DIGITAL BODY LANGUAGE
The way to do that, Kardon said, is to watch prospects' “digital body language,” or that array of behaviors—from Web site visits to e-mail responses, form registrations and downloads—that 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 like e-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 business and 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 physicians and 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 landing page.
“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 and current 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 a legacy 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,” she said. “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.” M
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