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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?

Marketing's New Currency: Influence

I'm currently reading Kevin Lee's book, "The Eyes Have It", learning all about the history and practice of paid search as opposed to the Madison Ave. world of Advertising.  In the playground of opportunity that the online marketing world is, marketers need to think about not just how to reach consumers, but how to engage them.  I've posted about that a lot, talking about being relevant and providing relevant content that your audience is interested in.

But there exists now, in the world of online marketing, something that is only becoming available through the advent and application of technology -- something never before possible in a practical way.  And that is enhanced targeting.  As Kevin Lee writes, "Super niche targeting has the ability to deliver what is nearly unheard of in mainstream advertising: relevance.  When responsive and willing consumers notice ad messages, engage with Web content, and interact with brands within a ... website, that's the Holy Grail of marketing." 

"Relevancy is now the governing value.  [marketing] is no longer the act of just blasting out your message to bombard enough consumers until you probably hit some of the right ones." 

More and more evidence is mounting up to confirm the fact (and just look in your own life) that "consumers engage in and are influenced by advertising in direct proportion to the targeting and relevance of that advertising." 

While paid search and search engine optimization strategies and practices will become dominant in terms of demand generation and getting new prospects 'in the door', your ongoing ability to segment your leads, based upon their interest and activity with you directly, and provide relevant messaging and content to them ongoingly, will determine the success and failure of your online activities.  From a B2B perspective, unless you have a very short sales cycle, lead acquisition must be followed up with a lead nurturing program that resonates with your lead -- to continue to gain their interest and trust, until they are ready to purchase.

Influence will be determined by relevancy and superior targeting.  So how prepared are you to engage in this world? 

• First, do you have an integrated lead database? 
• Second, can you segment your leads not just by the demographic information, but also their activity and interest profile? 
• And third, can you present and provide content that is relevant and interesting to that segment in a way that will nurture their interest until they are ready to buy?

Managing top priority online marketing activities

Here's some more food for thought on the need to develop relevant content for your market segments, and how to spend time on your most important online marketing activities.

"Digital content will continue to expand exponentially as new marketing channels surface. This makes effective management and efficient use of content essential to maximizing return on marketing investment." -- Aberdeen Research

As I have said a lot recently -- Content Is King!  Creating and managing that content and using it in relevant ways is going to get even more important.  Paying attention to the content is of vital importance to the long-term effectiveness of your marketing investment.  Tools that allow you to be nimble and responsive in your online marketing activities, and where you publish your "relevant content" are key to achieving success with your marketing investment. When your technology makes your life easier, you can naturally give content the high priority attention it deserves.

In case you have been wondering what online marketing activities should be focused on, and how much time should be spent on these activities as a percentage of a work week, I ran across an interesting article at SEOMoz.org, entitled, "Time Distribution for Effective Online Marketing".  It has a great pie chart that outlines the following activities (not suprisingly, content is at the top of the list). These are based on a 40 hour work-week:

1. Building Viral-Worthy, Authoritative Content (40%) - 16 hours/wk
2. Developing New Features/Designs (25%) - 10 hours/wk
3. Keyword, Industry, & Competitive Research (10%) - 4 hours/wk
4. Participating in Online Communities (10%) - 4 hours/wk
5. Testing/Refining Based on Visitor Data (10%) - 4 hours/wk
6. Manual Link Building (5%) - 2 hours/wk

How many of these do you focus on?  What is your time distribution focus?  How are you doing building relevant content for your target segments? Can you think of changes to your technology that would free up more mindshare to create great content?

The Power of Microsites To Your Lead Nurturing Program

I attended the beginning of the Marketing Profs B2B Online Tradeshow this morning, and listened to the keynote presented by David Meerman Scott, author of "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" (well worth the read!).  As I listened to the shifting realities that Marketing Departments face in effectively using the Internet for marketing activities, there are several ideas that converged for me. These are important for companies looking at getting started with effective Lead Nurturing programs.  Here are a few questions and thoughts:

1.  How easy is it for you to update and post content to your corporate site?  If you cannot easily (within minutes) update that site and its content, it's not a good candidate to house the thought leadership content necessary for an effective Lead Nurturing program.  If you find yourself in this camp, think about how a microsite (with its own domain name, or a sub-domain of your corporate domain) might work to your benefit --without all the hassles and political hot-potato scenarios that surround your corporate site.  The Marketing Interactions Blog talks about how Microsites make a difference with Lead Nurturing campaigns and the necessity to be responsive.  To check out that article, click here.

2.  Do you have a way to easily create and publish a Microsite?  Not just a landing page, which many of the lead nurturing vendors offer -- but a full blown, specific domain name, SEO capable, microsite -- that will allow you to easily publish and host content for your Lead Nurturing program.  And easily create and modify the content on the pages, allow for downloads of PDF's (for those eBooks and whitepapers), etc. 

3.  As David's presentation said -- it's all about the content. But the perspective of that content is important -- it's no longer marketing-speak content (which he labels Gobbledigook), but content that your prospects (buyer personas) will understand and relate to -- that is meaningful to THEM.

But in order to use effective content, you've got to have a place where you can easily make it available -- in this new world of Online Marketing, it's about publishing content that is valuable to your target markets and audiences.  Plus you need to optimize that content so that it can be found. In the Google-it mindset that people have today you have to enabling them to find you rather than interrupting a mass audience and begging for attention.

4.  Can you produce valuable content that matters to your buyer personas (target markets)?  If you feel challenged in this regard, there are people who can help -- folks that aren't just copywriters, but folks with a journalist and story-telling background, who understand how to write compelling content, and who you could work with to produce the sort of content necessary for an effective Lead Nurturing program.

Joe Pulizzi, at Junta42, is putting together a new offering, that I mentioned in my last blog post -- but he is connecting folks who need content, with folks who can deliver it -- and since this new world of Online Marketing is all about the content, having access to folks who can help is something that will help ensure you are successful. The Junta42 blog has an article that talks about content and microsites - and having a content strategy that enables the success of the microsite.  David Meerman Scott's recent blog post on understanding an audience and creating great content is also something to check out -- click here.

For those of you interested in establishing an effective Lead Nurturing content strategy, consider attending the webinar, "Create a Content Strategy for Lead Momentum" by Ardath Albee (www.marketinginteractions.com) on March 26th.  You can register for it at www.on24.com

With shrinking Marketing budgets and more scrutinized investments in what is still seen as a risky investment, having an easy way to create and publish a microsite, that can also easily be search engine optimized, is quickly becoming an imperative.  To that end, Einsof is forming a strategic partnership with a new company, Genoo (of which I am one of the founders) -- that will launch in April. Genoo will offer an integrated set of marketing tools at your fingertips including the ability to easily and affordably create and publish Microsites.   If you want to check out Genoo's prelaunch marketing site, go to www.genoo.com -  more of the functionality will be revealed each week.  After all, the tools and technology should be easy, and the 'relevant' content should get the focus -- as that is what will ultimately determine the success of your Lead Nurturing program. 

Online Marketing Summit - It's All About Being Relevant

Yes, content is still king!  I attended many sessions on Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search, Microsite development, even Social Media sessions, and one theme rang through-out the entire set of sessions:

It's all about relevancy!  If you write targeted, relevant content -- that hits your audience on the mark, then search engine optimization, driving conversions, etc., will be much more effective. 

So, it's all still about the content.  But it isn't about you, your organizations, or your products.  It's about your customer -- whatever you write, it MUST be relevant to your audience.  It must be understandable and valuable to THEM.  That should be your measure.

I met a cool guy at the Summit, Joe Pulizzi - who runs Junta42 - which is all about Content Marketing.  His site also has a list of the top content blogs, where you can find out the latest on putting together relevent content that works.  Joe also has his own blog -- and a good post announcing Junta42Match, which might be perfect for helping you with writing content for your targeted segments (see my previous post here)!

Online Marketing Summit - The Ability to Segment is Critical

I've been attending the Online Marketing Summit for the last few days in San Diego -- kudos to Aaron Kahlow and the team at BusinessOnline who put this event together.  It is an excellent educational opportunity for everyone engaged in effective online marketing initiatives.

I will be posting some of the insights gleaned from those two and a half days, as the dust settles from all the input and interactions.

One of the top items, as I attended different sessions -- from Content, Search Engine Optimization, Lead Nurturing, and the effective use of Microsites, is the need and requirement for effective Segmentation.

Obviously, this requires a true knowledge of your audience and speaks to persona development as well -- which ClickZ has a good article, entitled "Persona Development and the Law of Averages", which in it's way highlights the need for segmentation.

Marketing folks then shriek, "I don't have time or resources for this!", because it's just plain easier to "batch and blast" - even if that approach, and studies back it up, don't produce the kind of returns you need or could be getting if you were to take on the segmenting and targeting challenge.  Consider this statistic, presented in one of the sessions: you can get 389% better results from segementing your list. (I'll put the specific info about that study once I get the powerpoint from the presentation).

Which brings me to the question of technology and tools.  Are you able to segment your leads beyond basic demographic information?  Do your tools allow you to create lists based on activity and interest data that you've been capturing for those leads in your system?  Can you create "dynamic lists" that can be used with an ongoing email strategy for folks who fit particular criteria, so you can continue to be relevant as your demand generation strategies drive traffic to your site and capture leads into your system?  Because with the right tools in place, segmenting doesn't have to be as challenging as you think.

With the right segmenting, you might actually send out FEWER emails than you do today, and get HIGHER returns and conversions.  Now that is something worth looking at!

Does your lead nurturing system listen?

I’ve mentioned before how today’s long sales cycle has changed from a time when just demonstrating your qualifications and product benefits could often close a sale. Nowadays successful sales often come from learning more about your prospects than they know about you.

Listening needs to hold an important place in your marketing and sales organizations’ practices. I’ve seen organizations try to put a lead nurturing system in place and fail because they either don’t have the ability to listen and respond to the information that comes in or they have that ability but don’t use it nearly often enough. (Generally, however, it’s the first: a “lead nurturing” system that doesn’t listen.)

How do you know if your system supports listening? There are two major areas to look at. The first is always how well your technology is supporting your sales and marketing teams to listen. For the foreseeable future, a human being will always listen better than a computer. Is a sales opportunity triggered in your system when a lead clicks through an email and visits other pages on your site? (Do you know whether they did? Does a live person get that information?) Or if they took the time to watch a demo? Are they flagged if their title is at the executive level? There are patterns that can be watched for, and activity that can be captured that makes it easier to create meaningful conversations with that lead.

If you are interested in nurturing your leads, the tools must go beyond just sending an email and tracking opens and click-throughs. The second place to look is for the listening built into your technology. Do your lead records grow as you gain more information from a prospect? And, are you prepared to react accordingly – for example, automatically sending them information relevant to a web page they’ve visited 10 times? Is it easy for a sales rep to tailor a value proposition to a particular prospect’s interests?

These days, great sales & marketing is as much about how you listen as it is about what you say.

So you want to be a Thought Leader...

Welcome to 2008!

In the new world of marketing and sales, lead nurturing requires that instead of talking about your products and then more about your products, you actually need to talk about the issues and opportunities facing your customers and prospects, and help them think about how to address those issues and/or opportunities.  You no longer lead with your product -- because it just doesn't work from a lead nurturing perspective.  You've got to gain trust, and you've got to get the attention of your customers and prospects and their respect; you have to begin by listening to their issues just to get the opportunity to discuss and sell them your wares.

In short, the new world requires a degree of thought leadership.  I googled "thought leadership" -- and got a bunch of responses about the subject.

Wikipedia has this to say:
"Thought leader is a buzzword or article of jargon used to describe a futurist or person who is recognized among their peers and mentors for innovative ideas..."

I found a pretty great blog article on the subject (published in 2004, and still very relevant in 2008), which says:

"What’s a thought leader?
A thought leader is a recognized leader in one’s field. What differentiates a thought leader from any other knowledgeable company, is the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.

Trust is built on reputation and reputation is generally NOT built on advertising. It is built on what others say about you. Become a thought leader in your field and it won’t matter as much how big you are. Companies will look to you for insight and vision. Journalists will quote you, analysts will call you, websites will link to you."

And then it goes on to say how you could become a thought leader... all great ideas -- but it's item #5, "Use your Website" that got my attention.

For many companies embarking on a lead nurturing initiative, the ability to use their website for articles, etc that would help a lead nurturing campaign is mostly impossible.  Why?  because it takes practically an act of God to get something published to the site in a reasonable time frame.  Many large companies' websites require a minimum of 2 weeks to get anything posted or updated on the site.  This makes it impossible to run an effective lead nurturing campaign, where articles, thinking, whitepapers, eBooks, etc are published and made available within a quick timeframe  -- ALL of which you want to have optimized by the search engines.

Given the lead nurturing imperative -- a new imperative goes hand-in-hand -- the ability to easily publish and manage a thought leadership/lead nurturing microsite (and landing pages) that marketing can create, manage, optimize and use easily.  That way, your lead nurturing camnpaigns can leverage the articles, eBooks, white papers, etc. you write.  You need a microsite that has it's own domain name, allows you to track the effectiveness of the content you make available, and can also point to the larger corporate marketing site. 

Otherwise, the already slim marketing resources that are charged with increasing revenues, sending truly qualified leads to sales, or gaining market share, have their hands tied by corporate bureaucracy -- something that will cost some market leaders their leadership position.

To read the blog post on becoming a thought leader, click here.

Understanding and nurturing are the key to the B2B sales process

As Michael Webb mentions in his Nov. 28 post, and we’ve been talking about a lot with our customers, nurturing is the key ingredient in having people move through the sales pipeline. As much as Sales wants to figure out as straight a path as possible to get folks through the sales pipeline, in a longer sales cycle, it doesn’t work that way. In reality, leads wander their way through the process as they learn, get educated, understand your offerings, and figure out what will work best within their organization to help them reach their goals.

It’s critical in this meandering nurturing process to continue marketing to your leads and building awareness of your offerings in ways that show them its value and how it will solve their pain.

There are great tools on the market today to keep Sales and Marketing aligned so that the lead passes to Sales at the right time in the process (or is pulled in by Sales). The more intelligence your tools offer, the faster you can locate the leads that are ready to move further down the pipeline. Rich lead information also allows Marketing to provide value propositions for personal follow-ups from the Sales person, which builds a deeper relationship as you show your understanding of the lead’s problems.

Repetition works! Webb points this out and we’ve seen it in our marketing efforts as well. It’s terrific to have a great landing page article, but in reality only a small percentage of visitors will click through and read it. That means the content of the article can be changed, nuanced and used again with different email messaging. You don’t need completely new content every time you do an email campaign. People have different interests and attention at different times. As with good presentation skills: tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you told them.

I recommend Michael Webb’s article Nurturing: The secret to doubling your sales conversation rate.

The Landing Page Debate… Links or Not?

I hear two schools of thought about landing pages these days.  The ad-word segment of folks seem to be saying that there should be no links on your landing pages but rather a form where users can submit their information to add them to your lead pool.  From what I’ve seen, these pages contain limited information, mostly articulating features of the product or company, and are not focused on creating value for users – only collecting lead information to validate the ad-word buy, and add to the ‘lead list’.

I wonder what the effectiveness of those sorts of landing pages are.  I wouldn’t be inclined to complete the form just from coming in from Google, for example, and providing my information to a company based on whatever information they have placed on their landing page.  Would you? Does anyone have metrics to share on the effectiveness of this approach?

The other school of thought on landing pages comes from lead nurturing. I’m definitely in that school. I want to provide thought leadership and ideas that help potential customers understand the value that we bring to the table or that solves some pain for them. I want to let them know they’ve got a resource in what my company provides, and not that I’m just trying to sell them something.  As someone coming from an ad-word click, of course I want them to opt in to my lead nurturing system, but at their choice, not be forced in.

As someone who shops for solutions online, I appreciate research that helps me understand my problem domain and its solutions.  I’m interested in landing pages that have valuable information and links to further information.   If and when I am ready for a conversation with that company, only then will I complete a form and request they contact me.  And that doesn’t mean I’m ready to purchase, but it does mean that I’m ready to get contacted, and perhaps included on some emails until I choose to opt-out.

There’s a caveat in here: my perspective is for B2B organizations.  An effective lead nurturing strategy requires content.  It takes content strategy that has your company build a capacity beyond promoting its products, to one of using domain intelligence to create value for the customer (thought leadership) – and that is not necessarily what Marketing folks are used to creating.

I don’t think a landing page is the most effective way to register and track leads.  In the B2B world, the preferred method of communication is through email.  Email campaigns are a much less intrusive and helpful way to reach my target audience’s minds with useful information.  Search Engine Optimization, through natural or purchased search terms helps people find me.  Through the value they receive at my site – based on the content available and how relevant they find it, will determine whether I ever find out ‘who’ they are.  The job of the content at my site and my landing pages is to earn my place in their consideration.

When I send emails out, I want software that allows me to track all responses to that campaign, not just opens and click-throughs.  I want to track everything they do on my site once they click-through – even beyond the landing page!  As a marketer, I want to know what content is most visited at my website once a user clicks-through an email – what else do they look at?  I want to track it on an individual lead level, and aggregate the information for trending – so I can continuously improve how I communicate with the users coming to the site and showing interest in my products. 

The school of thought that focuses on the landing page as a registration portal has too much of their attention on the “lead” part of “lead nurturing” to the detriment of serving potential customers. Technology should help us reach our audiences, not put barriers in the way.  If the value is there, the leads will opt in when they are ready.  And that is a much more valuable lead.