Today is a special day. As I was contemplating which guest bloggers to invite this week, this man was at the top of my list – Kevin Grossman. Kevin’s 22 years of marketing communications experience has been primarily in the human resources (HR) and recruiting industries. Hundreds of HR suppliers around the country have tapped into Kevin’s PR and social media expertise to obtain increased visibility, sales leads and improved search engine optimization (SEO). Kevin is an HR industry Top 100 Influencer (via John Sumser) and is one of the Top 25 HR Digital Influencers (via the HRExaminer and Traackr.com). And in addition to being a published writer of  children’s books, he is a regular contributor to the HRmarketer Blog, has his own blog about fatherhood and domestic violence awareness a Get Off The Ground. Besides all of his marketing greatness, Kevin is a dear friend.

Thank you for contributing to March Marketing Madness Kevin!

Starting, Scaling and Nurturing to the Tipping Point of Need

“I didn’t want to go to a big company and I didn’t want to go to a startup. Scaling a company: that’s the most enjoyable phase. That’s what I like doing.”

That was a quote from Bill Watkins, Ex-Seagate CEO, in a recent newspaper article about him becoming the CEO of a clean-tech company.

Scaling a company…the most enjoyable phase…

Wait.  Aren’t we always scaling our companies?

Most small businesses actually have to do these three things simultaneously, or at least in rapid repetitive and cyclical succession:

1. Starting up – educating the market, brand and relationship building, and differentiating from competitors
2. Scaling – educating the market, brand and relationship building, and capturing market share
3. Nurturing – educating the market, brand and relationship building, and maintaining market share

All of which share:

• Educating the market (customers, prospects and influencers)
• Brand and relationship building
• And of course, closing sales, sales and more sales

Yes, constantly starting up, scaling and nurturing — especially in this erratic, post-economic-apocalyptic world. When you think of buzz-kill in terms of marketing investment, there’s a lot of work to be done.

A lot of hard work that includes:

• Planning marketing activities
• Managing marketing activities
• Executing marketing activities
• Tracking marketing activities
• Measuring marketing activities (publicity, traffic, leads, improved SEO)
• Revise planning – shampoo, rinse and repeat all the above

In order to take the three steps of starting up, scaling and nurturing, you’ve got to allocate staff and resources to take these three steps:

Step 1: Strategy, Messaging and the Search-Optimized “Marketing” Web site.

Before engaging in any marketing, you need to have a strategy –- a long-term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal and the messaging to drive that strategy. Then you need a Web site with a strong online presence that is search-optimized to improve the volume and quality of traffic to a Web site from search engines via natural (“organic”) search results.

Step 2: Content. Content. Content.

It goes without saying, but the primary goal of your Web site is to convert visitors into prospects (then nurture them into true leads). But without site traffic, you have no prospects. And without great content, in addition to SEO, you have no site traffic, only virtual crickets chirping.

Step 3: Promotion.

Okay, now you have a winning strategy, powerful messaging, and a great Web site that is search-optimized. And you have lots of great content and processes in place to generate fresh content on a regular basis. Now you’re ready to promote and distribute that content to generate visibility, traffic and leads.

Promotional tactics being everything from:

• Direct email marketing
• Search-optimized press releases
• Media relations and pitching
• Analyst briefings
• Partnerships/affiliate programs
• Content development (articles, white papers and research reports)
• Blogging
• Podcasts/Video
• Webcasts
• Trade shows
• Speaking
• Mobile
• Online radio
• And now you’ve got social media marketing – the sharing of relevant content and the building of trust and relationships with very specific prospect groups

But let’s say you’ve only just begun down the marketing path and you’re struggling with closing sales.  Maybe you’ve executed three months of content marketing and now you’ve got a big bucket of leads – some warmer than others but most are just folks interested in your content and not much else.

What do you do?  How do you nurture and “move” folks enough to have a sales conversation?

Hammering your “lukewarm” sales pipeline with demo requests and maybe a monthly newsletter isn’t engaging them or nurturing them. The same customer service outreach you give your customers can and should be applied to your prospects.

It could be months before a prospect converts to a sale once they become a lead.

Consider these nurturing ideas:

• Keep your marketing touches value-based and content-laced. Every bit of content you generate for your outbound and inbound marketing efforts should be distributed to your prospects as well, exclusively.
• Encourage your prospects (and customers) to collaborate and engage with one another and you. Whether that be in a LinkedIn group, Facebook group, a Twitter stream and/or Twibe, one of many other professional networks, and/or your own collaborative platform. Encourage it, facilitate it and monitor it.
• Be available to answer any and all questions. And not just about your products or services either. Be available to talk about the greater part of the marketplace you occupy. Be a thought leader and be “live” — use social media, talk on the phone or via a Skype video call (to be seen). Email only doesn’t cut it any more.
• Encourage philanthropy and social causes. Corporate responsibility and virtue are the new differentiators. Get involved and encourage involvement with your firm, your employers, your customers and prospects.
• Breakdown and analyze your community demographics. If you can, that is. This way you can better serve your prospects by providing them with regionally specific content and encouraging collaborative discussions among like companies (and you) sharing the same regional pain points. Your already doing this with your customer service (or trying to) and this could help to close more deals.
• Run regular informal polls and surveys. Ask your customers and prospects about what’s going on in their world, what are the ever-changing events that affect their businesses today, what kinds of products and services do they need to meet their ever-changing needs — so many things to ask. Take the time.
• Shut up and sell me stuff. The point of all these activities is to catch prospects at the tipping point of need and drive sales conversations. Don’t forget that.

Launch your marketing efforts and never let up.  That’s the only way to sustain your sales pipeline.  Invest the time for these lead-nurturing activities as well because you never know when your prospects are at the tipping point.

Good luck.

What a phenomenal post Kevin!

Many small business owners fall into two ends of the spectrum; selling without relationship building or relationship building without selling. Kevin’s post addresses the critical balance between both: nurturing. Fantastic! Kevin is available to answer your specific questions via the comments section of this post.

Tagged as: business development, Entrepreneurs, growth, march marketing madness, marketing, marketing nurturing, results, scaling, small business