptly. Ingenuity Marketing helps professional service firms grow through strategy and implementation systems: InGenius GrowING : Strategic, smart and systemized growth. InGenius BrandING : Messagebased branding that puts your whole team on the same page and clearly spells out your firm s unique value. InGenius AttractING : Use content marketing strategies to become known as the best place to go for trusted advice. InGenius MarketING : Access the complete services of a strategic marketing firm. 1 CONTINUED ON PAGE 3 Ingenuity Marketing Group, LLC 360 North Robert Street, Suite 711 Saint Paul, MN

2 What do your prospects really want? In 2011, Altman Weil conducted a survey of chief legal officers and asked how they rated the efforts of new law firms to get on their radar. They picked a number between 0 (no effect) and 10 (extremely positive). Sadly, no individual effort got a 10, but here are the top contenders: Personal contact 6.7 Free seminar, webinars, CLE 6.2 Written material demonstrating legal expertise 6.1 Industry event sponsorship, presentations, attendance 5.8 Committee work, community involvement, board memberships 5.0 Website content, firm brochures, advertising 4.3 Direct mail and campaigns 3.8 Directory listings and ratings 3.6 Invitations to social events 3.3 Social media activity 2.0 When the survey creators asked their CLO participants to identify and rate other efforts they found noteworthy, spending time to understand our business got a whopping 9.3 and recommendations and reputation scored 7.8 both higher than personal contact. You can see that personalized and educational information comes out on top as do the service providers who sent it. TEAM INGENUITY Wendy Nemitz Liz Kuntz Dawn Wagenaar Kristy Gusick Want more great statistics about the increasing importance of sending relevant, tailored content to prospects? Check out Ingenuity s Facebook page. Rachel Gold Christine Nelson Kara Helm Shana Karle Sara Bracewell Melissa Trost Call us. 2

3 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 These are the kinds of clients you want to clone so these are the leads you want to generate. A common mistake is to think that it s better to have 100 leads of any type than 10 leads of the best type. But 10 A client leads are far more valuable than 100 random names on a purchased list. Identifying your best clients will save you money by eliminating marketing efforts that don t reach that audience. Your next step is to really understand what s important to those clients and therefore the prospective clients or leads you re hoping to reach. You can do this by conducting A client interviews and holding client highlighter meetings to identify pains and opportunities that align with services you most want to sell. Once they re on your website, get them to do something! Missing that opportunity is like observing a customer in your retail store and never offering to answer a question, point that customer to the right aisle or invite her to sample something. Really? You re going to let them window shop and leave? Referral sources also want to recommend the best option for their clients. Are you proving through your online brand, content and differentiating messages that you are the best? Some clients might just take a referral source on his or her word that you re the best, but most are still going to decide for themselves based on first impression first by what they ve found out online and then in the initial meeting. Connect with and observe your best clients on social media to see what they re sharing, reading and talking about. Think about the most recent problem you solved for one of your best clients. This client is not the only one who is grappling with this problem. Add the problem to your list of client pains that should be addressed in your marketing content. Why Should They Buy From You? { } In his book UnMarketing, Scott Stratten gives the results of asking over 1,000 business owners, Why do you buy? When selecting a new service provider, most owners cited a referral by a trusted source at the top of the list. Right behind that was current relationship, but have yet to purchase. Those are the prospects that have learned about you and started to trust you through your expert nurturing of that relationship. Even better, the third top answer in the survey was recognized expert in the field, which is another form of lead generation/nurturing. Bio pages on firm websites consistently rank as one of the most highly viewed pages on professional service websites. This isn t just about telling leads why you re different from your competition. If it was, everyone could win by saying better quality, great service, leaders in excellence and all the other overused phrases in the marketplace. You need to prove that you know what you re talking about by sharing industry insights, trends, tips and updates regularly and in the right channels. If you re a fairly social, in-person networker, you do that through speaking, webinars, videos and tailored events methods to get in front of your best prospects physically and with your voice and personality. If you prefer a more thoughtful, behind-the-scenes approach, you have opportunities to write articles and case studies, blog posts and tips sheets. Distribute them in the channels where your audience hangs out as well as on your website. Draw them in for even deeper, more technical conversations, then warm them up for a real meeting. Lead Them to Act. This information might not seem new, given that many service providers get their best clients through referrals or a trusted relationship. However, how those leads come to you are changing. Bio pages on firm websites consistently rank as one of the most highly viewed pages on professional service websites. Those warm prospects are checking out your people before they make the decision to call. If, in viewing that bio page, they also find a client story, an article on a key industry topic, a downloadable tips list or informative blog post, those prospects are wooed into staying longer on your site and learning more about your expertise. You are nurturing them to look further and find out why your people are the best choice. Lead nurturing usually breaks down in one (or both) of two places: either you don t have a good system that helps you follow up with leads, or you don t have a system feeding you content that you can use to follow up. Sometimes professionals don t have good lead nurturing systems because they don t know how to implement one. If that s the case, good sales training with an eye toward the sales process as well as individual coaching on business development strategies can help create this system. Make it easier for your prospects to act by making sure that every communication whether in person, in print or online guides 3 CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

4 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 them to take action. This doesn t have to be a hard sell. You could invite them to ask or answer a question, fill out an evaluation, share their own insight, download a brochure or join your LinkedIn group. Every time your prospects respond to an invitation, you can reach out with additional information. Thank them for their comments. Let them know about an upcoming webinar that relates to their pain. Ask if they would like a copy of a recent article written about their concern. The goal is to keep the conversation going in a way that is personal and focused on the prospect s needs. One of the biggest drawbacks to our content-rich world is that prospects and clients can come across information that is important to them and you didn t send it first. Embarrassing. Your goal with lead generation and nurturing in the coming months and years is to become so good at sharing your expertise and knowledge to the right audience and in the right places that you become a preferred source of information. Prospects and clients turn to you first, share the information with their connections and practically build your business for you. Converting prospects to clients is still about referrals and relationships, but in a new and dynamic context. You are the information hub. You are the experts. Start dangling those carrots of timely and useful information and invite people to take action. One of the biggest drawbacks to our content-rich world is that prospects and clients can come across information that is important to them and you didn t send it first. Embarrassing. Do you lack a consistent way of reaching out to clients? Ingenuity has a series of helpful and short webinars to help you create a strong lead generation and lead nurturing pipeline, make your website work harder for referrals and generate hot content that s worth sharing. Check out our FREE series starting in May. It s time well spent. Prosperous Nonprofits: Hillcrest Family Services By R A C H E L G O L D Communications Consultant How does a century-old organization create fresh interest and rely less on the Catch 22 of government funding? This story reflects the power of rebranding and strategic marketing. The Client: For over 116 years, Hillcrest Family Services has served the Iowa area. The organization currently provides over 22 services to at-risk youth, adults and families including schools, residential facilities, a health clinic and adoption services. With a vision of becoming the Midwest s premier health and educational ministry, Hillcrest realized they needed to develop additional funding streams, build their endowment, and raise overall awareness of Hillcrest s mission to support and develop the whole person. Above: Hillcrest s primary logo inspired the new academy logo we developed for them. CONTINUED ON PAGE 5 4

5 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 The Strategy: Hillcrest brought in Ingenuity Marketing Group to help them consolidate their core messages, create a long-term strategic marketing plan and implement many tactics in the plan. Although they knew some of the elements they needed, Hillcrest discovered strategies through Ingenuity they hadn t considered. For example, we recommended methods to connect more deeply to current advocates, including donors and school alumni leveraging their close connection to the organization to build awareness and positive public relations. We worked closely with Hillcrest leadership to create key messages that differentiated their mission from other similar organizations. Then we trained Hillcrest s staff to use those messages regularly. The comprehensive marketing plan outlined action steps to achieve four objectives identified as most important for Hillcrest. Ingenuity has started to change the culture here at Hillcrest, says Carol Jefferson, vice president of mission advancement. Some of those action steps included designing a new school logo, event invitations, ads, s and direct mail pieces. We provided public relations support for Hillcrest s planned campus expansion. Along with these tactics and key message training, we also delivered social media training to Hillcrest s senior staff and have supported the organization s social media presence. For example, we helped Hillcrest hire a marketing/social media coordinator and got him started by creating a series of posted content for their social media channels. Ingenuity has started to change the culture here at Hillcrest, says Carol Jefferson, vice president of mission advancement. They got us to look at how our messages are going to the public and viewed by the public. Ingenuity has been there to take the pressure off and help us define our own messages. People are more confident in talking about Hillcrest, with a unified message, using the Ingenuity plan. Measurable Results: In the first quarter of 2012, compared to a year ago, the average time a visitor spends on Hillcrest s website has risen from 3:13 minutes to 4:29 minutes and the bounce rate (visitors who come to the site and leave after one page view) dropped from 75% to 59%. In addition, the number of visitors to the site who came through social media channels nearly doubled. We introduced the idea of a High Touch Letter to the most faithful donors as a part of Hillcrest s year-end giving strategy. This letter was mailed to 175 of their most generous donors and highlighted several key programs. The response rate increased by 27.92%. Giving to Hillcrest was also up over the previous year. Grants, private gifts and other sources of income now make up 8.1% of their total budget and they look forward to increasing that percentage in the future. You ve given us the opportunity to focus our energy, says Paul Lemley, marketing/ social media coordinator. Often marketing and mission advancement can be sporadic. Ingenuity s work with not-for-profit organizations like Hillcrest has grown significantly over the past several years as these organizations realize the benefits of a strategic marketing and funding plan to advance their missions. To learn more about our services on our website. 5

6 Meet Shana We can never have too many redheads! Ingenuity Marketing happily welcomes Shana Karle, our dynamic new Marketing Consultant. Shana has a long history of managing people, projects and events in the communications industry. While working for Tiger Oak Publications, she had a role in launching Metro Magazine, including organizing many events for them to create strong grassroots communication. Once she helped build the meetings and events brand for Tiger Oak, she went on to support the launch of four other trade publications and then moved to working for Minnesota Business Magazine another Tiger Oak publication. Most recently, Shana worked in-house for a public accounting firm. Before her magazine experience, Shana worked at Children s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, the largest pediatric hospital in the Upper Midwest. There she got her first taste of marketing with cause marketing, as well as helping the hospital to build strategic partnerships and raise money. Shana is enjoying her move into marketing professional services because of the way it lets her make a big impact for firms that need to grow quickly. She brings a powerful sense of organization and discipline to the execution of their marketing strategies. Not incidently, she graduated from Wartburg College with a B.A. in marketing and management. When she s not arranging her clients marketing, Shana coordinates her husband s travel schedule, her two children (ages 3 and 5) and their Border Collie/Lab mix, in a hectic and playful household. Stay awake for this! The takeaway from a speaker should never be boredom. Instead, you want comments like this: Very applicable and informative! Done in a memorable way, fabulous! Excellent and animated; right on target, funny and real. I WANTED to stay awake! We understand that messages won t click with participants if they re delivered without passion or conviction. Ingenuity speakers are tested by the most distactable, gadget-dependent and postlunchtime audiences. And still, people stick around to write an evaluation! For strategic branding, marketing, media and sales thought leadership, contact Ingenuity Marketing Group for your next event. Avoid the snooze. Talk to Melissa Trost at melissat@ingenuitymarketing.com or Another InGenius multi-tasker corrals her family for a photo. 6