This article discusses prospecting strategies and how to
efficiently reach your target market.
- Media Channels
- Frequency
- Reach
- Calendar
- Audiences
- Creative
- Activity Reporting
Marketing campaigns establish brand image, whether good, or bad your campaign is influencing your target audience’s perception of your brand. Marketing emails can be redundant, sales calls can be insistent enough to irritate. Good lead nurturing falls somewhere between the two – enough contact to engage, but enough space to respect the demands on a busy prospect.
The trick is to know how to balance the contacts between timing and type of outreach. Mixed media programs that use a combination of quality outbound calls, voice mail messages, email and direct mail all optimally scheduled for the greatest effect will consistently be the best use of your marketing dollars
Everyday a large percentage of leads are abandoned by sales simply because the prospect did not response to a few, single-channel contact attempts. Salespeople generally do not have the time, or the patience to make the multiple touches, which can run from as few as eight to as many as 30, or more – to identify, qualify, and nurture prospects to a point of sales readiness. Even immediate-need opportunities can take as many as a dozen attempts by sales to become effectively engaged.
A multi-touch strategy allows the prospect to be contacted in his, or her preferred manner. Most busy decision makers are not willing or able to arbitrarily pre-empt their business day to respond to a telephone sales contact, but can reply to an email, or VM at their convenience and schedule a time for follow up. A combination of properly timed and executed initiatives opens all channels of communication and thereby opens opportunities.
Historically, database marketers have expected to increase their results by six to eight times when following up a direct mail, or email campaign with a single phone call. But what you may not know is that stopping at that single touch point can leave substantial business – half, or even more – on the table for competitors to grab.
It’s true. Traditional one and done advocates touch customers once and then move on to the next big marketing initiative. This is extremely ineffective compared to campaigns that integrate multiple emails and media touch points that reach out to business prospects repeatedly. This multi – touch process builds familiarity and increases a positive brand perception within the mind of your target prospect.
Throughout the years we have collected data while working with many clients and working on over 100 separate direct marketing programs. As a part of this, I tracked the numbers. I tracked frequency and type of touches performed and corresponding response rates. Analysis revealed that unless you are reaching to prospects with at least nine individual touches – including a minimum of two email messages – you are not achieving the results that you could.
The initial contact cycle – the first time that you touch your prospect base with a combination of nine phone calls, emails, voice mails and direct mail – will yield only 40-50% of the total opportunities. Continuing to touch the same prospects with the same multi-touch, multi-media process will identify other opportunities within the market.
In fact, lead rates from the second and third nine-touch cycle can generate anywhere from 110-220% on the initial lead rate. There is a point of diminishing return – in most B2B markets the return does not support the investment after the fourth, or fifth cycle.
Voicemail and email reach busy decision makers – these touch points have comprised over 30% of all leads delivered to our clients over 35 years. Perhaps surprisingly the most frequent responders to VM and Email are the more senior-level decision makers.
We hope that these statistics and processes will help you with your own demand generation process.
Author: Travis Piepho, Prospectr Marketing, https://www.prospectrmarketing.com
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