involve continuous improvement, or to operate more efciently and - PDF document

involve continuous improvement, or to op
involve continuous improvement, or to operate more efciently and to instill a sense of ownership by all of the process stakeholders. Traditionally, we think of manufacturing as the primary beneciary of lean, but any process can be improved, and marketing is no the present day and identify component processes that can be continuously improved. We will suggest strategies and tools for implementing kaizen in digital marketing and for assessing results.Marketing has earned a bad reputation over the past half-century, a reputation for excessive cost without direct, measurable benets. During the pre-Internet years, the challenge was reaching as many households and businesses as possible, regardless of t or relevance. The theory was that at least some percentage of advertising would get through, and some fraction of the recipients would express an interest in our products and services and pick up the phone. If not, we would instruct our armies of telemarketers to call everyone on a “rented” list at all hours of and telemarketing, we spent hundreds of millions of dollars each year with low success rates and effectively poisoned the well for future sales.Enter the Digital Age, and wha

t have we learned?We’ve learned how
t have we learned?We’ve learned how to carry on our worst marketing practices and adapt them to new tools – email, paid search ads, mobile and social media advertising. The mantra continues to be, “Get in front of them, and they will come.” Unfortunately for most marketers, consumers now reject invasive marketing tactics of all kinds and have become In recent years, however, a new style of marketing has emerged that discards these ‘outbound’ tactics in favor of ‘earned media’ and relationship building online. The new approach, called focuses on attracting rather than reaching buyers and nurturing them with interesting, helpful content. Many studies have shown that inbound marketing has become far more effective than traditional outbound methods as consumers continue to reject the old ways.www.kunocreative.comseeks to attract likely buyers by publishing free content that is easy to consume online and that fullls a need or desire. In the B2B world, we publish helpful how-to’s, industry updates and educational materials that are relevant to people in our target markets to the online channels they favor, such as blogs and social networks. B2C marketers may o

ffer something more tangible, like disco
ffer something more tangible, like discounts or free trials for a limited time, and they may seek a broader reach, but the approach is the same. In either case, content or offers are not “pushed” out to a mass email. Instead, they are posted on blogs, websites and social networks as part of a daily ow of useful and creative content that interests consumers. Search engines like Google favor this type of content now and are more likely to include it in searches for relevant keywords and phrases by is still marketing; however, the primary objective is to capture qualied sales leads and pass them on to your sales team. Research shows that more than 80 percent of captured leads are lost as sales opportunities because they are not yet ready to buy or are ignored, so they move on to other resources to solve their problems. To solve these problems, digital marketers use to stay in touch and “nurture” leads with additional, helpful content that gradually convinces leads your product or service is potential buyers attracted to your website by free content that helps them solve their problems or “pain points.” Once a visitor signs up to download three categories. 25 percent a

re fully qualied sales leads that a
re fully qualied sales leads that are ready for a call by your sales team. It’s up to the marketing team to make sure these as possible. Another 25 percent are unqualied and should never be contacted by sales. These people include competitors, students, tire kickers and companies that don’t t your buyer prole economically or strategically. We need to nd a way to identify these leads at an early stage and redirect them off your sales radar screen.What is Inbound Marketing?www.kunocreative.com25%25%www.kunocreative.comThat leaves a full 50 percent that are in limbo. You don’t know whether they are interested or qualied for your sales process. It’s our job to help these leads nd their way to the right status and pass them along to the appropriate channel, staying in touch until they are closer to a decision point. Modern marketing automation software, such as HubSpot, Lead nurturing campaigns are step-by-step automated workows that send out periodic emails to each lead with more content that is relevant to their needs (based on the content they have already downloaded), providing a pathway for continued communication and “nurturing.”

In each email, we provide additional opp
In each email, we provide additional opportunities to learn more about our products and solutions and gradually move them closer to a sale. This “low friction” approach can increase lead conversion rates as much as 32 percent compared to lead generation without lead nurturing.What is Inbound Marketing?by at least 10% within 6-9 months, despite the uncertain economy.of Your Leads www.kunocreative.comWhat are the Benefits of Lead Nurturing?www.kunocreative.comNurtured leads have aNurtured leads have ashorter sales cycleof sales go to the vendor that 35-50%Customer acquisition reported throughwww.kunocreative.comWhat are the Costs of Lead Nurturing?Senior Marketing Strategist:Content Marketing Manager:Content Creation Team:Senior Graphic Designer:Web Designer/Developer:journalism background with an emphasis on marketing1-5 copywriters creating blogs, white papers, ebooks, — responsible for all digital content designresponsible for operating and analyzing all data captured network proles, creating emails, optimizing for SEOFirst, let’s dene what goes into an effective inbound marketing and lead nurturing program.In traditional outbound marketing, we are spending a lot on a

dvertising and distribution to a mass au
dvertising and distribution to a mass audience. In inbound marketing, we are creating content and distributing it through a variety of online channels including websites, blogs, social networks, industry forums, email and paid search. We are creating landing pages and call-to-action graphics to attract and convert leads. We are analyzing data collected via marketing automation systems and making recommendations for new content and new strategies. In effect, we are replacing the spending on advertising and media with creative talent and digital natives who know how to create content, share it online and operate marketing software. Lead Nurturing experts might look like this:Demand Generation ServicesProfessional VideoSearch engine optimization on website pages, blogs, videos, downloads, social proles, and press releasesPPC (paid search) and external costs for email marketing and press releasesProfessional video production costsAdditional Costs:Digital Marketing, with an emphasis on inbound marketing and lead nurturing, requires a serious investment ROI can take many months to achieve, depending on the size of your company, current brand visibility and the competitiveness of your marketplace, but th

e investment is worthwhile for several i
e investment is worthwhile for several important reasons:Inbound marketing and lead nurturing are lean processes compared to pays dividends going forward and because fewer qualied sales leads are lost due to premature direct contact or inattention. You can actually measure ROI, interested leads. Outbound nurturing have been shown to By lead nurturing, you have a By lead nurturing you have a higher probability of convertnurturing deliver more qualified prospecting for new leads472536www.kunocreative.comApplying Lean Principles to Lead Nurturing Processes within each component of Digital Marketing can be broken down into individual PDCA loops, worked on by a kaizen team, and improved on a continuing basis. Here are some examples of how this Identify and describe customer persona(s) through discussions with sales team and interviews with current customers.Identify and create content for each persona and each part of the sales funnel (top, middle and bottom); create a content map.Create a digital asset list and identify existing content that can be repurposed or updated to ll the content map; identify content that will need to be created from scratch. A dental equipment manufacturer wants

to attract new customers for its 3D ima
to attract new customers for its 3D imaging systems. and convince them to contact the manufacturer for a demonstration of 3D. We will nurture them slowly with nurturing emails, we will gradually introduce them to the product line, testimonials, demonstration videos and a calculator to show the economic benets. At each stage, we will offer them something new and helpful but also give them an opportunity to immediately reach out to a sales person.Lead Nurturing CampaignPLANDOCHECKADJUSTwww.kunocreative.comCreate an initial offer campaign, usually an email to a targeted list of opted-in identied as a top-of-the-funnel offer.Create several follow-up emails with invitations to download or view each of the sequential Create landing pages to capture the leads from each Lead Nurturing email. Create call-to-action graphics to also capture leads from website pages, blogs and Launch the campaign and begin to monitor results.clicks from emails, individual landing page conversion rates, A/B tests and any Create monthly score cards that track KPI’s and compare the measured results to projected numbers; highlight wins and losses and assess overall trends.Identify campaigns that are and are not perform

ing well versus expectations.Analyze the
ing well versus expectations.Analyze the root cause of each poorly performing component. For example, was the step from one lead nurturing email to the next too aggressive in terms of branding Adjust the campaign with revised content and/or workow to improve results and “double down” on messages and content that are performing well. This is done on By executing a marketing lead nurturing campaign in a structured, repeatable way, we can make the entire process more efcient and amenable to further analysis for purposes of continuous improvement. By monitoring results via score cards and by holding periodic kaizens, we can grow sales revenues while achieving positive ROI for our marketing budget.By creating a reproducible process for lead nurturing, we can execute these campaigns quickly and efciently, with less wasted time on process steps and faster time-to-market. If there are problems encountered with any of the steps in the process, we can hold a kaizen meeting with the sales and marketing teams to nd their root causes and implement creative ways to solve them. We are continuously improving each campaign using the Check and Adjust process steps.A second dental equipment m

anufacturer wants to promote its patente
anufacturer wants to promote its patented line of advanced shaping les to endodontists. We start by creating a new white paper, “Recent Advances in Rotary Instrumentation in Endodontics.” We know from feedback from the sales and marketing team that endodontists want to stay on top of the latest trends, so this topic is likely to be popular. At the top of the sales funnel, we refrain from promoting the specic brand and focus instead on an overview of technology and trends. Converted leads are added to a Lead Nurturing campaign that offers a second white paper, “Patient Referred Endodontics.” Each time we introduce a new download, we ask for additional information that augments the information we have previously gathered, and tion courses and videos – content that requires more of a commitment in time and further introduces them to the product and its benets.The Plan-Do-Check-AdjustLead Nurturing Campaign – Twisted FilesPLANDOCHECKADJUSTThe essential components of inbound marketing are blogging, website updates, social media updates, SEO, paid search (PPC), email marketing, landing pages, calls to action and marketing analytics. A few years ago, each of these

tasks had to be performed using a separ
tasks had to be performed using a separate piece of software, requiring expertise in each application and knowledge of how to import, export and maintain data between them for analysis. Now there are a few integrated inbound marketing platforms that combine all of these tasks into one easy-to-use dashboard. Available platforms We recommend HubSpot as the inbound marketing platform of choice due to its user-friendly interface and robust treatment of marketing data analytics.Lean Digital Marketing ToolsInbound Marketing SoftwareBy using a state-of-the-art inbound marketing software platform, your team can avoid wasting time pulling together data from diverse applications and formulating reports for analyzing and adjusting inbound marketing strategy and campaigns. Visualizing data from diverse marketing channels, segmented by campaign and content, allows your marketing team to understand and reach more accurate conclusions faster than would otherwise be possible.www.kunocreative.comIn recent years, marketing automation software platforms have been developed to help companies build lead generation campaigns (usually by email), capture leads and place them in appropriate lead nurturing campaigns usually

do not include any form of content crea
do not include any form of content creation, such as blogging or social media – they are geared specically toward demand generation campaigns tied to lead nurturing emails. Market leaders in this space include integration with industry leading customer relationship Salesforce.com.teams and automating the process of handing off leads to sales reps with critical information to assist in closing more sales.Lean Digital Marketing ToolsMarketing Automation Software & CRMMarketing automation allows you to focus on lead generation and lead nurturing content while automating many of the processes involved with communicating with leads. Automated lead nurturing campaigns with high-quality content, appropriately mapped to buyer personas and buy-cycle stages, have been shown to deliver more qualied sales leads to sales teams when the buyers are ready. Lead nurturing can make your entire sales and marketing process more efcient and lean by identifying sales opportunities when they are ready to buy. With CRM integration, your marketing and sales teams can work together more effectively, and sales reps have the information they need to close more sales.www.kunocreative.com36901 American Way, S

uite 2A, Avon, OH 44011Toll-free:www.kun
uite 2A, Avon, OH 44011Toll-free:www.kunocreative.comwww.facebook.com/kunocreative www.twitter.com/kunowww.linkedin.com/company/kuno-creativeIn days gone by, marketing was more of an art than a science. We relied on copious amounts of money to leverage mass media in order to reach more people. Marketing has evolved as consumers have learned how to reject unwanted spam and invasive advertising. Modern digital marketing focuses on earned media and voluntary participation in blogs and social media. By opting in to your content streams, marketing leads are more willing to read more and learn more about your solutions to their problems. Companies that embrace inbound marketing and lead nurturing benet from the lean nature of these marketing processes and set themselves on a course for continuous improvement for the long haul.MECLABS asks: Are you losing 95% of your leads? Lead Nurturing: Pilot campaign increases conversion 32.6% with automated emailseases conversion 32.6% with automated emails4 Marketing Misalignment [WEBINAR]5 Hard Data to Justify Your Marketing Automation Investment Finding, Creating and Managing Leads HubSpot’s Best Practices for Managing SaaS Inside SalesLEAN DIGITALA Kuno Cre