A Message from Erik Frantzen, President of Nurture Marketing

Nurture 365 continues the tradition started by our founder, the late James P. Cecil – that all communication is developed by human beings and consumed by human beings. Jim believed that from this communication we either develop a level of trust, push the source aside, or land somewhere in the middle until we decide.

Our goal is to help you simplify how you nurture and ultimately gain the trust of your audience. Who you should nurture and how you should nurture will be discussed, with the goal of making incremental improvements in your process.

We often have to make generalizations with personas, as it is very time consuming to map out each individual or find all common traits. If we are correct for 70% to 80% of the audience, our nurture program should be successful.

Our primary audience consists of Microsoft, Citrix and Cisco Partners; however, anyone involved in the worldwide business technology channel may find the content relevant.
 

The Azure Accelerator

The Azure Accelerator is a recurring feature that will focus on a particular Microsoft Azure buyer persona type and, of course, how we believe you should nurture the relationship.

Azure encompasses a great deal – from Software as a Service to Platform to Infrastructure and the hundreds of workloads under each. As a result, your nurture roadmap could be very complicated. The makeup of the consumer, such as their vertical market and organizational structure, will also dictate how you nurture and ultimately engage.

NURTURING THE AZURE BUYER PERSONA FOR BACKUP SOLUTIONS

The Azure backup buyer persona encompasses individuals who are concerned about their insufficient present strategy as well as those who are overly confident that they are not at risk. Most organizations today have some backup strategy, so losing data may or may not be a concern. But unplanned downtime or recovering from a data breach are often what keeps those involved up at night.

Backup strategy decisions are often made by middle management with access to executive leadership in mid-market and enterprise companies. With small businesses, ownership is often at least aware or has the final decision. Backup was often in the background in the past unless it caused downtime or data was lost. Today, with issues like ransomware, backup is more top of mind.

Your nurture messaging will differ depending on whether the current solution is premises based or already in the cloud. If the current solution is online, we can assume that there is some trust issue with the technology or the manner in which the present vendor is providing support.

NURTURE VISION GRID

Nurturing the Dynamics 365 Persona

In years past, many software solutions were stand-alone for the specific groups they served. Before the term Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was coined, we used solutions like Act or Goldmine for managing prospect data. Early mid-market ERP was pretty much financial software focused on GL, AP, and AR. Who we called on to discuss the potential need for the solution was clear: either the head of Sales or the CFO.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides tremendous opportunities to work with many groups and become instrumental to the entire organization. The challenge, however, may be where to start. Dynamics 365 should matter to Sales, Finance, and Operations, of course. The potential to impact senior management, lines of business, and specific departments with business intelligence, project management, and customer experience improvement opens up the need to nurture more personas with specific messages.

One approach to simplify the nurture plan may be to focus on the organization type, the current situation, and the foundation of what drives their business. Are they focused on their product, service, professional service, sales, or distribution? Will you nurture all groups or focus on one area and hope to bring in the other groups during the decision stage or after the decision is made?

NURTURE VISION GRID

“Digital Transformation” Fits with Your Nurturing – Perfectly!

Our team at Nurture Marketing is very excited as more and more digital transformation content has started appearing. We believe that your content should be personal and focus not just on business but on the effect on individuals, and digital transformation provides a treasure trove of topics. After all, digital transformation does consider technology’s effect on society or societal change.

Over the past 4 years, MIT, Booze and Company, the World Economic Forum, and McKinsey have launched studies or initiatives around the topic. Digital transformation has as much potential to bring areas of society together as it does to create more gaps.

How you view your company’s role in digital transformation will be very relevant to your audience. Whether or not you are at the forefront, your audience will want to know your opinions. Most of your clients are concerned about their clients, and this may be an area to focus on for your digital transformation nurture themes. Digital transformation will have a major impact on the client experiences for many industries.

Make your nurture buckets to apply your nurture themes by stage.