Rate Your Lead Nurturing Program (quiz)

Automated lead nurturing has the potential to significantly impact the effectiveness of content marketing in developing sales. In fact, according to DemandGen, two-thirds of B2B marketers using lead nurturing saw at least a 10 percent increase in sales opportunities, with some seeing an increase of as much as 30 percent.

But those kinds of results rely on approaching lead nurturing methodically, as an integrated part of your overall content strategy. Take our quick 5-question quiz to see how your lead nurturing program stacks up, then find resources for capturing more opportunities in the notes below.

Let’s get started!

Read the following statements and consider how well they match your current lead nurturing strategy and implementation. Give yourself a score for each one, on a scale of 1 to 5 (strongly disagree to strongly agree), then total up your points for suggestions on what comes next.

1. We use an automated lead nurturing solution such as HubSpot to immediately engage leads with additional information and offers.

2. Lead nurturing emails provide leads with usable content that fits the lead’s stage in the sales funnel.

3. Progressive forms are used on landing pages to incrementally build a customer profile of information that can be passed on to sales.

4. We have defined the characteristics and actions that qualify a lead to be passed on to sales for direct contact.

5. Lead nurturing workflows are reviewed and updated periodically to include new assets and blog posts.

So, how did you do? Remember that this quiz is more about finding opportunities to increase the effectiveness of your lead nurturing strategy than it is about finding fault. Let’s see what your next step should be.

10 or fewer points: Maybe you’re just getting started, or maybe lead nurturing has taken a back seat to an initial push on content creation. Whatever the situation is, there is opportunity to employ lead nurturing to create stronger relationships with your contacts and help them move toward becoming customers. If, like many marketers, you simply don’t have the bandwidth available in-house to drive the initial establishment of a lead nurturing program, consider the benefits of working with a HubSpot-certified agency to help you hit the ground running and make the most of your investment in marketing automation. Check out our HubSpot Agency Checklist for tips on choosing the right partner.

11-15 points: Is one particular segment of the test causing your low score? Check the list of resources below to find ways of addressing your most vexing challenge. If several areas need improvement, it may be that it’s time to take a step back and consider your entire inbound marketing strategy from top to bottom: blog posts, social media, downloadable content, landing pages, nurturing emails, and complementary efforts such as contributed articles. All need to work together. See all of the elements of one of our client’s successful campaigns in this single download.

16-20 points: You’ve got a great start, your program may need just a bit of fine tuning to maximize results. Maybe you put together a great set of lead nurturing workflows when you first started using marketing automation a couple of years ago, but you are still sending those same emails today. Update them on a regular basis to ensure your leads are seeing your most current and relevant content in the emails they receive. Or it could be time to rethink what constitutes a sales-qualified lead as conditions in your industry change. It may take an objective outside perspective to help you find the areas in which you can capture the greatest opportunities. Learn more about what you can expect if you decide to engage in a marketing program audit and how it can improve your entire strategy: Media, Messaging and Marketing Audits Checklist.

21 or more points: Sounds like your lead nurturing program is rolling along well. What advice would you give to other marketers about fine-tuning their marketing automation and the content that feeds it? Are there other areas of your inbound marketing that you want to address? (Take these other quizzes to see if there are opportunities for an impact: Rate Your Business Blog Strategy and Grade Your Marketing Agency’s Content Creation Performance.)

Here are some resources — blog posts and downloadable ebooks or templates — to address each of the 5 questions above:

1. Automated lead nurturing solutions such as HubSpot

   a. Why We Love HubSpot (And Why We Aren’t Alone)

   b. HubSpot Implementation Timeline & Planning Template

2. Matching lead nurturing emails to the appropriate stage of the sales funnel

   a. 5 Best Practices For Lead Nurturing Workflows

   b. Lead Nurturing Emails: Personalize, Customize, Guide

3. Using progressive forms to build a customer profile

   a. How To Build Customer Profiles With Lead Nurturing

4. Defining a sales qualified lead

   a. Lead Qualification Checklist

   b. 5 Ways To Improve Your Lead Qualification Process

5. Updating lead nurturing workflows (or creating them for the first time)

   a. Plan Content Creation With Lead Nurturing In Mind

   b. Lead Nurturing Workflow Template

As I said at the beginning, lead nurturing workflows are just one element you need to consider in your inbound marketing strategy. Which one will you review and optimize next? Give yourself a total score by downloading our 30-question overall evaluation — Rate Your Inbound Marketing Scorecard — to find the opportunities in your inbound marketing program to move forward and realize greater results in lead generation and sales.