Sales and marketing departments, as recently as 2016, believed that the entire point behind digital marketing was nurturing consumer marketers, B2C. They thought nurturing a prospect through the process of awareness, consideration, etc., was exclusive to B2C marketing. Were they correct?

No. The process is equally effective for the B2B environment, and statistics proved otherwise. Business, like consumers, must be nurtured through in much the same way. No matter the business type, your prospects, leads, and customers must be engaged and re-engaged through each step of acquisition, retention, loyalty, and advocacy.

Creating a journey of self-directed content, specific to potential and current customers, is the key to attracting and building long-term relationships. It’s not complicated once the building blocks are set. There are three main elements to consider: setting goals, determining which of the many technology puzzle pieces available is best for implementing your plan, and finally, integrating your nurture programs. Understanding these three steps in more depth will help.

1. SETTING GOALS

 The first step involves looking at how you currently market to your audience. Do you:

• post occasionally
• survey customers
• research your competitors and find out who their customers are
• target ads
• use smart social media
• respond to every email, tweet, Facebook comment, and phone call
• post relevant content on blogs
• craft an engaging newsletter to foster leads?

 Questions that can open the flood gates for internal discussion: 

• How and what are you are we doing now?
• How do you find customers, keep them, and when do they drop-off?
• What are the goals within your products range for each product?
• Each business has different customer types. Can you identify the many customer types or segments you currently work with? Do you ‘talk’ to them differently?

Sitting down to address these questions is the first step. The answers will help create a baseline for setting both quantitative and qualitative goals. Business intelligence makes clear that customer quality over customer quantity is essential.

Attracting a bigger customer base is not the primary goal. What use is having a massive email list or social media following when only a select few buy your product or service? Little value is provided to the bottom line. The basic goal is to improve lead/customer journey, new customer acquisition, customer retention, brand perception, and converting engaged contacts into brand advocates. This is achieved by knowing the different customer types you work with and speaking directly to them accordingly.    

2. SELECT THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY

Until now, managing buyer journeys, sales funnels, and everything in between were relegated to using different software solutions for creating and disseminating content and analyzing results. The old school approach was to manually post and hope for the best.

Posting a funny gif may be ‘worth’ 800 views but did these views translate into opportunities? Writing an article on LinkedIn received 40 likes. Did this effort convert by increasing inbound emails, live chat queries, or phone calls? These are real-world business questions. Are you spinning your wheels or gaining traction? It becomes apparent that having (and consistently using) a system to answer these questions goes a long way to understanding the return on investment.

Not understanding the value of your efforts is frustrating and needlessly expensive. It’s true that top of mind awareness is essential, however top line sales is the goal. When properly constructed, digital marketing leverages awareness and converts it into sales. Your marketing platform is the backbone of customer nurture.

Engagement marketing is all about connecting with people as individuals, based on what they do, posting continuously over time, directing viewers towards an outcome, and reaching prospects everywhere they are. Engaging customers in a personalized way requires a powerful engine built specifically for marketing, placing the customer at the center.

How do you choose from all the tools on the market? After all, these companies know how to market better than most. Keep three objectives in mind for your customer nurturing:

• Will it help meet the goal of developing long term relationships?
• Can it be scaled beyond your current active customer base?
• Will it integrate with your current marketing channels? 

 3. INTEGRATE NURTURE INTO YOUR OVERALL MIX

Digital marketing doesn’t work in isolation. Other marketing activities, such as trade shows, webinars, print catalogs, must be part of the mix. While it is effective, when added in combination with these other programs, it becomes a powerful engine to drive engagement.

• How often do you publish email campaigns? Does nurture fit into the mix?
• What is the best way to co-mingle the nurture program with other marketing activities?
• What is the best way to co-mingle the nurture program with other marketing activities?
• Do you have rules set to ensure all activities are coordinated?

Think about how your customer or prospects will be affected by your marketing activity. Do you want to customers presented with an isolated and disconnected batch of emails hitting their inbox, or with a coordinated series (journey) of touches based on their interests? A tremendous benefit using the right software allows for customer nurturing automation. Setting up and letting programs run based on behavior-based rules and optimized on an ongoing basis.

There is much to consider when it comes to customer nurturing. From segmentation, scoring, to cross-channel implementation but all of this is easily understood with time and dedication. Going down this road, on this journey (pardon the pun) is methodical and rewarding.

For more on customer nurturing check out our recent blog posts.