leading them on – secrets of successful lead nurturing programmes - the marketing practice
TRANSCRIPT
© The Marketing Practice 2012
1
SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL LEAD NURTURING
© The Marketing Practice 2012
2
Over the next 40 minutes…
Experiences based on programmes with companies including Canon, Oracle (Best Lead Nurturing Campaign 2010) and O2 (Best Lead Nurturing Campaign 2011)
What’s involved in setting up a lead nurturing programme?
What does it looks like from the audience’s point of view?
Some of the biggest potential pitfalls/myths of lead nurturing
© The Marketing Practice 2012
3
© The Marketing Practice 2012
4
Sales & marketing infrastructure challenges
• Poor client and prospect information – Lack of marketing intelligence systems– Lack of data management expertise
• No planned and consistent client and prospect communications strategy– One-off campaigns that deliver an oversupply of high volume and low
quality leads (or none at all)– Too many tactical demands on too little time– Not enough advantage made of potential ‘inbound’ contacts (e.g.
website visitors, referrals, social media respondents)
• Sales prospecting resource is variable– Driven by bid priorities– No time to keep marketing ‘leads’ warm– Potential opportunities not converted
© The Marketing Practice 2012
5
A definition
Lead Nurturing:
Everything we do to our leads to pass more of the right quality ones through to sales
© The Marketing Practice 2012
6
A definition
Which just leaves the question:
“What do you class as a lead?”
Previous respondents
All verified prospect data?
or
© The Marketing Practice 2012
7
SETTING UP LEAD NURTURING PROGRAMMES
© The Marketing Practice 2012
8
The ROI case
March 2011 to dateUnweighted pipe
£55m
Marketing Investment£580k
Unweighted ROMI94 times investment
Marketing Investment£250k
Generated:Weighted pipe - £5.37m
68 face-to-face meetings
Weighted ROMI20 times investment
Marketing Investment£600k
Generated:Weighted pipe - £12m
Unweighted pipe - £40m
Weighted ROMI19 times investment
© The Marketing Practice 2012
9
Building the ROI model
• Tracking conversion rates through the funnel
• Factoring in profitability to see true ROI (and set a target cost per lead)
• Sense-checking that market size will support the target results
© The Marketing Practice 2012
10
Individual contacts converting to leads over timeOf the sales qualified leads generated from lead nurturing programmes, how long had the contacts been in the programme?
© The Marketing Practice 2012
11
ROI illustration of lead nurturing vs One-off campaigns
Number of leads
Cost over the year
Average cost per lead
Sales conversion (1
in x leads)Number of
sales Cost per saleAverage size of deal
(20% uplift with nurturing)
Value of sales ROI
One-off campaigning 55 £126,000 £2,291 6 9 £13,745.45 £400,000 £3,666,667 2910%
Lead nurturing 100 £208,000 £2,080 4 25 £8,320 £480,000 £12,000,000 5769%
• Plus, large elements of a nurturing programme can be set up once to work for ongoing inbound contacts
© The Marketing Practice 2012
12
Content-led approach & nurturing
• Chordiant customer experience management: signed Vodafone as a client and attributed £32m pipeline in EMEA to a 12 month programme
• Research and benchmarking tool promoted via LinkedIn, Google, Wikipedia, blog sharing, employee social media advocates and direct outbound communications
• 90 ‘enquiries’ per month converting to 180 sales leads over 12 months
© The Marketing Practice 2012
13
Canon Prospect Engagement
© The Marketing Practice 2012
14
Planning methodologyDiscovery: Sales alignment Strategy: Data auditSales objectives and business targets Review current data strategy and coverageMarketing objectives and responsibilities Gap analysis against full potential prospect universeHandover points and process (in both directions) Define strategy for augmenting/optimising data
Discovery: Proposition insights Implementation: Process designMarket and proposition maturity Inbound contact captureBuying process stages Outbound nurturing delivery and website integrationBuying knowledge/content requirements at each stage Lead qualification and handover to sales (and back)
Discovery: Audience definition Implementation: Campaign designSegmentation (by sector/size/customer/prospect...) Select inbound channelsFunctions comprising decision-making unit Design first nurture flows and website useTypical attitudes/expections from supplier Define how personalisation/segmentation will be used
Discovery: Audience access research Implementation: Team & GovernanceChannel preferences Internal team requirementsSocial Media usage Integration with other activities3rd party and influencer knowledge sources Reporting requirements specified
Strategy: Content plan Implementation: System designExisting content audit - what is suitable? Is there a gap between existing and required systems? Plan headline content hooksand message hierarchy Review potential solutions to support the planAlign to buying process and promote next steps Implement selected solutionDesign creative execution concepts
© The Marketing Practice 2012
15
MYTHS & LEGENDS OF LEAD NURTURING
© The Marketing Practice 2012
16
Marketing Automation
I’ve yet to see a situation where a marketing automation budget wouldn’t have been better spent (or matched) on data, core CRM system or sales integration processes
Reality:Targets, Data,
Content, Propositions,
Systems...
Nirvana:
Nurturing and
Automation
© The Marketing Practice 2012
17
Some misconceptions...
• That it’s anything different from good prospect marketing– Same content, same calls to action, same plan– It is a useful way to encourage thinking about long-term journeys
• That the telephone is a channel to save until the end– Teleservice not telemarketing – the mentality is critical– Focused on the right prospects (by demographics or behaviour)– Makes scoring a lot less relevant
• That scoring or BANT criteria are everything– Not necessarily what sales really need
• Content aligned to the buying cycle– Can’t assume we know everything they’re doing
© The Marketing Practice 2012
18
Varying types of content...
© The Marketing Practice 2012
19
The best marketing doesn’t always look like marketingAnd the best content can come from Sales
© The Marketing Practice 2012
20
Or it could look a lot like marketing…
• UK (19% conversion rate), Spain (24% conversion rate) and Portugal (33% conversion rate)
• A success rate of meetings with almost 1 in 2 organisations targeted
© The Marketing Practice 2012
21
O2 Business readiness
“It’s rather refreshing to see a big tech company actually do this kind of thing rather than just talk about it.”
© The Marketing Practice 2012
22
O2 Business readiness
Click screen to play
© The Marketing Practice 2012
23
Taking into account the rise of digital interaction, do you value the following forms of traditional communication more, less or the same as in the past?
Networ
king
at e
vent
s
Face
to fa
ce m
eetin
gs w
ith s
uppli
ers
Teleph
one
conv
ersa
tions
“Soc
ial” b
usine
ss a
ctivi
ty (E
.g. D
inner
s, h
ospit
ality
, tea
m b
uildin
g)
Inno
vativ
ely p
rese
nted
phy
sical
mat
erial
from
sup
plier
s
Hearin
g fro
m s
peak
ers
at c
onfe
renc
es a
nd s
emina
rs
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
19 20 22 20 22 23
43
31
4350
45 4438
49
3530 33 33
Less Than You Have Done The Same As You Have Done More Than You Have Done
© The Marketing Practice 2012
24
Tactical tip: lead generation in the summer
• It’s working in the UK…• …can report back on the Nordics next year!
© The Marketing Practice 2012
25
Closing thoughts
• Tom UpfoldTM ‘Natural’ calls to action
– Selling the benefits of the next step rather than the end proposition
– ‘Why should I give up my time to meet you?’
– Capture their interest first, then qualify them (not vice-versa)
• Aligned with Sales, not necessarily just to Sales
– Not a black and white handover: 90:10 => 10:90
– Find out what they’re bonused on
– If you can’t find out, maybe don’t try nurturing!
– Most important alignment is day-to-day (and lead follow-up)
• Plan Year 2 from Day 1
– How we will prove success? (don’t start without it)
– What else will we want technology to do?
– What will we do when data’s a year out of date?
• Holistic, real-time…– Holistic: look at company level, not just contact level (who else do we know that we should be targeting?)
– Real-time: monitoring starters/leavers or rapid response (aligned with PR)
– Holistic & real-time: all channels need to work together – the audience doesn’t see channels, they see journeys
© The Marketing Practice 2012
26
THANK YOU