These days, B2B buyers are sophisticated researchers who move themselves through the sales cycle by self-servicing. They read online articles, belong to communities with common interests, and they Google, click and read until they are ready to buy.

This shifts much of the control of the sales process to the buyer, which can be unnerving. Where and when will you have an opportunity to show your solution and turn those marketing qualified leads into sales qualified leads?

Today, you need to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time. This kind of nurturing turns MQLs into SQLs.

We’ve blogged about generating MQLs before, and how we use enhanced data to create better demand generation results. But once your prospect has shown interest, how do you turn them into sales qualified leads?

Nurturing MQLs through the stages of the buyer’s journey

According to Salesforce Pardot, nurtured leads increase sales opportunities by 20% and purchase size by 47% over non-nurtured leads.

In short, nurturing turns an MQL into an SQL. It’s critical to match the right content to where the buyer is at each key stage of the journey: awareness, interest, consideration, intent and evaluation.

By evaluating enhanced data, you can determine what client assets are most beneficial at each stage of the buying process, and then use a variety of sales automation tools to deliver it.

For example, you can use data enhanced with online intelligence that enables you to place ads or tag post content using the keywords and hash tags your target prospect is following. You can find prospects who are engaging with competitors and deliver content that is timely and relevant. We’ve also used data to create highly compelling offers based on personal interest, like hobbies or sports teams they follow.

Targeting by job title is increasingly risky and not a good indicator if the prospect will be a potential buyer for your solution. Job title information is frequently inaccurate, and there are a plethora of new titles out there like “Chief Satisfaction Officer” that are not helpful in determining their role in the buying process. By using personographics however, you can leverage more insightful information to look at work history, solution preferences, group memberships, and other key indicators that are far more useful.

Enhanced data can also unearth prospects you didn’t know were out there, bringing in new target accounts.

IF you’d like some help nurturing your MQLs into SQLs, give me a call.

Ellen Pensky
925.699.7921 ellen@bumblebeemarketing.net