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The Televerde Blog

• Aligning Buyer Preferences with a Nurturing Strategy

  Dawn Coppens 2:44 pm on March 25, 2010 Permalink | Reply   Tags: Lead Nurture, marketing automation    with no comments

  

  Dawn Coppens

  B2B buying behaviors and preferences have changed dramatically. I know this first-hand since the gamer generation (including my son the video kid whiz) are now the CEOs in the organizations we want to buy from us. This is a generation that was raised on the web. Often, most of their research and evaluation is completed before any human interaction occurs.  

  Many of my clients have invested heavily in second-generation Web technology to support social networking and video sharing. There are many pages of content assets and brochureware that inform and educate the general population and web visitors. So today, when knowledge is “king,” how do you direct potential customers to the specific information they need to make buying decisions? 

  Enter marketing automation and nurturing strategy. 

  Savvy marketers are leveraging a digital + dialogue approach to drive individuals (like my son) to the information that is specific to their needs, interests and roles. I’m not talking about email blasts. Rather, this is about using very specific strategic thought leadership content and approaches designed to address your ability to solve business problems. 

  The purpose of nurture is to build relationships, enhance the customer experience, and create brand identification in your markets. Nurture is an ongoing dialogue via both digital and human contact that provides relevant and actionable messaging to the purchasing execs and other specific titles you’re seeking to engage with. The buyer wants to be in control of the buying process, but they’re willing to exchange information with you if the nature of the conversation is reciprocal (i.e., value given for value received). A well-planned nurturing strategy (if necessary deployed by a partner who has the expertise and bandwidth to execute it correctly) can accelerate pipeline conversion and eliminate the dreaded marketing lead leakage.   

  Well-managed data, marketing and nurture activities are most successful when they can be repeated and predictions can be drawn, so when I do speak with people (like my son), I know they are already well-informed and further along in the sales cycle, perhaps even at the much-desired “ready to buy” point. 

  I would love to hear about the nurturing strategies that you are using and how they are working for you.

   

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• My Best Advice: Don’t Underestimate Data Integrity

  Dawn Coppens 8:58 am on March 3, 2010 Permalink | Reply   Tags: data    with no comments

  My Best Advice: Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Data Integrity

  

  As a Strategic Account Manager for 10 years, clients often rely on me for information and insight about how they are marketing compared to their competitors or peers in the high-tech industry. I’m always grateful for their confidence in my experience and always willing to provide my candid observations. So it’s in the spirit of “knowledge transfer” I’d like to share with you a common observation.

  I’ve found that that the most recurring flaw in effective marketing programs is a lack of attention given to the marketing data – the contact records that comprise the foundation of the marketing campaign. It’s quite common to receive a client’s data that is either missing key information or that contains inaccurate information. Examples include data we receive from responder campaigns where it’s typical to receive records populated with “John Doe” who attended an event, or the name “Mickey Mouse” in a record for someone who has downloaded content from the clients’ web site. And more often than not we find clients are marketing to non-purchasing locations or contacts who are not involved in the decision-making process.

  Best-in-class clients are often looking at the data in aggregate to identify buying patterns and opportunities to segment that information in order to create a more informed marketing strategy. My personal review of over 150 client marketing programs that were implemented in the last 90 days revealed a yield of a much greater ROI and overall results in cases where a data quality improvement or data enrichment program (including standardization and cleansing) were implemented before the marketing campaign began. This seems so sensible yet often campaigns are rushed to execution despite the lack of data quality.

  Many of our clients tell us that data quality improvement is a top investment priority for 2010, and my hope is that this priority is not ignored in-lieu of the rush for quick results. This is something I continue to advise my clients about. Accurate data is critical to making certain that a targeted program or message is actually reaching the right customers and prospects.

  Please share your thoughts on the importance of data integrity.

  Next discussion…”Buyer preferences and the importance of a nurturing strategy.”