In B2b companies, sales closures can take anywhere between 3 to 12 months and sometimes even more. Once potential prospects or leads are identified they may require nurturing. A relationship needs to be built between the company and its prospect customer to ensure, their solution is the prospect’s first choice, when they finally decide to buy.
This is why it is essential to adopt a two phased approach when it comes to B2B marketing. Your B2B Marketing plan should ideally focus on generating leads in the first phase and nurturing them in the second phase. While the first phase is wider in its reach and more generic, the second phase of marketing should be customized to suit the needs of the lead you are trying to nurture.
Phase I – To generate leads
Identify your target audience and the channels they frequent, this is key to your reach out – this ensures you only attract serious customers with your messaging. What is the problem your product/solution is trying to solve and how will your target customer benefit? Should essentially be an integral part of your messaging.
Whatever channels you use – PR, Social Media, Advertising – online or offline or both – the focus is to educate and inform your target customers about your offerings. This process of generating demand for your product/solution is critical to your business. This is the only way your company can get interested/potential customers to even inquire or consider your offerings as a solution for their problems.
Some key activities which help in this phase are Press releases, Corporate blogs(establishing thought leadership/expertise in your industry), attending industry events and trade shows, engaging with your target audience on social networks, optimizing your website for search engines, paid campaigns( advertisements, sponsorships) etc.
It is best to engage as many marketing channels as available to reach out to your end customer initially. A review after 2-3 months of engaging these channels will give you an idea on which one works best for your company (which campaigns resulted in more responses, inquiries, interest, lead generation)- you can then put all your effort in maximizing your reach using those channels only.
- Create a two phase marketing plan
Phase -II – To nurture the leads, till they are sale ready
All visitors who come to your website or call your office are not people who are ready to buy. Its worth it to spend time with these visitors, who filled an inquiry form on your website or called up your sales rep for more information to understand their exact requirement. Apart from these traditional methods of leads reaching you, there are a number of marketing automation solutions available in the market today, these help your company define a good lead and match those specifications against the visitors on your website – rating people on the basis of their activity on the site (form fill, whitepaper download, request for demo etc.).
No matter what method you use – once you are aware, that the visitor or caller is a good lead but not yet ready to buy, it is time to kick in your second phase of marketing activities.
Once you have an insight into the requirements of the lead, feed him with more information on your solutions that best fit his requirements. This should be done over a period of time. Also, this phase requires going beyond self promotion and researching the interests of the lead, engaging him in a conversation, helping him with his decision making process by being an advisor to him.
Some of the key activities that you can use to engage your lead during the nurturing process are – sending well researched whitepapers in the space, sending articles relevant to your lead that comment on his domain or on the problem he is seeking a solution for. Send news updates about your company or industry which are relevant, case studies which showcase how your solution solved a similar problem for another client. Or send invitations to Webinars where he can learn more about your solution and how it solves his problem.
Emails are the most preferred mode of communication during this phase of marketing, which requires building a relationship of trust with your prospect. If the lead nurturing program is customized to suite the needs of a customer it also ensures faster sales closures as the marketing content shared during this period helps in the decision making process of the lead being nurtured.
