1. Over time I have been writing less about small business marketing fundamentals, and more about B2B and social media. It’s what’s interesting to me right now, so I went with it!
2. The people who read my blog and follow my tweets now come from all over the world — relatively few from my core market.
3. Based on my social media presence, including the blog, Twitter, and my web page, I am getting new customers from California, Switzerland and Australia — not what I originally had in mind.

In a matter of weeks, my core business competency and customer base changed dramatically, because my message and audience changed dramatically. Isn’t that interesting? I wasn’t consistent and now I’m challenged to match my STRATEGY to my inconsistent MESSAGE!!

How did this happen? I lost sight of my core mission because writing the blog became so much fun. I wasn’t “marketing.” I was being me. And it worked out fine. I didn’t choose my audience. My audience chose me.

What did I learn? Perhaps in social media, “being me” IS the strategy.

Steven Soshea

Photo credit: I don’t know. Probably some porn site. This is an actual Twitter follower of the guy mentioned in the article. If this is a picture of you and you’re not in the porn industry, I apologize. I was just trying to make a point. Now go put on a tee shirt.

There are many ways to be prospect-centric, but nurturing leads is one of my favorites. If this a concept that is new to you, read on to understand why this is something you want to consider and what steps you can take to get started.

In general, I think too many marketers are focused on getting proficient at generating leads. Instead, I challenge you to focus your attention on what happens to those leads after the initial contact.

Consider the typical scenario: someone registers on your site when they download a white paper or a webcast, and the leads are then collected into CRM system. Typically, there are a few common approaches to following up with the leads:

• The prospect receives an automatically-generated email thanking them for their download and possibly providing links to additional material a user would find interesting.
• Leads are passed to sales, and they may follow up on a few, but if they don’t get a positive response (which is likely as most people who read a white paper or watch a webcast are not sales-ready), they ignore the rest and believe that what marketing is producing is “junk.”
• Telemarketing contacts individuals to follow up, but, unless you get someone at the exact time the want to buy, they’re probably not going to have much luck.
• Leads sit in a database in case you want to reach out to them at some point.

A much better approach is to nurture your leads, which means having a process in place to continually provide touch points to your prospect to move them along the path to purchase (Note: you need to get the customer’s approval to send them additional emails).

There are ways you can make your nurturing programs very sophisticated and use tools to help you automate the process, but you can also start simply. Making a few changes at a time will continually improve your organization’s interactions with prospects; small steps OK! If you are new to lead nurturing, I suggest this two-step approach:

Step 1: Map out your typical buying process and the key people involved in the purchase decision. Then, determine what content would be useful for each person at each stage of the buying cycle, filling in gaps by creating content to use for each person at each stage. (It all comes back to really understanding your prospects.)

Step 2: Create the actual nurturing program, which includes deciding how long you want to communicate with your prospect (ideally, it should be as long as the typical buying process) and developing the customer touch points throughout the process (e.g. emails, direct mail, possible phone calls, etc). In short, you want to continually provide your prospects with targeted content that moves them through the buying process and keeps you top of mind.

Want to learn more?

There is a ton of information available on lead nurturing, but here are a few of my favorite posts on the subject to help you get started (I’d recommend all of these blogs as well):

Unleash Your House Database with Lead Nurturing (Marketo)

Detecting Buyer Roles in B2B Marketing (Digital Body Language by Steve Woods)

Payoff for B2B Content Marketing is Movement (Marketing Interactions by Ardath Albee)

Losing Touch with Leads? 7 Suggestions for Nurturing Programs (This is a post I wrote for my blog, Savvy B2B Marketing)

This is a picture of me building business relationships in Italy during World Cup. Well sort of.

Let me relate three quick stories that took place in the last 24 hours:

• Yesterday morning, I went to a networking meeting and recognized somebody from his Twitter picture — a fellow I had followed for several months. Even though I had never spoken to this person before, he greeted me like an old friend, asking me about a common interest I had discussed on my tweets.
• In the afternoon, I had a conference call with a potential customer from California. She had read some of my posts on Linked-in forums and was interested enough to go to my website (where she read some of my longer articles) and my blog. Based on my web and social media content alone, she was convinced I was the right marketing “voice” for her company and offered me a significant new business opportunity.
• In the afternoon I received a call off my website. This young entrepreneur had also gotten to know me through Linked-in discussion boards and he referred to recent blog articles. We agreed to meet next week and discuss a new business engagement.

I’m not telling these tales to demonstrate my good fortune on this particular day. I’m providing examples of how a social media strategy can be used to attract potential customers and “pre-populate” business relationships.

What do I mean by this? In normal business relationships, it might take weeks or months of discussions and meetings for a new potential client to know and trust you. Through original web-based content and participation in forums related to my profession, these nice people felt they had a personal relationship with me — before they even made a single phone call.

In effect, I was able to pre-populate the business relationship with my life, talents, hobbies, opinions –and probably a few flaws — to significantly expedite the sales cycle.

Here’s an important point. In NONE of these cases did I actually try to sell something to somebody. One pundit likened social media to a dinner party. If you stand there and simply talk about yourself and your product, people will quickly try to get away from you. But if you offer something of interest, they’ll listen, seek you out, and perhaps become a new friend.

What are your experiences with this topic? Does it make sense to you? How is pre-populating sales leads relevant to your business situation?

But after spending a few weeks assessing the state of social media among industrial companies, I’m changing my mind.

To be sure, B2B social media successes have been scarce. According to a 2009 Forrester research study, 86% of B2B companies had NO integrated social media strategy. These are smart folks — if there is a way to market effectively for less, they’ll be doing it. But there are good reasons why there is slow adoption in this segment of business:

• Social media takes time and new skillsets. The recession will depress any rapid change in marketing capabilities.
• In a failing economic environment, the emphasis is on near-term cash generation and survival, not “community.”
• Building a community seems less relevant when you have a small number of known customers tied up in long-term contracts.
• Understanding the shift in marketing channels, customer dynamics and relevance to B2B will take time … and maybe a few retirements.

When the economy improves, I believe mainstream B2B companies WILL make the shift as they understand how technology is already re-defining their customer relationships. Here’s why:1) Sales and marketing is about building relationships … and that’s what social media is all about. The intense, high-value B2B industrial relationships are like a marriage. B2C is a flirtation — gimme a coupon and I’ll go out with you baby. There are probably lots of ways this important, long-term B2B bond can be enhanced through the constant contact enabled by social media, especially throughout a long sales cycle. Perhaps it will take place behind a firewall — most people don’t want to discuss their marriage in public!

2) It’s where the customers are. In some of my seminars, I challenge attendees to find their “truckstop“ — the place where customers hang out. That place has changed dramatically over the past few years. Even baby boomers are spending enormous amounts of time on the Internet. The lines between professional “truckstops” and social “truckstops” are blurring. In the old days, business networking took place on the golf course or at glitzy trade shows booths. Those days are over. We need to find the new truckstops and they’re online (53% of Facebook users are over 35, up from 46% in 2008).

3) Social media can play a critical role in the information-gathering process. The consequences of a major buy are high and purchasing agents use all available means to gather data on your company and product. They’re going to Google the heck out of you. So why not help them and gain an edge by putting quality content everywhere — blogs, videos and social networking communities that can help your cause.

4) It can help build loyalty. Compared to impulsive B2C behaviors, there are probably fewer opportunities to influence direct sales through SM. However, that’s just one piece of the sales pipeline. What about service? Technical support? Product development? Customer involvement and loyalty? I’ve been guilty of focusing too much on the lead-generating opportunities of social media and have not given enough credit to the other parts of the sales cycle.

5) Social media is a way to engage and inspire far-flung employees. Today, every employee can be your best sales advocate or a corporate terrorist. It has never been more important to enlist your employees and engage them through the power of social media. For example, Ingram Micro, the world’s largest technology distributor, has open Facebook sites available by country so their employees can connect and collaborate. IBM, GE and others are actively engaging employees to tell their company story through this global Town Hall meeting.

6) If you don’t engage, it will be done for you! My previous blog showed an example where Dow’s name has been hijacked for several fake social media sites that pillory the company. Today, every customer can be a critic, every employee a reporter, every activist a broadcaster. Without an active voice in social media, your company will be defined by others.

Props: In the best spirit of social media, my enlightenment on this subject was nurtured by blogs and thought leaders such as Chris Brogan, Jamie Wallace, John Bottom, Nathan Egan, and Jason Falls    . If you’re interested in social media’s impact on marketing, follow their tweets, blogs and insights.

How is your B2B company coping with the transition to this new world of “community?”

Recently I taught a class on Recession Marketing for area business leaders. I think you’ll find this 10-minute video entertaining and useful as it explores the three marketing strategies you MUST employ during the recession. Just click on the image above … and let me know what you think!