The next edition in the Lead Nurturing Series from Gilbert Bailey as a follow up to my post a few weeks ago. 

Executing a successful customer acquisition campaign can be one of the more challenging tasks that any marketing professional may face.  In part two of this series we will examine the second phase of a lead nurturing campaign, the content phase, or as I like to call it, the “Pain Funnel.”

As you will recall, phase one of our campaign was the “branding phase.”  Leads were introduced to our brand: the logo, colors, the focus of our business and possibly a mascot (or, for large companies, something they sponsor).

Now that we have warmed the leads up to our brand, we are ready to educate them with some content.  We can accomplish this through a variety of methods:
•Information regarding a specific product or service
•White papers
•Case studies
•Blog entries
•Other educational content

Some of you may be thinking: Hey, this list is pretty obvious, what gives?  How is this process any different from my drip marketing campaign?  The difference lies in the way the educational material is delivered to the lead.  As I mentioned in part one of this series, a traditional drip marketing campaign uses attrition to stay front of mind with a lead and wear them down over time.  In our approach we will create a “pain funnel” and attempt to elicit a response from the lead.

The pain funnel works like this:

First sit down and identify 6 pains that your typical customer will experience.  (You could also do 3 and just come up with two solutions for each).  Then select a white paper, case study or description of a product or service that you sell that solves this pain.  Create six emails that clearly state the pain in the subject line and opening paragraph.  Then place a paragraph or two below the pain that introduces the solution.  But don’t give everything away.  Instead, provide a link to a landing page, blog or your website where your lead will discover the rest of the solution.  Now we are ready to load up the pain funnel.

Each month, over the next 6 months, your leads will receive an email that addresses a pain that they might experience.  If they identify with a pain they are very likely to respond and read about a possible solution.  Those that respond will be identified through lead scoring (we will talk about this in a future article) and selected for calls and direct mail.  Depending on your budget, you can introduce direct mail simultaneously with the calls or use the calls and additional emails to select only those with the most interest for direct mail.  It is important that the branding phase occurred first (see article one) so that the emails have a greater likelihood of being opened resulting in more pain-solutions in the funnel.

By introducing multiple pains-solutions through emails, calling those who respond to reinforce the pains, and finally utilizing direct mail to drive the point home, you are building the “Pain Funnel.”  As more pain and solutions are fed into the funnel those that need your services or products will begin to self identify.

Contact me at jim@jcthomas.com or at 704.377.9660 ext. 2521 for more information.