Lead Nurturing and Niche Marketing - More Cost Effective?

In the world of Lead Nurturing, the goal is to build relationships with your leads so when they are ready to buy, they pick your organization.  At a minimum, you want to be considered and have intelligence that will help your sales folks close the deal.

In this blog, I've talked a lot about being relevant in your lead nurturing efforts.  Now there is growing evidence that being relevant and targeting your audience to their interests is also more cost effective.

Marketing Sherpa's "Online Advertising 2008: What Works, What Doesn't and Why" report, shows that niche marketers don't spend as much as mass marketers.  In the companies surveyed, the niche marketers spent as little as $9,000 in a month.  None of the mass marketers surveyed spent as little, with one-third spending as much as $1 million in a month!

eMarketer.com put together a chart that depicts the amount the US Marketers spent on online marketing by target audience in February 2008, by the respondents to the Marketing Sherpa report, which shows the following:

Niche B2B Target: spending between $10,000-99,000 constitutes 41.3% of the niche marketers.
General B2B Target: spending same amount, constitutes 7.1% of the general B2B marketers.

Contrast this with spending between $100K - 999K:

Niche B2B Target: 21.3%
General B2B Target: 64.3%

As I wrote my blog post, "Marketing's New Currency: Influence" - the ability to target relevant messages is the emerging necessity.  It's no longer about blasting to as many eyeballs as possible, it's about targeting and relevance: sending a relevant message to a targeted audience.

With the cost of paid search rising as more companies engage in those efforts, the ability to target, segment, and provide relevant messaging will distinguish the successful and effective organizations from the rest of the pack.  75% of marketers will use behavioral targeting in 2008, up from 64% in 2007.  My question remains: What do you do after you get the lead?  How do you continue to market to them? Does your ongoing marketing consider your lead's behavior and interests?

Comments

[Darin Dixon]

I'm glad I came across this article. I have suggested to some of our smaller clients that use our lead response software to base their lead nurturing activities off of the media type (web, phone, third party).

It makes complete sense to base your lead nurturing program off of the interests of your prospect rather than just the media type in which they used. As you can tell, I'm an amateur at this, so I'm glad you have these easy to understand tips to help us out.

[Michael A Brown]

Hi Kim! Nice post. You pose three questions ... What do you do after you get the lead? How do you continue to market to them? Does your ongoing marketing consider your lead's behavior and interests? My answers ...

After you get the lead, actually talk to the person ... live, human to human ... and say "thank you!" Then ask, "How come us? How come now?" Their response provides the context that is central to effective nurturing.

How do you continue to market to them? Actually ask them when, in which media, and under what circumstances they want you to stay in touch. Then do what they say.

Their behavior and interests? Oh my yes! Watch and listen for their verbs and respond with relevant, timely content.

Michael A. Brown
www.michaelabrown.net