Marketing Times - December 2007/January 2008 - (Page 11)

marketingtips tim wilson Provide reAl vAlue to your ProsPects - And they will listen. BTOB COMPANIES MUST EVOLVE FROM A CAMPAIGN-CENTRIC TO A LEAD-CENTRIC VIEW. LEAD LIFECYLCE MANAGEMENT IS THE VEHICLE FOR THAT TRANSITION. As a BtoB marketer, you face an increasingly daunting reality. Communications to your prospects—those e-mails, Webinars and white papers you spend so much time creating and testing— are but a drop in a vast sea of information that is washing over them. In order to make your message stand out and connect with prospects in a manner that drives results, you must evolve from a campaign-centric to a lead-centric view of marketing. Lead Lifecycle Management (LLM) is the vehicle for that transition. Prospects in Control The explosion of the Web as an information resource has empowered your prospects to shape their own experience. They subscribe to RSS feeds for blogs and podcasts. They connect directly with their peers and thought leaders through social networking sites and discussion forums. This means that you must provide relevant content to prospects when they are ready to, able to, and interested in listening. This includes empowering prospects to “pull” content through the channel(s) they most prefer. The key to this is viewing lead generation as an ongoing conversation rather than as a series of stand-alone campaigns. Your Leads Don’t Care About Your Sales Cycle The prospect’s buying cycle should be at the core of your entire program. A lead-centric strategy recognizes that your marketing and sales activities influence, but cannot entirely control, a prospect’s purchase timeline and purchase decision. The stages of the buying cycle, and what type of content is most relevant to a prospect at each stage, are as follows: Early Stage: Educational content that explains concepts, strategies and tactics, and helps the prospect determine whether doing something is a better option than maintaining the status quo Middle Stage: Solutions-oriented content that explains different approaches for addressing and solving issues—case studies and customer solutions are common solutions-oriented content Late Stage: Vendor-oriented content that describes specific products/services or compares products and services across different companies By identifying which type of content a prospect gravitates to, and by providing easy access to content that is at or just beyond the prospect’s stage in the buying cycle, an LLM program can increase the timeliness and relevance of the information being delivered to the prospect. At the same time, and on an ongoing basis, an LLM program evaluates prospects’ responsiveness to different content, in order to assess: • Where in the buying cycle that prospect appears to be— passing a lead to Sales only when the prospect has identified himself as being in the middle or late stages of the buying cycle • How actively engaged the prospect is with the content that is provided (and, therefore, with the company) • What products or services the prospect appears to be most interested in This ongoing evaluation of the prospect’s behavior creates a feedback loop that delivers more relevant content to the prospect, while also strengthening your credibility and brand. Clearly, LLM requires you to segment and manage your leads from initial discovery, to and through the handoff to Sales, and on an ongoing basis. LLM also requires granular tracking of your leads’ activities and then reacting and communicating in a timely and relevant manner based on their behavior. Patience Pays A core LLM concept is that a lead that is not sales-ready right now may very well be sales-ready in the future. The LLM program needs to incorporate lead nurturing, along with continuous evaluation of the lead, to both move the lead along to the point of sales-readiness, as well as to detect when the lead reaches that point and then quickly and effectively pass that lead to Sales. Lead nurturing requires consistent and meaningful interactions with your prospects, regardless of whether or not they are salesready. The focus of lead nurturing is to build relationships and to build your company up as a trusted advisor and valuable information resource. Let the lead’s behavior tell you when he is sales-ready—when he either explicitly “raises his hand” or when he begins to consume content that is most relevant to someone who is in the middle or late stages of the buying cycle. Tim Wilson is director of business process analytics for lead marketing company Bulldog Solutions. To learn more about Lead Lifecycle Management and lead marketing optimization, visit www. bulldogsolutions.com or e-mail info@bulldogsolutions.com. marketingtimes http://www.bulldogsolutions.com http://www.bulldogsolutions.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Marketing Times - December 2007/January 2008

SMEI Certified Professional Salesperson Certified Sales Executives Certified Marketing Executives Marketing Times - December 2007/January 2008 Contents Chairman's Report An Interview with David Neeleman Founder & Chairman of Jetblue Airlines President's Message Integrated Marketing in the Digital Economy Professional Certification Class of 2007 Marketing Tips SMEI and Puerto Rico Affiliate Partner for Certification Success Selling Skills Why all Star Teams Fail

Marketing Times - December 2007/January 2008

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