Q1 is Almost Over. Is Your 2014 Campaign Strategy Producing?

With the start of spring now less than a month away, I’m sure most of us are beginning to daydream about the prospect of sunshine and summer vacation, and the (hopefully) final disappearance of the polar vortex. But let’s not throw on our flip-flops and shut down our computers just yet.

After all, this time of year—the fast-approaching end of Q1—also marks a critical evaluation period for VARs. It’s a time to assess what has (and hasn’t) worked in 2014, and ensure the lead generation campaign strategy you put in place at the beginning of the year is actually delivering the results you anticipated.

In today’s world, deploying a multi-faceted lead generation campaign that drives more (and better) leads is crucial. Many VARs have responded to that need, studying up on—and even beginning to execute—nurturing campaigns that educate and guide potential customers through their buying process. But nurturing only gets you so far.

A trend we’re noticing among VARs is that while many have moved to nurturing prospects, they aren’t investing time into converting them to qualified leads that will close. To do that, your marketing organization must develop an integrated campaign that doesn’t just focus on a variety of nurturing and lead generation activities, but also delivers different calls to action.

For instance, if a contact is still in the awareness stage of the buying cycle, your focus with that person is primarily nurturing. You might regularly send content with links to articles or white papers that help them further explore their business situation and better assess their needs. Your call to action is to click and explore.

If a contact is deeper into the buying cycle, however, your focus should be more tuned toward getting that person to actually engage in a sales conversation and become a real sales lead. In that scenario, simply delivering the same content that you did to prospects in the awareness nurturing phase won’t work. You need content and a call to action that encourage the person to call you.

Lately as we’ve worked with VARs we’re noticing a lot of nurturing, but not much lead generation. As a result, lead rates are dropping. Marketing isn’t delivering the leads that sales (and the company) requires.

So, as you’re evaluating your marketing campaign strategy for the remainder of 2014, it’s important to consider three things:

1. The different personal, collaborative and digital attraction strategies you can use to engage your target market and attract high-quality prospects.
2. The message you’re using for contacts at various stages of their Buying Cycle.
3. The different calls to action that you can use to attract more leads faster.

It’s the calls to action that indicate which contacts are ready for a sales call. Often times, the rebuttal I hear from marketers about including calls to action in nurturing campaigns is that doing so risks alienating leads that aren’t ready to engage in sales conversations.

Over the years, however, I’ve found that concern to be mostly without merit.

In fact, our experience shows that integrating different calls to action within a nurturing campaign increases the number of leads you attract and continues to nurture other contacts who might not be ready to engage. Contacts who aren’t yet ready simply ignore the call to action and hone in on the messaging that’s meaningful to them.

Meanwhile, the opportunity to grow your pipeline with the right call to action can be significant. You just have to invest the time in identifying what those calls to action should be and understanding when (and how) you should be delivering them.

So, where does your lead generation campaign strategy stand heading into Q2? If it’s not producing results, you may want to rethink your approach.

Kendra Lee is a top IT seller, prospect attraction expert, author of the award winning books “The Sales Magnet” and “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment.