Mid-funnel management can become fuzzy at times

Earlier in the year we sponsored the B2B Marketing Advanced Practices Handbook with MarketingSherpa and also hosted a webinar with on how increasingly complex sales cycles make it difficult for marketers to generate highly qualified leads and create targeted campaigns. The focus was geared at the top of the funnel and increasing the quantity of leads generated. We have another webinar this month with MarketingSherpa and the focus now moves toward quality, not just volume. We’ll discuss lead nurturing and best practices for managing mid-funnel prospects. This leads me to part one of a two-part blog post.

The B2B buying process has changed. Decision makers and power users have thousands of resources at their fingertips to research their potential line-up of products online long before they engage with a sales team. In a quantitative survey of 1,900 B2B customers done by the Marketing Leadership Council they discovered that on average, customers are 57% of the way through the purchase process before they allow a sales person to enter into their purchase decision.

This means marketers must now begin to decipher which of these prospects are ready to buy and which are still in the process of researching solutions. If we are too hasty in passing these potential buyers along to our sales team, we walk the thin line of scaring them off and losing potential revenue – not to mention flushing precious marketing dollars which are tightly guarded these days.

So, how do you know when your leads are ready to engage, and how do you nurture those that aren’t there yet? Enter “The Funnel.” This funnel shapes the way us marketers do our job – who we start conversations with, who is simply researching (and what can we do to convince them of their next step), and who is ready to pull the trigger? The marketing funnel helps to create sales-ready leads and nurtures those are not. Obviously, these two sets of prospects have two different set of criteria that may keep them from moving down the funnel or staying put until they are ready to engage.

If you’re reading this from a marketing standpoint you understand that the top of this funnel is all about lead generation – getting volume in the top that funnels into quality at the bottom. Eventually there is the hand-off between marketing and sales when that lead becomes an opportunity (given that it has met the right set of criteria) and then sales can begin to bring the other pieces together and close the deal (if only it were always this easy).

Where the funnel tends to get fuzzy is rrrrright in the middle. Prospects in the mid-funnel are not the same as their predecessors (the mass quantity I mentioned earlier). Now it’s about beginning to build the right relationships with the right people. These leads have a few more pieces information that we need to capture – what are their specific needs, do they have a list of objections, how many of your competitors have they evaluated, what is their timeframe for purchase?  So, how exactly do we do this?

Glad you asked! This is exactly what we’ll be covering in our upcoming webinar with MarketingSherpa and Eloqua next week. Our guest speakers will discuss lead qualification and then dive into scoring and nurturing strategies for mid-funnel management. Both of these obviously play a crucial role in optimal ROI for your demand generation efforts.

Part 2 of this blog will cover some of the key takeaways from our webinar and focus more on best practices for optimizing the funnel (if you have one). If you don’t, do not fret; you’re not alone – neither do 68% of organizations according to the latest infographic by MarketingSherpa .  A well thought-out funnel can be a confusion-diffuser (say that three times fast). It is a planning tool that will help you to align the many facets of sales and marketing that you have to get right to close business. I hope you can join us for the webinar and take away some fresh ideas on how to update or upgrade your current approach to managing the marketing funnel in your organization!

ReadyTalk is always showing our customers new ways to use web conferencing services. Whether you are trying out teleworking, collaborating with colleagues worldwide, or hosting a lead generation webinar series, ReadyTalk assists you with your business every day. Now ReadyTalk expands their reach with a new Partners Program.

Partners come in all shapes and sizes so we chose to develop a program that offers flexibility and suits a variety of business models. Our recruitment push continues for resellers at the upcoming Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Chicago, August 24-26. If you’re interested in adding audio and web conferencing and web events to your product offering – come by booth 1236 and talk to Betsy or Dwight about how ReadyTalk can help increase revenues from your existing customer base and help you gain new customers with these services. You’ll also want to hear about our new reseller incentive program where you can earn an additional 10% commission for the first six months. Our programs offer a full complement of sales and marketing resources and out of this world customer support. Can’t make Chicago? Check us out at ReadyTalk.com/partners.

Tracy focuses on channel and partner marketing at ReadyTalk, building out marketing programs to recruit partners and reinforce engagement with them. When she’s not coming up with marketing plans she likes to compete in canine freestyle Frisbee and ride her Ninja motorcycle.

Last week, a few people from our marketing team attended the Eloqua Success Tour. The basic function of these events is to interact with like-minded peers who are utilizing the Eloqua platform and share best practices, unique use cases, and helpful tips to avoid pitfalls. Eloqua’s regional success managers also share new functionality and present the upcoming product roadmap for discussion. It’s a great way to network and simply learn how others are utilizing marketing automation within their organization.

There were some great presentations this year including one particular SaaS company that has created progressive profiling with the Eloqua platform to continually capture and aggregate information from prospects that are visiting their site and filling out forms, hitting key pages, etc. The speaker made a great point: personalization is really the future of marketing. The idea can be attributed to all of the social networks that are embedded in nearly everything we do. Work related or not – this is how to catch someone’s attention. Call them by name, offer them what they’ve been looking for on the right day at the right time, and you  just landed yourself a deal.

When someone feels a sense of individuality, not just like another fish that’s going to get hooked, they’re more likely to foster a relationship with your brand. Today, consumers have almost come to expect a one-on-one dialogue with marketers.  The challenge to us as the marketers is to use the important data we’re capturing to strike that personal chord with our prospects.  Knowledge of past behavior is a valuable tool for predicting future purchases and crafting relevant messages that will increase sales. The key takeaway is to build plan to follow the customer – not making them follow you.

Is personalization part of your strategy and marketing automation program? Is it working?

Simone has been involved with both the sales and marketing teams at ReadyTalk and is currently the role Marketing Demand Manager and manages the monthly ReadyTalk Webinar Series, which is a free  forum for professionals to interact with their peers and other experts on topics ranging from sales and marketing to nonprofits and funding to leadership and professional development. Simone is an outdoor enthusiast – skiing, climbing, triathlons, and trail runs with her dog, Bucket, are just a few of the things she enjoys outside of the office.

“Spreadsheet hell” is what we call it at ReadyTalk.

It happens when your conferencing service data is isolated from your marketing automation service. It delays lead follow-up, lead scoring and the lead nurturing process. It complicates the entire process and can lead to data errors.

As a marketer, I am always looking for ways to accelerate lead conversion, arm my sales team with valuable information, simplify reporting and gain a solid understanding of metrics.  The new Eloqua Cloud Connectors for ReadyTalk allow me to take advantage of Eloqua’s platform without falling into spreadsheet hell

.Let’s look at the old way vs. the new way:

As illustrated in the steps above, integrating ReadyTalk webinar services with our marketing automation platform, Eloqua is saving us significant time and eliminating manual processes that can lead to errors and other problems.

If you’re interested, you can learn more about Eloqua Cloud Connectors for ReadyTalk.

What marketing automation platform do you use? Are there other marketing platforms that you’ve integrated and seeing the benefits? If not, what would you like to integrate?

ReadyTalk will unveil its newly designed website soon. We’ve changed quite a few things – all for the better (we hope you’ll agree). You’ll notice an entirely new look and feel; you will still be able to easily access our platform whether you are hosting or attending a meeting; we’ve made it easier to learn about our features and new product launches; and we’ve improved the navigation to make it easier to find what you are looking for.

Here’s where we started:

The current site was outdated and didn’t allow for much navigational and content flexibility. Our goals had changed in the years since the site first launched and we wanted to better reflect ReadyTalk’s values and culture in the imagery.

We started out by defining our site goals and objectives (see the post “Creating a New Website“), did some competitive reviewing of other sites, and put a timeline together. We studied our site user personas, determined our metrics for success and put together technical and functional briefs. Wireframes and site maps were created and new navigational structures were developed and vetted by internal and external users. Our information architect created paper prototypes and facilitated scenario testing with our customers. Then he revised the wireframes and began building out the mockups. Images were carefully selected to reflect our locale and our work culture. Once that was all approved the process of building it out in Drupal began.

We used the Agile process throughout the project. The team broke down the tasks to be done in two week iterations and then we facilitated a daily “stand up” in front of whiteboard to discuss what was completed and what tasks were blocked. It has been almost a year-long labor of love.

Here’s where we ended up:

The site is cleaner, easier to navigate, provides a wealth of support and training information and makes it easier for potential customers to schedule a live demo, sign up for a free trial or purchase our services immediately.

For this first phase of launch we wanted to make sure that the site continued to make it easy to join a meeting; provided information on how to use ReadyTalk through robust training and support); and communicated ReadyTalk’s values and culture.
We look forward to your feedback once it launches. Please tell us what you think as a comment below or send us an email. If you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear them – positive or negative. And keep watching the ReadyTalk blog because we have more exciting things in store for the site in 2011.