Achieving sales growth for your organization requires exceptional lead generation and lead nurturing processes. Creating a healthy new pipeline for business opportunities ensures that your sales team has a greater opportunity to deliver consistent business growth. In an environment with so many marketing channels, how do you choose a strategy that helps you nurture and deepen your connection with potential buyers?
Lead nurturing requires a more focused, personalized message, producing content that speaks to your audience about the specific problems they’re trying to solve. You have to tailor the message for the appropriate stage in the engagement cycle and the specific buyer persona that represents your buyers. Furthermore you have to tailor the message to the “persona” of the people you are contacting.
LetÂ’s look at a simple example from everyday life. If you are trying to sell a refrigerator, how would your message change with different personas? Â Take a look at these three personas and how the message shifts to address what is important to each of them.
Mr. Brown cares mostly about reliability. He had numerous issues with prior appliances and the best way to promote and sell your refrigerator to Mr. Brown is to highlight the outstanding reliability and extended warrantees of your product.
On the other hand, Mrs. Smith is a risk seeker. She likes to jump off planes and ride a mountain bike. She is into gadgets and she wants to buy a refrigerator that includes the latest technology, it is important to highlight the newest features to her like a touch screen on the refrigerator door.
Finally, Mrs. Jones is all about simplicity and functionality. She wants to know that the kids will have an easy time using the product and that the shelves can be adjusted the way that best meets her familyÂ’s needs.
Three different people looking to purchase the same product requiring content that highlights different desires and needs.
A recent Demand Gen report, “The State of B2B Lead Nurturing” includes some new ideas in B2B lead nurturing that may help you focus in on segmented groups for a more personalized marketing campaign. The idea is that you create smaller, more detailed content marketing plans for those leads that are ready for nurturing, and hopefully, conversion to clients.
If youÂ’re considering implementing a lead nurturing focus in your marketing division, youÂ’re not alone. The Demand Gen reportÂ’s survey found that 42 percent of marketers reported that lead nurturing has been a part of their strategy for at least the last two years. Of those that use lead nurturing, 66 percent said that one of the key benefits of lead nurturing was the increased response to more detailed, targeted marketing.
There are effective ways to combine marketing channels to create a highly personalized content marketing effort for potential buyers in various stages of the engagement cycle. Here are a few ways to look at lead nurturing that may help you focus your content marketing strategy and convert more leads into sales growth:
Make the most of your analytics: Marketers have access to better analytics than ever, and they can be used to create a more carefully targeted marketing effort for lead nurturing. ItÂ’s important to develop detailed buyer personas that are generally involved in the decision-making process at the companies you are trying to convert.
ThereÂ’s usually a committee approach to major purchases or service contracts, so find out which buyer personas are involved at a particular company. Use these buyer personas to create content that speaks directly to their role and the challenges they face in their jobs, based on information gained from your analytics on those buyer personas.
Segmenting your leads: This strategy depends heavily on the idea that thereÂ’s a predictable process that occurs between an individual simply being a contact, and becoming a qualified lead thatÂ’s ready for an in-person sales call. Lead nurturing involves some specific actions taking place as contacts move through the engagement cycle.
This approach segments leads into three tiers:
- Tier One is the top of the pyramid, where you have developed a personal relationship with your contact and they are highly engaged with your content. They receive highly focused marketing efforts, with content that addresses their specific situation.
- Tier Two is a larger group, targeted with content marketing based on their industry or role in the company. These contacts are being nurtured specifically, but you are still gathering information to personalize content for them.
- Tier Three is your largest group of leads. They have engaged with your content and are ready for initial nurturing. You may not be sure if they are ideal potential buyers, but youÂ’re feeling them out for further engagement and tailoring the content they receive based on what theyÂ’ve already consumed.
By separating your B2B lead nurturing efforts into tiers, you know how to dedicate your time and resources, and how to channel content to the right people at the right time. You can develop distinct content libraries for each segment of your leads and where they are in the engagement cycle, with content becoming much more specific as they move through the tiers.
Accommodating bingers: Marketers are finding that as potential buyers are getting closer to making a decision, they enter a content binge phase, soaking up as much information about a product or service as possible. This means that your Tier One segment needs a lot of content available for helping them arrive at a decision. ItÂ’s easy to see what happens when your competitor can meet that demand, but all they find on your site is one or two blog posts related to the product or service they are researching.
How Telemarketing Fuels the Trends in Lead Nurturing
People still enjoy talking on the phone, so telemarketing is an easy way to connect with potential buyers on a personal level. Using telemarketing as one of your key channels in a diversified marketing approach for B2B lead generation provides a variety of benefits:
- Identification of their tier or segment: One phone call can replace hours of analytics work. Through a personal conversation, you get a clear idea of where your contact is in the buy cycle and what types of content you should be sending them.
- Clear picture of their buyer persona and role: Telemarketing also helps you find out what your contactÂ’s role is in their company, what other decision-makers are involved and what kinds of challenges or problems they are currently trying to solve.
- A more accurate content selection: YouÂ’ll get key information about what kinds of topics would be useful to your contact, but also what formats they prefer and even the timing that they prefer to receive your content.
- You can feed the binge: Once a potential buyer moves into that top tier, youÂ’ll know through telemarketing the exact topic they are bingeing on and be able to create more specific content to help move them to a decision to purchase from you.
B2B lead nurturing is all about moving your contacts through a process where you increasingly tailor specific content for their needs. YouÂ’ll need a balanced selection of diverse channels in which to nurture these leads to a sale, and telemarketing is a reliable and consistent way to cultivate leads.
Interested in including telemarketing as a key channel for content marketing? Contact Blue Valley Telemarketing. We can help you strategically weave telemarketing campaigns into your content marketing strategy and effectively nurture leads to convert to sales.
Last Updated on September 14, 2023 by Ronen Ben-Dror