The MSP Guide To Lead Nurturing
By Contel Bradford via StorageCraft
Having the knack to consistently secure new leads is a sign you’re doing something right. But subscribing to your newsletter or downloading a white paper doesn’t necessarily mean a prospect is ready and willing to deal. In fact, research firm Gleanster found that while many of them look the part, 50 percent of qualified leads aren’t ready to make a purchase. What’s more, 8 to 10 percent of those leads will choose not to buy for one reason or another. If anything underscores the importance of lead nurturing, these statistics nail it.
Lead nurturing is the ultimate commitment to building trust and creating relationships with prospects as they travel along the sales funnel. The goal is to communicate and provide potential customers with a steady flow of relevant information that eventually influences them to buy. As for the benefits, they are numerous and oh so compelling. Lead nurturing allows marketers to:
- Track customer relationships from lead acquisition to sale
- Segment prospects into the right groups
- Deliver content that helps sway leads into making a purchase
- Turn unqualified leads into new opportunities
- Trim the sales cycle and increase revenue
I’m fortunate to operate a business that sees referrals steadily coming in. Some are ready to do business right away. Others need a little convincing. Lead nurturing is a technique I personally use to sort of coddle and guide them towards checkout. Engaging in one-on-one conversations and sharing relevant content makes it possible to build meaningful relationships and influence some of those prospects to buy. Lead nurturing experts realize that marketing is not a sprint, but a marathon.
Good Leads vs. Bad Leads
There’s an indescribable excitement that comes with acquiring new leads, especially for smaller businesses. But what if that relationship isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? What if closing the deal means taking on a project that doesn’t have an MSP’s best interest at heart? Not all leads are created equal and undesirable ones find their way into the pipeline more often than we’d like. Bad leads can result in a loss of revenue and time you will never get back.
So how do you determine if a lead is worth the time and effort? Adopt these principals in your marketing strategy:
Learn to gauge interest: A qualified lead has a desire or problem that can be solved from buying your product or service. Being able to measure interest is a skill you develop over time. When you’re good, it’s something you may pick up on in the first couple of conversations with a new prospect.
Make quality a priority: Not all visitors are ideal customers. Conducting research and gathering feedback is crucial to making sure you’re attracting an audience with a genuine need for your help.
Communicate and listen: Whether a prospect turns out to be a good lead or bad lead often depends on you, the marketer. Your ability to ask the right questions and understand individual needs will go a long way in determining lead quality.
Set customer criteria: No two leads are the same, but it makes sense to establish some custom criteria that define your idea customer. Company, industry, position, and familiarity with your products or services are examples of what that criteria may look like.
Make the right connections: Retail marketers usually want to pitch their message to the person in charge of making buying decisions for the household. B2B marketers don’t necessarily need access to the CEO, but should put emphasis on speaking with the right person.
Another way to distinguish good leads from bad leads is to simply understand your business, what it is you do, and what you’re able to do for the customer. As an MSP, your marketing message should communicate the services you offer in crystal clear fashion. This way, you can increase the likelihood of attracting projects that best align with your goals, existing services and expertise.
Qualified leads are quality leads. These type of prospects have a much better chance of converting to signed agreements. Give the qualification process the attention it deserves, and you can make sure your sales team spends more time closing deals and less time pursuing leads that lead to dead ends.
Tricks of the Trade: Lead Nurturing Tools
Lead nurturing is a powerful way to gently nudge prospects along the road to becoming customers. Like most marketing processes, this one is far more effective when managed with the proper tools. Coming up we take a look at a few lead nurturing tools that can be afforded on the most modest of budgets.
Email Marketing – Benchmark Email
Looking for a cost effective lead nurturing tool that delivers an awesome return on investment? Look no further than email. Email marketing offers a simple, highly targeted, and measurable way to stay in touch with existing customers and win over new prospects in the process. When factoring in its relationship building qualities, it’s not too far fetched to say that email marketing is the ultimate lead nurturing tool.
There are several email marketing services to choose from, but as someone who’s personally used it, I nominate Benchmark Email as the focal point of this section. With plans starting under $12 a month, Benchmark Email aims to keep you connected to your audience with the ability to easily create mailing lists, newsletters, and marketing campaigns that can be customized to fully represent your brand. While customization possibilities are virtually endless for the design-savvy IT team, an arsenal of ready-made templates makes it possible to assemble your email campaigns quick, fast, and in a hurry.
Pros: From extensive list management tools to the luxury to include social media buttons and video inside your emails, Benchmark Email offers a variety of features you can actually put to good use. The firm also offers a free trial you can take for a spin, in addition to a totally free plan that lets you send up to 14,000 emails per month – far more than the average business needs to send!
Cons: If there is one drawback to email marketing with Benchmark Email it would be that the software itself doesn’t offer conversion tracking. This can be a real annoyance when you’ve been monitoring the relationship from the moment the contact subscribed to your mailing list. On the bright side, this function can be obtained via integration with Google Analytics, which is easily enabled from the Benchmark dashboard.
CRM – Insightly
B2B marketers roll out lead nurturing campaigns to transform contacts into prospects and convert those prospects into paying customers. In order to lock down these versions, you need a way to track every interaction with your leads. CRM software enhances your leading nurturing strategy in two ways. First, it lets you record the many interactions that take place along the sales cycle. Second, it arms your sales team with relevant information that helps them effectively follow up with leads and make the right decision for the business.
SalesForce.com is the undisputed king of the CRM space, but many MSPs don’t have the need, budget, or staff to manage a fully featured enterprise solution. If that sounds your like situation, an entry-level application like Insightly may be the perfect alternative. Simple yet powerful, Insightly delivers everything you would expect from a CRM app. Key features include user, contact, and lead management capabilities as well as built-in reporting and integration with Microsoft Outlook, Google Drive, Mail Chimp, and other business software you may already be using.
Pros: Insightly offers a little something for everyone with Basic, Plus, Professional, Enterprise, and Free editions available. The free version only supports two users on limited functionality, but could be idea for the one to two-person sales team. There’s also a mobile version available for iOS and Android users.
Cons: Insightly throws so many features at you that those completely new to the CRM environment may initially feel a tad bit overwhelmed. With that said, it also lacks the features and customization options of more costly solutions the likes of Salesforce.
Marketing Automation – Infusionsoft
Marketing automation goes beyond CRM functionality to not only store lead contact details, but automate many aspects of the nurturing process. For example, you can automate contact integration, lead segmentation, and campaign management among other critical processes. By eliminating tedious manual tasks, marketing automation helps companies maximize their resources and introduce new processes that optimize business performance.
Popular marketing automation platforms like Eloqua and Marketo come with high-end price tags that can tax your budget by the thousands. Luckily, more affordable options like Infusionsoft exist. Infusionsoft is an all-in-one solution that aims to equip smaller businesses with the same technology Fortune 500 firms have access to. Infusionsoft makes marketing automation, email marketing, social media marketing, and CRM functionality available in pricing plans that can be tailored to individual budgets and business needs.
Pros: Infusionsoft excels at streamlining repetitive tasks IT teams ordinarily devote a lot of time to. Users report that being able to automate time-consuming processes like contact management, campaign creation, and analytics visualization frees staff up to focus on core competencies.
Cons: Based on customer reviews, Infusionsoft’s biggest downside is a steep learning curve. One reviewer referred to the platform as “Confusionsoft” while several others agreed that mastering it takes some time.
When it comes to lead nurturing tools, there is no one size fits all solution. The Eloquas and Marketos of the world deliver the features, but may offer more functionality than an IT service provider demands. At the end of the day, the right solution will come down to a matter of budget, required functionality, and existing skill set. I highly recommend documenting your specific lead nurturing needs and finding a vendor that can fully support those requirements. In this sort of arrangement, the reliability of your service provider is as vital as the competency of your IT and sales teams.
If lead nurturing is not currently an integral cog in your marketing strategy, now is the time to make a change. It’s an investment in and of itself, but one that can help you see some swell gains in the ROI department. Definitely worth every bit of blood, sweat, and tears you put into it.