Monthly Archives: February 2013

Identifying your best B2B potential by prospect mapping – Step 6/6: Nurturing and Content Marketing

Navigating by your content marketing strategyStep 6: Nurturing and Content Marketing

The purpose for starting this process was to find new potential customers for your business. After going through a careful target group design, potential mapping, marketing concept planning,  data segmentation and activating the top 20% leads – you should now focus on a long-lasting lead nurturing and content marketing activity.

From the prospect mapping you have gathered information about companies potential and decision makers willingness to talk with you. Now, take the second group from the Step 4: Data Segmentation (these are the prospects that are not investing in the near future) and serve them with great content. They will most likely be your customers sooner or later.

And what is great content? I was wisely taught in DIT Drama Class in Dublin, Ireland (1998)- “you are not writing about the subject, but around it. If you want to talk about an apple – describe its form and color, but don’t mention it.” In other words, don’t put your companies products and services in the middle. Talk about your customers and their challenges. As Michael Brenner put it strogly in his post The Content Marketing Echo Chamber “Stop talking about your self”.

Fill your promise and start a dialog with the decision makers, that have indicated their interest. Put your content marketing plan in action and nurture your prospects with appropriate content according their stage in the buying process. Serve them with a sales call when they are ready. Then, continue to feed your lead base and start a new prospect mapping process on a new region or industry.

I hope this post was helpful for you. I am happy to get feedback from all B2B Sales and Marketing professionals. Tell me your way – how do you find the potential from the market and generate sales?

Identifying your best B2B potential by prospect mapping – Step 5/6: Activate

Step 5: Activate

Now put your qualified data to work. The first group of qualified prospects (from step 4) are warm leads for your business – your aim is to turn these leads to sales meetings.   Before starting the appointment setting calls, you should give a reminder to the decision maker – and direct mail is a great tool for activating this customer dialogue.

I am a big fan of snail mail, because it will most likely to be noticed by the receiver. People get a lot of email marketing (spam) to their inbox’s and even the relevant messages will be ignored and deleted.  Creatively designed physical marketing however will be noticed, opened and most importantly remembered by the receiver.

For sure, concept design and color make a difference. Have a look on Brian Morris’ post on Business2Community of how different colors are used in marketing campaigns. (picture on this post is also linked to his original work)

Follow-up the direct mail by a appointment setting call to the decision maker. Remember you are now working with a group that has previously told you their interest in your products or services and are willing to hear more about you. You will most likely to get a high pull percentage for these sales meetings. I have seen over 70% pull rates in these kind of processes. Also the booked sales meetings will be of a high quality due to the earlier qualification in the mapping process.

For more on this subject:  Check Steve Olenski’s post on Forbes CMO network (3rd of November 2012) Direct Mail: Alive And Kicking

I hope this post was helpful for you. I am happy to get feedback from all B2B Sales and Marketing professionals. Tell me your way – how do you find the potential from the market and generate sales?