Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

What’s the best way to get the most mileage out of your traffic or lead generation dollars? Convert those leads to customers! Lead nurturing plays a big role here, and you need a solid system – if for no other reason than to make sure it happens.

If you need reminding why lead nurturing is so important, you’ll get a good overview by reading There’s Gold in the Middle of the Funnel.

By “lead nurturing system” I mean the component of your marketing system that focuses on those 75% to 80% of your prospects who aren’t ready to buy when you first meet them.

Lead nurturing systems can range from relatively simple website based conversion point optimization to complex multimodal, multi-year programs. (I know that sentence is racked with marketing jargon, but I can’t help myself). The point is that sometimes lead nurturing occurs entirely on a website – as in the case of a pure ecommerce site. More often than not, there are other communication channels involved.

Setting up a lead nurturing system involves several steps:

1. Reaching universal definition of a lead.
2. Establishing or cleaning up your marketing database
3. Devising a system for ranking or scoring leads
4. Understanding your customer’s buying process
5. Deciding what lead nurturing tactics and activities you will use.
6. Establishing a sales hand-off, feedback and closed loop process

Let’s start with step #1 – reaching a universal definition of a lead.

You’d think that everyone involved in marketing and selling your products or services would share the same definition of a lead. And you’d be wrong.

Unless you’ve gone through the process of developing a company-wide lead definition, you’re likely to find that sales and marketing people have very different ideas about what is a lead and what is junk.

So, sit them down together – figuratively if not literally – and talk about the following:

• Who is our target audience and what makes a good lead? What are their titles? What kinds of companies do they work for? Where are they located? Include all the industry, job responsibility, revenue, number of employees, type of ownership information, and any other specifics that help make a good lead good.
• What makes a lead ready for the sales team? You can call this a qualified lead or a sales-ready lead or whatever you want. The point is to agree on a checklist of qualities that a lead must possess before it’s time to involve the sales people. This checklist might include things like:

• There is an open project
• With a timeframe
• A budget
• And an executive sponsor.

Once you’ve got agreement on a universal definition of a lead, you’re ready to take a look at your database. I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you have examples of good lead definitions, share them here.

Technorati Tags: lead nurturing, lead development, conversion, sales ready, marketing and sales alignment