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Many companies have created a lead scoring model such as [A, B, C or Cold, Warm, Hot] to help determine how valuable prospects are to your company. But what happens to the value of that prospect as time goes by? Are they as valuable six months from now as they are today?

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You already collect leads from your website, tradeshows, personal contact and other channels and are storing them in a database or CRM system such as www.salesforce.com. However, many of these leads have an interest level that while immediate is not at a point where you want to pass them on to your dealer or sales team.

Implementing a lead nurture campaign might be the answer to fulfill their immediate need. One way is to send them a product information request and then stay engaged over a defined period of time until they are ready to buy.

Below are four steps to implement a lead nurture campaign of your own.

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For many organizations, I imagine your leads come from the usual suspects; through your website, direct mail, an email newsletter, a direct inquiry to your organization, or through the efforts of your sales team making direct contacts with your prospects.

As a marketer, especially in the current economic climate, are you doing enough?

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In spite of a challenging economy, one-third of B-to-B marketers plan to increase their budgets in 2009, while only 25 percent plan budget cuts. That is the surprising findings of BtoB Magazine’s 2009 Marketing Priorities and Plans survey. Among all B-to-B companies, the areas earmarked for increases by the largest number of marketers included:

• Email (68.3%)
• Online marketing (66.5%)
• Website work (66.3%)
• Search (50.0%)
• Video (46.6%)
• Social media (46.6%)
• Webcasting (42.9%)

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Laura Ramos, a B2B marketing analyst at Forrester, has had a three-part blog series over the last several weeks that provides sound recommendations for improving B2B marketing:

Will B2B Marketing Become Obsolete? (Part I)
Will B2B Marketing Become Obsolete? (Part II)
Will B2B Marketing Become Obsolete? (Part III)

After reading the posts above, I came away with five key takeaways from her series:

1) Anybody in B2B marketing today who isn’t empowering their efforts with the technologies mostly associated with new media is on a sinking ship. As Ramos said,"technology will be a key element (but not if applied indiscriminately) to help marketing and sales shift from obnoxious bullhorn to respectful partner.”
2) Marketers have to switch from a telling mode (cranking ads out the door left and right) to a listening mode (marketing enabled by feedback from the social groundswell). Only by listening to that social groundswell and analyzing interaction data and dashboards will marketers be able to construct marketing methods that work.

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