So we are now up to the fifth Q&A with Andy Ellicott, a B2B marketing expert for several early-stage B2B software companies, from Implementing Lead Nurturing – A Practitioner’s Perspective and we will soon get into a few examples of Lead Nurturing. If you are new to Lead Nurturing, the thought of starting from scratch could be a little intimidating, so we asked Andy:
How do you get started?
Ellicott: “Understand your target prospects and their buying behavior.
It’s really important for the marketing team (with input from customer-facing people in sales and service) to identify the types of people you want to capture as leads and the process those people typically follow (and the information they need) when shopping for offerings like yours. This is fundamental to almost all marketing functions, so hopefully you already have this covered.
Sometimes called “personas,” you’ll paint as detailed a picture as you can of the type of person you consider to be your ideal lead. For a B2B product or service, it’ll include information like:
- Job title/function, geographic location
- company size
- company type
- industry
- can afford to spend $X on an offering like yours
- the top 3 challenges/problems the person faces (and that you solve)
- what competitive products they already use or might also be evaluating
- what motivates and excites them professionally
- how they like to communicate (e.g., email or phone, at a business or technical level), etc.
After you agree on whom your leads will be, then agree on how they prefer to shop, what key decisions they’ll make, what information they’ll need to decide in your favor and how and when they like to receive that information.
You can map out what information you want to push out to whom and when to help them move from Researching your product to Trying your product and hopefully, Buying your product. After mapping out the prospect types you’ll capture and how they shop, planning effective lead nurturing flows is possible.”
For the complete interview with Andy Ellicott, download Lead Nurturing Best Practices for Small to Medium sized Businesses (SMBs)
