Evolving Nurture Strategies
In a thought-provoking conversation, Tom Gatten explores nurturing strategies with two B2B marketing leaders: Claire Pitman-Massie, Vice President of Field Digital and Channel Marketing at ForgeRock, and Hannah Maltby, Head of Campaigns and ABM at The Access Group.
With decades of combined B2B marketing experience, Pitman-Massie and Maltby provide unique perspectives on how nurture is changing today and predictions for the next five years. Key themes include adopting an omnichannel approach, integrating sales and marketing, getting personal and shifting to ‘smart nurture’ of highly targeted, in-market accounts.
Host
Tom Gatten, was joined by marketing experts to discuss the topic.
Guests
Hannah Maltby, Head of Campaigns and ABM, The Access Group
Claire Pitman-Massie, Vice President of Field and Digital Marketing, EMEA, ForgeRock
Lessons from B2C Marketing
As Maltby explains “the role of nurturing is to increase engagement and drive urgency - which means using the channels where people are spending their time, and getting creative so that you’re standing out from the rest of the nurture noise”
She notes more frequent usage of platforms traditionally associated with B2C such as Reddit, YouTube and influencer marketing, and celebrates the “B2B doesn’t have to be boring” movement.
As Pitman-Massie suggests, “I think the B2B technology marketing has a lot that it can learn from B2C.” She notes B2C’s focus on customer loyalty and retention even after purchases as a model for post-sales nurturing in B2B.
“Buyers aren’t moving down the funnel in a neat sequence, but almost simultaneously - our nurturing efforts have to enable that” Hannah Maltby
Emotional, Outcome-Driven Nurturing
Maltby also explains how B2B decision making has grown more complex, with longer buying cycles and bigger buying committees.
As she states, “Logical, feature-benefit marketing isn’t enough anymore. You’ve got to focus your nurturing efforts on the emotional drivers – what’s the impact of this decision on the buyer's reputation? What are the personal implications of the problem your solution is trying to solve?”
Pitman-Massie agrees that this shift from functional messaging to emotional, business outcome-driven nurturing will be critical moving forward.
"It’s important to consider the role customers or brand ambassadors can play in your nurturing”
Hannah Maltby
Omnichannel, Nonlinear Nurturing
Historically, B2B nurture has heavily relied on email. But our experts emphasize the need to take an omnichannel approach. As Pitman-Massie suggests, “I think now it's time we can be inventive and innovative and look at multichannel and we can overlay that.”
She cites a content syndication program example where adding LinkedIn ads to existing email nurture dramatically increased conversion rates, simply by reinforcing messages across channels.
Maltby also advocates for a nonlinear nurture approach. She states that “we plan our campaigns based on what people need at each stage of the funnel, and with the view of progressing them through the funnel in a linear way, but the reality is that not many people, particularly in B2B, actually buy like that. Where possible, we should be allowing prospects to self-serve, with easy website navigation and retargeting campaigns to nurture and progress buyers through their journey”.
“I think the B2B technology marketing has a lot that it can learn from B2C.”
Claire Pitman-Massie
Integrating Sales for Continuous Nurturing
Our experts also emphasize tighter integration between sales and marketing to nurture cohesively throughout the funnel. As Maltby notes, “we should think about how we nurture across all of our customer facing channels, and Sales is a really important part of that”. She also states how nurturing can help free up Sales’ time to focus on activities that are going to drive revenue.
Pitman-Massie explains their “pod” structure with sales reps, SDRs and marketing aligned to key accounts for continuous nurturing. She also cites the value of sales rep input in building highly targeted, multi-touch ABM campaigns.
“I think now it's time we can be inventive and innovative and look at multichannel and we can overlay that.” Claire Pitman-Massie
Getting Personal
As Maltby states, “Nurturing can be used to learn more about a contact or account, and test and pivot as we increase our understanding of how buyers are behaving across the funnel and where nurturing can have the most impact.”
Maltby highlights how “peer to peer” nurturing, where you send content to prospects from the same persona in the vendor organization, can be used to build credibility and improve relevance.
From ‘Nurture’ to ‘Smart Nurture’
With a focus on sales conversion, our experts question the value of nurturing unqualified leads that are far from purchase-ready. As Maltby boldly suggests, “Maybe we focus too much of our efforts on nurturing people that just aren't ready to buy.”
Instead, they advocate for “smart nurture” concentrated on active prospects showing high purchase intent. Pitman-Massie concludes, “It’s about intent based and intelligent based and interest based.”
Conclusion
The B2B marketing landscape continues evolving at a rapid pace. As nurturing becomes smarter and more human, brands must embrace innovation and emotional messaging while laser targeting accounts with high purchase intent. Seamless coordination between sales and marketing also remains critical, especially as introspective brands begin shifting focus from general “nurture” to highly valuable “smart nurture.”
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