Generate & Nurture Leads from the Top to the Bottom of the Sales & Marketing Funnel
In the most recent article in this series on lead generation, we talked about customer retention, leads that are self-nurturing, and leads that are traceable and valuable for your sales force – see part 7.
Lead Generation for Different Stages of the B2B Sales & Marketing Funnel
You should have one clear goal for each program or campaign: you must decide whether it is going to be about generating leads for the top, the middle, or the bottom of the funnel (see previous article on the Sales and Marketing Funnel).
Top of the Funnel Leads (i.e., the “Prospecting and Qualifying” stage of the Sales funnel and the “Awareness” stage in the Marketing Funnel). These leads ensure that you don´t run out of leads in general and that you always have enough leads–specifically, they ensure that you don´t run out of leads for nurturing further down the funnel. Top of the funnel leads are typically generated by offers for general content such as catalogs, handbooks, eBooks, CDs, newsletters, posters, or similar items that provide high-level information about your company and about what the company is doing. At this stage, leads are about generating awareness, building a relationship with the customer, growing trust and confidence, developing retention, and creating an affinity for your company over time. This results in customers considering you much more often when they have projects.
At this stage, it doesn‘t matter whether a lead represents a new prospect or an existing customer but it is very important that you contact him or her again and again on a regular basis. Such customers can remain in the Prospecting and Qualifying stage for a while. They might respond here and there but not have projects, so they are not yet real opportunities. Nonetheless, repeatedly contacting them greatly increases the likelihood that they will come back to you when they do in fact have a project.
These leads should be forwarded to the sales force only for their information and to let them see what´s going on in their accounts. Salespeople should not be expected to care or to handle these leads; this would be a waste of your sales force’s time, which is better spent on strategic account management.
Middle of the Funnel Leads (i.e., the “Business Needs Assessment“ and “Solution Development“ stages of the Sales Funnel, and the “Opinion“ and “Consideration“ stages in the Marketing Funnel). Content and offers for programs that generate these leads are usually more specific and application oriented and are often associated with Application Notes, White Papers, on-site and city and web seminars, product news, etc.
Programs like these demonstrate your company’s expertise, build credibility and trust, retain your customers, and help move the decision-making process forward. These leads help you to be considered and to be be preferred more often. Propects/customers are more likely to come back to you in this stage if you give them a good picture of your special offerings.
Leads from this stage are more interesting for your sales force because they are more specific and give the salesperson a better feeling for where a new project could come up within their accounts. However, please note that leads at this stage should only be handled by the salesperson when there is an indication that there could be something more concrete behind them.
Bottom of the Funnel Leads (i.e., the “Selection“ and “Purchasing“ stages of the Sales Funnel and the “Preference“ and “Purchase“ stages in the Marketing Funnel). Programs for the bottom of the funnel address a specific interest of your customer‘s. They are designed to elicit a reaction from customers who actually have a concrete project and are close to buying and also those that might soon have a concrete project and be ready to buy. Programs here are mostly product promotions that provide all the information the customer might need in order to make a purchasing decision. You will generate fewer leads from such programs but these leads will be of the most highly qualified and will have the highest conversion rates. Content and offers typically include requests for detailed product information (digitally, of course), requests for a quotation (the B2B ordering process typically requires that a quote be submitted and accepted prior to the approval of a purchase), request for an application configuration, request for a demo, or finally, a direct order or purchase.
Leads like these have a high likelyhood of being converted into sales, so they are of great interest to the sales force and must be handled by them.
The whole model presumes the consideration of many other things, such as the right program design, the right offer, the right content, lead management, follow up, and nurturing, the use of CRM, vehicles to be employed, etc. We´ll talk more about all these in upcoming articles.
Feel free to contact the author directly to dicuss this topic in more detail: jwflossmann@globalmarcomm.com
Still interested? Stay tuned for more about leads and the Sales and Marketing Funnel to come soon in part 9….
You can find part 1-7 on our GF&Z website:
- Part 1: https://www.globalmarcomm.com/?p=2850
- Part 2: https://www.globalmarcomm.com/?p=2937
- Part 3: https://www.globalmarcomm.com/?p=2992
- Part 4: https://www.globalmarcomm.com/?p=3045
- Part 5: https://www.globalmarcomm.com/?p=3103
- Part 6: https://www.globalmarcomm.com/?p=3140
- Part 7: https://www.globalmarcomm.com/?p=3178
Or you can view them in on my LinkedIn profile at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwflossmann/
Josef W. Flossmann, EMEA Managing Director and Senior Consultant at Gilbert, Flossmann & Zhang Worldwide Marketing Consultancy