Nurturing possibilities in a tough economy; Focusing on warmest prospects and retaining current customers.
PrintByline: CHRISTOPHER HOSFORD
Amid the prolonged economic recession, lead generation is one of those marketing tasks undergoing rapid redefinition. Increasingly, lead gen today is about protecting what you have while duplicating past successes.
"Yes, we have a house file, but we want to customize it to make sure we're reaching the correct person,'' said Sara Poulton, senior director of marketing at DigitalGlobe, a provider of satellite and aerial images of the Earth for government; oil and gas companies; and the insurance industry, among others.
"It's all about segmentation and matching our content with the right type of industry,'' Poulton said, adding that converting these leads and "handing them off to inside sales to follow up'' is another key part of the process.
DigitalGlobe faces the basic lead-gen challenges: Find the right prospects; communicate with them in a timely and compelling way; and do whatever it takes to get them to convert.
But DigitalGlobe's emphasis also highlights a shift in how lead gen is handled by many companies these days. The company is increasingly focused on the bottom of the sales funnelnurturing the warmest of leadsand up- and cross-selling current customers.
"This trend has surprised us,'' said Brian Kardon, CMO at demand generation and lead management company Eloqua. "The effort today is not so much at the top of the funnel, bringing in raw leads, but ratherin nurturing and relationship management with current prospects. A lot of marketers pride themselves on how many leads they generate eachquarter, but they already have a ton of prospects in the pipeline. The focus now is on closing the business.''
Digital body language
The way to do that, Kardon said, is to watch prospects' "digital body language,'' or that array of behaviorsfrom Web site visits to e-mail responses, form registrations and downloadsthat indicate an increasing interest to buy.
"It's the old Don Pepper one-to-one marketing, based on the prospect's private behavior,'' said Kevin Joyce, CMO of lead-management company Market2Lead, referring to the partner at management consulting and training firm Peppers & Rogers Group. "We've seen a huge increase in nurturing in our installed base of customers. Why? Because the most expensive part of the process is getting a new qualified lead, about $100 to $150 apiece for a b-to-b company.'' And online methods likee-mail, he added, "cost just fractions of a cent.''
In fact, Joyce and others say that the very definition of lead generation is morphing into "qualified, sales-ready lead generation.''
"It's like the frog in the pot of water,'' Joyce said. "The water temperature has been going up for the last couple of years, and something's changed to finally cook the frog. What's changed is the recognition that marketing has too many leads that sales thinks are crap.''
Could it be that tough times are enabling the salesteam tail, asserting its power and accountability, to wag the marketing dog?
"A bad economy forces you to look at every aspect of your businessand drive more effective conversations with people who are interested,'' said Michael Maske, VP-sales at TransMotion Medical, which designs, manufactures and distributes specialty procedure chairs for a number of medical specialties and hospital departments.
For his primary lead-gen solution, Maske uses a Salesforce.com customer relationship management database of 70,000 names and an e-mail marketing and Web tracking solution from Genius.com.
TransMotion, which supports 53 independent sales reps, uses the Genius e-mail to create powerfully worded direct outreach to physiciansand hospital administrators. "You need to be provocative in your message in this marketing space, almost to the point of aggression,'' Maske said. The application records when each prospect sits down at a computer, opens the TransMotion e-mail and clicks through to a landingpage.
"By their behavior, they display some interest,'' Maske said. "Maybe they're curious or just looking, and that's OK. But when we see that interest, we'll give them a call immediately suggesting a trial and free evaluation of our products in a hospital setting.''
Not surprisingly, automation is key to a successful lead-gen and nurturing effort.
To market its Earth images, for example, DigitalGlobe uses lead-generation and nurturing automation from Neolane to alert prospects andcurrent customers about the availability of new images, then tracks them based on their transaction history, catalog requests, online behaviors and lead scoring.
But sometimes there's no substitute for what might be considered alegacy outreach. Poulton reports that DigitalGlobe's half-day seminars in Brazil, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand work surprisingly well.
"Some of these road shows and seminars are old school, true,'' shesaid. "And one of the most useful marketing tools we have for the defense side is a poster of our satellite imagery. Some of these tactics still work.''