How to consider customer buying journeys in your digital nurture program

B2B marketers might be able to fill the sales funnel with leads. Have an arsenal of compelling assets to get potential customers onboard. And maybe even a plan to nudge them along the nurture to commit.

But if any part of the campaign relies on guesswork — is influenced by desire, not data — the only guarantee is that those leads won’t lead to ROI.

The buyers’ journey isn’t a series of simple checkpoints to conversion. It could be long, or short; may involve dozens of parties and personas – with different needs and schedules — and it will most probably veer off platforms you control.

It isn’t as simple as awareness, consideration, action – but each of those tenets, those stations along the buyers’ journey, need to be respected and stopped at, to ensure new customers not only complete the trip but CTAs (calls to action) become the obvious next move before dis-embarkment.

Marketers must follow the signals from the start. Test and tinker with tactics along the way — always optimising for the best outcome — and deliver the right assets, to the right people, at the right time. Only then does predicting and achieving desired outcomes become achievable.

B2B marketing has never been more challenging: Buyers have B2C expectations and increasing autonomy. The cookie era is soon to crumble. Budgets are stagnating or shrinking, and regulators are closing in. In short, the landscape is hostile.

But you can do much more, with less, and that’s what nailing the digital nurture is all about.

So, let’s look at some of the top things to consider when building out your digital nurture program.

Every journey begins with a single step — and in marketing, that’s always awareness.

All three stages have their place, and each makes the next more effective, so marketers should never skip ahead, as it is more likely to lead to a potential customer getting confused or going elsewhere than closing a deal in record time.

For a nurture to really work, marketers must know everything about who they’re serving content to, from the specifics of their role to what part they’ll play in the purchasing decision, in order to best serve their immediate needs and to propel them further along the funnel.

Each stage of the journey allows marketing teams to learn a little more about potential clients which increases their chances of meeting their purchase requirements when they’re ready to spend. Don’t miss a chance to improve the odds by being impatient, and never use guesswork when data offers a blueprint.

With increasing demands and diminishing returns, the temptation to jump ahead and unleash the full nurture arsenal is obvious — to throw all the bait in the water at the first nibble.

But marketers must be patient and only try to reel in clients when they’ve got them hook, line and sinker — or in this case when their journey has passed through the three critical stages (awareness, consideration, action).

Firing killer consideration and conversion assets too soon, to the wrong people, will only prove fatal to your nurture. Potential customers can’t be sold on a solution when they’re not properly educated about it, and they’re also likely to avoid any actions early in their research phase that might lead to a sales call they’re not ready for. As Kenny Rogers says, you need to know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em… and never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.

When accounts are fully bought in and up-to-speed on your solution, they’re already practically sold, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot by racing ahead.

Solutions are expensive and the competition is vast, so the best chance of winning is by taking the time to service all the buying groups’ needs, on their timeline, not yours.

Only fools rush in.

Buying groups, not individual buyers, make decisions, so it’s essential that teamwork is used to win them over — that marketing and sales work together from the get-go.

Sales may have a lead, but that’s not a reason to take a step back, it’s a signal to step up and work on reaching and nurturing the rest of the buying group. Meeting them at whatever stage they’re at with the appropriate asset, to get them to the next one. The nurture ends when they’re all at the final destination, and that could be six months, or 12, or more.

And while adding new names to the funnel is essential, it’s important that existing leads aren’t left unattended, because they haven’t progressed. Stagnation doesn’t necessarily mean a deal can’t be done; only that a longer nurture is required because they’re not ready yet.

Marketers should make every lead count by continuing to market to them and every other stakeholder and department inside an organisation, until the account closes, proving, and reassuring the buyer/s that your company is still relevant, and interested in them.

Buying cycles vary greatly and the longer a lead continues to engage, the more likely other leads may emerge from the same account, strengthening the chances of conversion.

And when it comes to CTA’s, marketing teams need to be more open-minded. Intent can be as simple as signing up to a virtual webinar. Some buyers just don’t want to meet sales in person.

While planning is important, a nurture isn’t something that is ever complete and should be continually optimised through testing.

Over a short period of time, by using multiple creatives, marketers can see what is under and over-performing, and utilise the most effective assets and pathways, optimising the process in real-time by turning off any product not reaching thresholds.

This allows marketers to claw back budget while simultaneously giving buyers a better, quicker, slicker experience and increasing conversion rates.

A/B testing, also known as split or bucket testing, allows marketers to identify the most effective way to nurture buying groups through the funnel, by ensuring only the best assets remain in play, and prevents the pipeline becoming a sieve with buyers getting lost, stuck, or just stagnating. Goodbye roadblocks, Adiós bad apples.

By testing at every stage, with multiple assets, marketers can improve entire workflows and eliminate the guesswork that could be suppressing their success without them even knowing. It’s proof of buyer preference, over the office favourite.

What may begin as a labyrinth of pathways, assets and options, will give way — through analytical footprints — select avenues of engagement.

So, rather than arriving at a campaign page and navigating at their own pace, buyers, unbeknownst to them, are clearing the best tracks to the final stage, the most dynamic assets, and illuminating them for all the other potential customers who follow.

There’s an art to running a perfect nurture, and it’s about maths. And more, is never better.

It may mean ushering 25 leads into a nurture at a time — from a list of 1,000 — trickling them into the funnel, day by day, week by week, to ensure each has the best possible experience.

Engagement thresholds can be utilised to move those accounts from awareness to consideration, but they may have been met by just a few individuals, or even just one overly excited researcher with a bad case of the clicks, so timeframes should be monitored to ensure enough time has passed for the content to reach enough people.

Again, don’t rush the process. Don’t overwhelm the nurture. And always ensure you’re providing buying groups with the best possible experience.

It’s also essential that the leads going in are a true match for your solution from the outset. Are GDPR compliant and have engaged with your content previously so you don’t pollute the pipeline and waste time.

A “flash in the pan” reaction, won’t make a successful campaign.

Marketers need to control the pace, constantly offer new assets, which they can test along the way, and always check the analytics to ensure the pipeline is optimised.

Vanity metrics will get you nowhere, because more leads don’t mean more business, only more work.

Marketing teams need to ensure sales, not to mention their senior leadership, understand the numbers that really matter because ROI will never be reached when the equation contains bad maths.

While lead quotas are unhelpful, problems also occur when details, or limited actions, like filling in a form, are not seen for what they really are. Contact details are simply that. Only through engagement does a phone number, or email address, become something more tangible – a lead that may lead somewhere.

While marketers may be under pressure to show immediate ROI for their efforts, vanity metrics are not real pipeline, and for a proper nurture to work, everyone needs to get onboard with that reality.

B2B products and services are often worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, so, unlike the sale of a pair of shoes, time must be spent educating buying groups, alleviating concerns, and answering questions, until the only one left is, where do I sign?

No one is dropping a bundle on a product they saw in a tweet, and no one is getting swayed by a conversion asset they got served before they even knew who the company was who made it.

Killer assets can close deals, but not when they’re promoted too soon; to the wrong people. They must be mapped onto a nurture and the pathways that lead there should be constantly tested to ensure they’re never missed, or even, avoided.

A nurture path aims to educate, sway and then prompt buying groups to act, but it is also a learning experience for marketing teams, who should consider it a live process that can always be improved.

No leads should be left behind.

By adopting the five key approaches above, marketers can streamline their nurture and safeguard it from problems that they may not even have been aware of, to achieve results they never thought possible.