Designing Lead Nurturing Programs (A Step-by-Step Guide)
By: Çağlar Bozkurt
Tags: Marketing, Guide, Marketing Automation, Strategy, Lead Nurturing

The distributed approach is using different tools for different needs and connecting them with each other. Imagine using Drip for your workflow design and e-mail campaigns, integrating it with Pipedrive, creating native forms with your WordPress website, and of course, Zapier for connecting all of them with each other. Some tools provide an integration marketplace, but not with all of the tools out there.

Honestly, I suggest going with the monolithic approach. Even if you select a cheaper option in the monolithic space, you might not have the best experience, but you will still have a good set of features that can support your activities until you generate enough revenue to migrate to another tool. I personally used EngageBay with WordPress and Zapier and HubSpot alone. Both were great options — but HubSpot all alone is an unforgettable experience that every market must taste at some time.

2. Designing The Value Communication Map

We have our setup. Now we’ll design the value communication map.

The value communication map means designing the information flow we will make our leads to go through in the beginning. Even though most of the nurturing blog posts you’ll find out there will not tell you to do something like this, I find it highly valuable to build an initial sequence to inform the prospect about your company’s vision, market, and the reason of existence. It’ll make the whole process more comfortable, and will support you on educating the market.

How are we going to design this map? In the last 20 years, the startup revolution made a unique story flow highly popular. To better understand this, I highly suggest you to read Andy Raskin mentions it by proxying Drift’s pitch, or there is an excellent presentation about perfecting sales pitches. I want you to take a few minutes to check it, so here it is.

Leveraging this pattern, I came up with a story flow that will help you whatever kind of a company you are. If your target is to change how the mechanics of the market, take the first way, and if not, take the second way.

(if you change the market) mention the change in the market in detail,

(otherwise) tell why your company exists,

define a new world where problems magically disappear,

show a customer case study where your company solves their problems,

explain how your company supports this transformation.

At the first 3 steps, you are not selling anything. You are just trying to show an alternative world where you are consistently saying that it’s a better place to be within; and at the last step, you are showing how you support them take action and move to that better place.

I know it sounds like shenanigans, but if you leverage the right mediums, it just works. Just remember how many times you got hooked with content that had this formula.

Now, before starting working on the content, we should identify the content medium. Will we focus on developing PDF content, or blog posts, or just plain-text e-mails that include small pieces of information? That’s where your customer personas or your educated guesses about your customers will help you. But without making things more complicated, it’d be a good start to provide something digestible at the beginning like a blog post or like plain-text e-mails, and then move forward to the more investment needed content that’ll be valuable for the customer. Let’s go through an example.