“An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”
Those words probably sound familiar to you, as Newton’s first law of motion (the law of inertia). As a marketer, you can think of them as a physics-level explanation of a psychological phenomenon — customer behavior.
Rare is the customer who will go from zero to purchasing your product. That is, the impulse purchase.
For all other customers, they will tend to stay at rest until you get that ball rolling in the direction you want it to go.
Building momentum with intermediate payments
How do you start building momentum? Well, there are two other crucial payments from the customer that you should earn. And we’re calling them out by name in today’s MarketingSherpa blog post because, while your company may be doing them on some level already, these intermediate payments often get overlooked and under-resourced in favor of the granddaddy of them all — the fiscal transaction.
But all three of these payments require a value exchange, not just the fiscal payment. So make sure your company is providing unique value in order to earn all of these payments.
Payment #1: Attention payment
In the discovery phase, your ideal prospect shows some interest or has a felt need for your product. Sometimes this is front of mind, and they are particularly interested in the topic in their daily interactions.
Other times, it’s very subconscious, and they don’t even realize they were ever considering purchasing your product or even your product category until they come across your message.
How do you move 18 to 20 segments of customers through the learning process of a complex sale? Mitch Zlotnik, President, and Seth Pauley, Vice President, both of Audimute Acoustic Panels, used marketing automation to educate customers with content on a large buying decision.
To learn the process they used to find the right marketing automation solution and agency to help create this low-touch ecommerce operation, I interviewed Mitch and Seth.
“We’ve been rapidly growing for the last eight years. We’ve found a good partner selection helps you grow your business. A poor selection extracts resources from your business, creates problems that hinder growth,” Seth said.
Mitch and Seth discussed their “Five Q” Technology or Agency Selection Process:
Qualified (at 3:39 and 7:40 in the video interview)
Optimization Summit 2012 wrapped up two weeks ago in Denver, and Amanda F. Batista, Managing Editor, DemandGen Report, sent along a few questions to get some information from the Summit to help marketers involved in the complex sale.
So, I grabbed Dave Green, Director, Best Practices, MECLABS, for his B2B view of Optimization Summit …
If you’d like to jump ahead to a specific spot in the video, you can use the links below:
00:25 – What are the most important metrics for B2B marketers to consider in today’s buyer-driven landscape?
2:04 – What are some of the key trends and imperatives in testing to optimize campaigns?
3:18 – Are there any particular case studies or anecdotal use cases that stood out at the conference this week?
B2B and other lead nurturing marketers are beset with challenges. Many are struggling to improve nurturing, scoring and alignment with the sales team, but they have a laundry list of questions.
I received 21 questions from the audience in recent a webcast for the American Marketing Association, “The One-Two Punch of Effective Lead Engagement: Accurate Lists and Powerful Content”(a replay of the webcast is posted below). Yesterday, I answered nine of the questions in a post on the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog. Today, I am answering 12 more below.
Questions on content
Q:When your sales team consists of medical reps who sell to doctors and show up at their offices twice a month, how do you nurture? Especially considering doctors aren’t Internet savvy?
A: I disagree doctors aren’t Internet savvy; there are social networks for the medical community that engage a quarter of a million physicians. That said, equip your sales team to ask for each doctor’s preferred means of communication: email, video, executive summaries, reports, etc. It could be a simple questionnaire.
Q:Should we consider paying outside subject matter experts to develop educational content?
A: Leverage internal experts first to build authority. But be sure the content you’re sharing will be valuable even if the prospect never buys. If your content doesn’t meet that standard, then you’ll want to think about using third-party experts to fill the gap.
Q:If you keep sending your contacts repurposed content (although the same information), won’t they be annoyed? Wouldn’t they prefer fresher info?
A: Research suggests it takes at least seven to nine interactions for a message to be remembered. If you have a complex offering, your audience will appreciate you breaking it down and presenting it in a variety of ways so they can better understand it. We have to look at our content from our customers’ point of view, not our own. Don’t be afraid of repetition — embrace it.
Q:What’s the right amount of emails with video versus straight emails?
A: You need to know your audience and how they prefer to consume content. Test and measure.
Questions on tactics
Q:My team has auto-communications that go to prospects once a week for eight weeks, and we have a team of callers that supplement this. Do you believe this will help nurture/re-engage older leads?
A: It could. Here are some thoughts and ideas:
Nurturing is about building a relationship based on trust to continue a conversation. It’s not just about sending irrelevant information that could cause prospects to emotionally unsubscribe.
Examine the cadence of your emails to determine if once a week is too frequent. Nurturing is a marathon, not a sprint. Nurture them at least the length of your sales cycle.
Look at your results. How many opt-outs do you have? What are the call-to-lead conversion rates? How many opens and clickthroughs are your emails getting? The key is measurement.
Q:How do you know which marketing tactic attracted your customer? Email? Direct Mail? Print? TV?
A: That’s a challenge every marketer faces in the complex sale. The answer depends on whether you’re measuring first touch or last, and if you’re focused on gathering names or closing the deal immediately. Leverage your CRM to capture every touch point: Have they attended a webinar, downloaded a whitepaper, or registered for a newsletter? All of these actions contribute, so measure all of them. Make sure your CRM allows you to track multiple campaigns.
Q:What is the best way to treat leads from a purchased list versus inbound leads?
A: Your answer can’t be quickly summarized, in fact, a book could be written on the topic. However, these blog posts will help:
Q:Any thoughts on lead engagement for B2C versus B2B?
A: In B2B, more people are involved in the buying decision, but, ultimately, people buy from people and the lines between these groups have blurred. MarketingSherpa will soon release its first-ever lead generation benchmark report that includes feedback from more than 1,900 B2B and B2C organizations on their lead generation challenges. In the meantime, here are some resources:
Q:How does lead-nurturing ROI compare for B2C (rather than B2B)?
A: As I mentioned above, MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report will be published soon and will have a very detailed answer. Again, reference this post: Lead-Gen: Top tactics for a crisis-proof strategy
Q:Can you set up a simple lead nurturing strategy without lead scoring, and then add scoring later, when you have data to evaluate?
A: Absolutely. In the beginning, simplicity is best.
Q:What’s a good lead score for a technology company?
A: You’re in charge of developing your score based on your requirements. There’s no industry-wide scoring system. Here are some lead scoring resources that will help:
Day one of the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012 opened with Sergio Balegno, Director of Research, MECLABS, and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS, the parent company of MarketingExperiments, with an emphasis that this is a research-based event driven by the 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, featuring W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst, as the lead author.
The afternoon kicked off with two sets of breakout sessions featuring both direct sale and complex sale tracks.
Infographic: How to Create a Model of Your Customer’s Mind
You need a repeatable methodology focused on building your organization’s customer wisdom throughout your campaigns and websites. This infographic can get you started.
