It’s no secret that the buyer’s journey has changed and that these changes have transformed how B2B marketers must communicate with their prospects. B2B buyers are now self-educating online. They search the Internet for product information, they visit vendor websites, and they consult with their peers on social media. Forrester Research has estimated that 90 percent of the buyer’s journey is complete by the time a prospect reaches out to a salesperson. This change means that the marketing team must nurture prospects through the large majority of the buyer’s journey, and the most effective marketers are building always-on lead nurturing programs. This LinkedIn SlideShare, The 7 Building Blocks of a Successful Lead Nurturing Program, outlines seven steps for building lead nurturing programs that work. Read on to discover the seven building blocks you can use to develop your own powerful lead nurturing effort.

1. The 7
of a Successful Lead
Nurturing Program
Building
Blocks

2. INTRODUCTION
The campaign is dead. Prospects aren’t
waiting for your messaging, they’re
actively reaching out to self-educate
on the market, on your products, and
your competitor’s products. This new
reality requires an always-on mindset.
Here are the 7 Building Blocks
to creating an always-on lead
nurturing program that goes
beyond the email inbox.

3. DEVELOP A STRATEGY
A solid lead nurturing program begins
with a smart and comprehensive strategy.
That strategy should determine what good
leads look like. What are the business
demographics and behaviors of a good
lead? Marketing should work closely with
sales, use the past as prologue and analyze
the characteristics of those who bought
your product/service in the past. Consider
collaborating with IT, finance, and other
departments to make sure the lead nurturing
program has the technical support and
investment it needs to thrive.

4. DEFINE PERSONAS
Building an effective program
requires personas, which demand
that B2B marketers know more
about their audience.
Knowing the job titles of the target
audience is not enough to build a topflight
lead nurturing program. To truly personalize
a nurturing program, the B2B marketer has
to know the personality of each member of
the target audience. Surveys of customers,
visits with prospects, and interviews of your
salespeople can provide the insight necessary
to create these personas and gain a deeper
understanding of your target market.

5. SEGMENT YOUR AUDIENCE
Intelligent segmenting is key to making
a lead nurturing program thrive.
Segmenting an audience allows a marketer
to personalize every message to potential
clients. Using marketing automation software,
marketers can create literally hundreds of
segments. In addition to targeted messaging,
this segmentation enables marketers to reduce
investment in programs that aren’t working
and double down on the programs that are
driving sales.

6. CREATE CONTENT AT EVERY
STAGE OF THE BUYING PROCESS
This content must speak to each segment
of the buying team at every stage of the
funnel, from awareness to consideration
to actual purchase.
Because many B2B purchases involve an
extensive buying team, from the influencers
to the person who controls the purse strings,
marketing departments must create a variety
of entertaining, helpful, and persuasive content
that speaks to the needs of everyone involved.
Marketers can also create customer-focused
nurture content such as welcome letters,
upsells, and cross-sells.

7. MEASURE, TEST AND OPTIMIZE
Whether you’re nurturing via email
and telephone or display and social
advertising, analytics tools exist to
track your performance.
This technology lays the foundation for
understanding the types of content that
drive sales. By tracking what efforts land
engagements or drive prospects through
the funnel, marketers are able to optimize
their programs to deliver a measurable
return on investment.

8. Data is good, accurate data is better.
Marketers should be maintaining the health
of their databases. Email deliverability is a
critical path to nurturing leads. For the most
effective lead nurturing, marketers should
commit to improving their data hygiene,
which can be accomplished by having
customer- and prospect-facing personnel
regularly ask their contacts for updated
contact information and other data.
MAINTAIN A CLEAN,
UPDATED DATABASE
of companies’ email
deliverability ranks
as “questionable.”
of records were
missing industry
and revenue data

9. Email is the foundation of most B2B
marketers’ lead nurturing programs,
but the most effective marketers are
exploring multichannel nurturing and
moving beyond email.
Email is effective as a nurturing tool, but its
drawbacks are well known. For this reason,
many B2B marketers are implementing
lead nurturing programs that move beyond
email. Marketers are also using multi-channel
nurturing programs that reach the anonymous
website visitors who expressed an interest in
their companies.
MOVE YOUR LEAD
NURTURING BEYOND EMAIL
of your email database
doesn’t open your
emails—on a good day!
of website visitors
don’t share their
email address.

10. CONCLUSION
Lead nurturing has changed
dramatically. The most effective
marketers are embracing this new
normal and building always-on lead
nurturing programs that take into
account these building blocks.

11. Learn more about the basics of
using multi-channel nurturing in
The Sophisticated Marketer’s
Crash Course in Lead Nurturing.

12. Today, LinkedIn members number more
than 380+ million of the 600 million
professionals on the planet, representing
the largest group anywhere of influential,
affluent, and educated people.
For more information, visit
marketing.linkedin.com