3 Steps On How To Follow Up On "Leads" From Brand Publishing Activities

"These days, people want to learn before they buy, be educated instead of pitched."

Brian Clark, Tweet This

One of the most important things to understand when implementing a brand publishing or content driven marketing plan is that the leads you receive are not the same as the traditional leads you saw in the B2B world 20-30 years ago. When an engineer exchanges his time and contact information in order to interact with a piece of your content, he is expressing an interest in the actual topic, not your product specifically.  Will they have an eventual interest in your product?  Most likely, especially if you continue to feed them valuable information to help spur their education. But for now, they don’t know it.

If you are doing brand publishing and content marketing correctly, the engineer or operator reading your white paper, case study, how-to article or watching a video segment will most likely not even know your company’s name.  Add the fact that the story or content was actually digested days prior makes connecting the dots, when your salesperson calls prematurely, very difficult for them.

Handing “leads” from these types of activities to your sales team or distributors without first training them on the lead’s context or setting their expectations will likely end in a lot of frustration and failure.  Quickly, the “leads” will be deemed “tire kickers” and “not quality.”  Most marketing executives know that once a salesperson has a stance on a lead source, it is extremely difficult to move them off of that opinion, especially if it’s not positive.

The best advice I can give based on experience and history is to explain the narrative to your sales team and train them on how to follow up correctly when handling these leads.  Another suggestion and perhaps a more preferable option is to not give them the leads at all. At least not initially.

You as a marketing executive might want to handle moving these prospects through the funnel yourself by utilizing your marketing expertise in conjunction with these three easy communication steps:

1. Remind them what the content piece they interacted with was and discuss it.
2. Tell them how they can contact you or find out more information if they would like to explore your content or solution further.
3. Continue to nurture them by offering a steady flow of quality content.

If you delay involving your sales team or distributors and opt for influencing potential buyers through a series of emails, newsletters and other content pieces you may find yourself in a better position to identify those potential buyers that do indeed need a direct follow up from your sales team.

Happy Hunting.