CallSource^® Aim Higher

A Practical Guide to the Four Types of Lead Nurturing

by Jon Miller, December 8 2009

Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with qualified prospects, regardless of their timing to buy, with the goal of earning their business when they are ready. While it's exciting to see the plethora of lead nurturing best practices available today, it can also be somewhat overwhelming, especially if you're just beginning to explore how to implement lead nurturing. 

There are four basic types of lead nurturing campaigns; each type adheres to the basic philosophy that the best way to increase sales through lead nurturing is by continuously building trust and meeting the needs of your prospects through timely, relevant communications.

TYPE 1: INCOMING LEAD PROCESSING
Lead nurturing is a lot like starting a long-term relationship with someone-you need to be a good partner; foster respect and trust; be a good listener; and keep things interesting. Incoming lead processing campaigns are your chance to make a positive first impression. There are three main objectives:

Identify if prospects are sales-ready. Registration form fields are a good way to determine if a person fits your ideal customer profile, but also consider anonymous online behaviors-actions the prospect took before filling out a form. Behaviors such as page visits and search terms can be strong indicators of buying interest.

Establish permission for nurturing. This is the time to offer prospects the opportunity to opt in or out of your nurturing programs. If someone doesn't want to hear from you, it's best to find out now.

Determine nurturing preferences, including frequency and type of communications. Ask prospects how often they'd like to be contacted and what type of information they'd like to receive. This is part of making your marketing more relevant.

TYPE 2: STAY IN TOUCH
The b-to-b buying process is just as emotional-and irrational-as the consumer buying process, and studies show that b-to-b buying decisions are usually dominated by one emotion: fear of risk. As a result, b-to-b selling is all about minimizing prospects' fear by minimizing their risk, both at the organizational and personal level. "Stay-in-touch" campaigns are essential to building trust and credibility with your prospects and helping minimize feelings of risk.

These campaigns are also an opportunity to build more personal relationships between prospects and salespeople by ensuring that every communication you send comes from an actual person. By incorporating the name of your salesperson or lead owner in the "From" and signature fields of an e-mail, you'll begin to transform the role of the salesperson into the role of a trusted adviser in the buying process.

TYPE 3: ACCELERATORS
Accelerator campaigns are behaviorally triggered campaigns that attempt to move prospects along the buying cycle faster by watching what individuals do and providing relevant "nudges." By observing the type of content prospects download, where they go and how often they visit your Web site, marketers can adjust their nurturing approaches accordingly, placing prospects with stronger interest on a more accelerated path toward a sales conversation and, perhaps, scaling back communications with less interested individuals.

TYPE 4: LEAD LIFE CYCLE
B-to-b marketers should develop lead life cycle campaigns to ensure that leads will never be stagnant or lost forever in the sales funnel. First, work with sales to determine the business rules and definitions you'll use to determine which leads will be passed to sales and when (e.g., if a lead reaches a certain score threshold). You'll also need a strategy for lead recycling, which determines when and how a lead will be recycled back to marketing for further nurturing. The purpose of lead recycling is twofold: 1) to automatically reassign-and track-those leads that for some reason cannot be followed up on by sales in a timely manner; 2) to allow sales reps to indicate a time frame for following up on leads who are either unable to be reached or are not sales-ready.

After establishing the ground rules, set up automated campaigns that trigger specific actions-such as changing lead status, creating tasks or alerting sales-whenever your business rules are met. With lead life cycle campaigns in place, you can rest easy knowing that you're attending to the needs of all your prospects regardless of their sales readiness, which is at the heart of successful lead nurturing.

Jon Miller is VP-marketing at Marketo, a provider of b-to-b marketing automation software. He can be reached at jon@marketo.com.