TMCnet Feature Free eNews Subscription
June 12, 2013

The Art of Lead Nurturing for SaaS Companies

By TMCnet Special Guest
Omri Erel, Marketing Director & Saas Specialist at WalkMe

You will not find much debate that establishing and nurturing leads in any industry is one of the more delicate, but crucial parts of business networking, marketing and outreach. It's a tricky problem, because it's almost entirely a sociological thing, rather than a strict, structured science of math and strategy like most business things tend to be.



Of course, this isn't to say that there's not some base strategy to be followed when it comes to the establishment of leads. The first thing to remember is that leads are, by definition, not focused or planned around any estimated times for potential customers to actually buy. By this fact alone, the success or failure of cultivating these is hard to get a timely metric on. But, the thing with this is, while you aren't dependent on a specific time for them to buy, the definition of viable leads are ones that show the potentiality to buy within a reasonable time. This time is defined by your discretion as well as culminating factors determined by the nature of your business and industry.

So, with that said, what are some tenets for nurturing SaaS (News - Alert) leads? Is it any different from other businesses? The answer is, if looked at vaguely, yes. If you look past superficial differences, however, you see that it's a similar song and dance. So, do these superficial differences justify talking specifically about SaaS leads today? Yeah, I'm inclined to think they do.

First of all, the biggest difference is obviously demographics, and in determining your demographics for lead nurturing in SaaS, you have two basic groups of people for serious business. The biggest group is going to primarily be IT and computing people, overlapping into business. A lot of SaaS solutions, while business oriented, are to handle IT-related issues such as database management, CRM and other things which were long ago migrated to the technically-minded professional. That said, keep these demographics directly in forethought when working out the type of people for marketing, outreach, and cultivation of leads.

So, with that in mind, a lot of the most successful SaaS people out there will tell you that riding buzz is the best way to establish leads, both directly and through causality, and to maintain their interest long enough for their buyer potential to actuate. I need to say that just because there are many places where buzz is harmful or at least not constructive, that's far from saying this is always the case.

Generating buzz through social channels, blogs and other digital mediums, sparking an interest, ergo leads, with your target demographic (a very digital people very much inhabiting the internet) is a very positive strategy. Buzz only becomes destructive when buzzwords begin to abstract and obfuscate the true meaning or nature of a concept or term, which you, having ethics, will not go so far as to do here, hopefully.

Now, to maintain nurturing with these cultivated or at least established leads, you need to keep them coming back, and to keep them aware of you, long after the initial buzz presence has faded. This is where some good people skills, grasp of sociology and basic human nature comes in handy.

If, after so long, these leads do not come to fruition, then it is best to try to find out passively if they opted to not use any alternative for your service, or if they chose a competitor, and to find out why. Sadly, for the moment, finding a way to get people to tell you why they didn't choose you seldom provides accurate metrics, because only angry or spiteful people will speak up, at least that's the case on the internet often enough.

Omri Erel is Marketing Director & Saas Specialist at WalkMe.




Edited by Alisen Downey
» More TMCnet Feature Articles
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]
SHARE THIS ARTICLE

LATEST TMCNET ARTICLES

» More TMCnet Feature Articles