Marketing Sherpa – Cultivation Power
admin | Thursday, August 7th, 2008 | No Comments »Great article “Lead Nurturing Best Practices: New Data, Charts, Tips to Put More Punch in Your Cultivation Tactics” at Sherpa’s site.
One of the best takeaways:
“MarketingSherpa estimates, in fact, that more than half of the leads in the typical marketing database are viable, qualified leads – even if those prospects aren’t yet ready to buy.”
What that means, as well, is the more data you can gather at the onset in terms of your prospects and what they really need, the more you’ll be able to convert those leads later to success. As I see it, it’s all about engagement. Brian Haven the former Forrester social media analyst put it in perspective in his report Marketing’s New Key Metric: Engagement report:
“Using engagement, you get a more holistic appreciation of your customers’ actions, recognizing that value comes not just from transactions but also from actions people take to influence others. Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to customer understanding. “
With engagement, or especially in light of engagement, the Sherpa article goes on to address the actions taken once that information is gathered. They cite research from from a study by David Elkington of InsideSales.com and Prof. James Oldroyd of MIT. The study looked at the time it takes for a company sales representative to follow up with a lead who completes a contact form form. The chart below illustrates that 44.1% of companies follow up within 24 hours.
The study revealed that the odds of making contact with and qualifying a Web lead decrease dramatically the longer you wait to place that follow-up call. The MarketingSherpa article highlighted the following:
- Calls placed within five minutes of receiving a Web lead have the highest likelihood of making contact.
- The odds of contacting a lead drop 10 times within 30 minutes of that prospect’s online registration.
- The odds of contacting a lead drop another 10 times if you wait one hour.
- Waiting more than 20 hours to call a Web lead actually hurts your chances of qualifying that lead.
The lesson in all of this:
1. Be proactive … engage in a ways that help you gain insights about your site visitors.
2. Use systems to capture and catalog data to guide conversations … on-line and follow up sales calls.
3. Be responsive by following up in a timely manner.
4. Be relevant … use content marketing to address the market needs of your audience … people don’t want to buy your product or service, they want to but your leadership.
