Beyond the MQL: A Three-Tier Model for B2B Qualification

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Beyond the MQL: A Three-Tier Model for B2B Qualification

The MQL was a good idea until it got bastardized. The original concept was a contract between marketing and sales: marketing sends leads only when there's real evidence of buying readiness, and sales commits to timely follow-up. It worked well. Then marketing teams gamed the scoring to hit volume targets, and any campaign responder became an "MQL." Sales lost trust, and the "MQL is dead" movement followed.

The overcorrection has been to focus exclusively on hand-raisers: demo requests, inbound inquiries, people who explicitly ask for sales contact. That feels disciplined, but it creates real problems. It's too passive, ceding the initiative to buyers who may never recognize on their own that they have a problem worth solving. It means reaching out too late, after buyers have already built their shortlist without you. And it forfeits the first-mover advantage that Bosworth's Solution Selling research showed is worth a 90%+ win rate.

The real problem was never the MQL concept. It was the binary thinking: qualified or not, ready or not, engage or don't. Interest and intent are different signals, and conflating them is what broke the system.

This article introduces a three-tier model that replaces one broken label with three honest contracts between marketing and sales:

Hand-Raisers are explicit requests for engagement. No scoring needed. Route immediately.

MQX (Marketing Qualified) represents marketing's evidence-based judgment that buying activity may be happening at an ICP account. These deserve proactive, consultative outreach with realistic conversion expectations communicated to sales.

MEX (Market Engaged) covers the right people at the right accounts who are engaging with your ideas but showing no buying signals. These people aren't qualified, but they're worth talking to, because helping buyers recognize latent pain is how you create demand, not just capture it.

The article also covers the expected value math behind why engaging at lower probability thresholds makes economic sense, why outreach quality is a variable in that equation (not a constant), what good latent-buyer outreach looks like drawing on Solution Selling and the Challenger Sale, and what metrics actually matter once you move beyond the MQL.

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11 Predictions for B2B Go-To-Market in 2026

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11 Predictions for B2B Go-To-Market in 2026

I've made public predictions about B2B go-to-market for four years, grading myself each time. This year was the hardest, since AI is moving so fast and everything feels uncertain. As Nicolas de Kouchkovsky says, "2026 won't be predicted as much as navigated."

But committing to specific predictions helps me navigate the year, even if I don't get them exactly right.

One thing I am confident about: enterprise adoption will remain incremental, and the gap between what's possible and reality will be large.

Here are my predictions; I hope they help you navigate your year.

PS: The full 6,676 word article is hosted on the Chiefmartec blog: Jon Miller’s Predictions for B2B Go-To-Market in 2026.

1️⃣ Marketing to agents, not just humans — AI agents will increasingly act as research partners in buying committees. Teams will start tracking agent activity and designing content and data structures for machine consumption.

2️⃣ AI transforms martech, but not in 2026 — Autonomous agents and new tools are real, but enterprises move cautiously. In 2026, most martech still looks like familiar SaaS with AI layered in.

3️⃣ Composable stacks grow slowly — Composable architectures are the long-term direction, but they shift complexity rather than remove it. Fewer than 20% of teams will be ready in 2026.

4️⃣ Context engineering becomes a thing — The real value of AI comes from operational context that lives in people’s heads and Slack threads. Formalizing that knowledge for AI becomes a new discipline.

5️⃣ Reasoning AI replaces brittle rules — Rules-based automation can’t handle ambiguity. Reasoning models start taking over the messy middle between simple automation and human judgment.

6️⃣ Journey orchestration moves to AI playlists — Personalization isn’t infinite content; it’s the right action at the right time. AI assembles unique journeys from a finite set of assets.

7️⃣ AI inbox gatekeepers make email earned — With hundreds of billions of emails sent daily, buyers rely on AI filters. Email attention shifts from volume to relevance and trust.

8️⃣ Taste, trust, and accountability matter more — As AI floods the market with mediocre content, buyers gravitate toward trusted voices, clear points of view, and people who stand behind their ideas.

9️⃣ Public intent data commoditizes — When everyone has access to the same signals, they stop being differentiators. Advantage comes from proprietary data, combinations, and timing.

🔟 Signal-based orchestration defines the next stack — Martech evolves toward three layers: signals, AI decisioning, and execution APIs. The transition will be messy but directional.

1️⃣1️⃣: Uncertainty intensifies — Economic and AI-driven uncertainty remains elevated. Entry-level roles are already being disrupted, and this pressure won’t stay contained. Preparation beats prediction.

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I Graded My 2025 Predictions. Here's What I Got Wrong (and Right)

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I Graded My 2025 Predictions. Here's What I Got Wrong (and Right)

I spent the break grading my 2025 B2B predictions. Overall Grade: B.

The pattern that emerged: I was generally right about direction, but too optimistic about speed. Often because I wanted these changes to happen.

WHAT I GOT RIGHT

Cold email is dying — reply rates collapsed to 1-5%. AI SDRs became "spam cannons that burn through your TAM." Seat-based pricing is giving way to consumption models (67% of SaaS companies now use them).

MQL criticism hit critical mass, and the brand investment conversation shifted exactly as predicted.

AI agents moved beyond proof-of-concept: 23% of organizations are scaling them, and usage surged 233% in six months.

WHAT I UNDERESTIMATED

The velocity of AI adoption in sales — 75% of reps now use AI tools, way higher than my 25% prediction.

The explosion of B2B influencer marketing and partnership ecosystems. 69% of SaaS leaders are increasing partnership investment.

How quickly Answer Engine Optimization became the top topic at every CMO dinner.

WHAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

The ground-up reimagining of marketing automation platforms. We got incremental AI features bolted onto legacy systems, but these are still fundamentally rule-based platforms with LLM wrappers, not AI-native orchestration engines.

True autonomous buying agents. While 90% of buyers now use ChatGPT for research and 72% encounter Google AI Overviews, high-stakes purchases still require direct human validation.

THE HARDEST GRADE: D

I predicted CMOs would reframe marketing's role from tactical execution to strategic market leadership.

The opposite happened.

Only 14% of CEOs view their CMO as effective at market shaping. 84% of CMOs report high strategic dysfunction. 48% experience high burnout.

This one stings because it matters the most. But it also creates the biggest opportunity for those willing to lead the transformation.

WHAT I LEARNED

Aspiration doesn't equal prediction. I wanted CMOs to reclaim their strategic seat. I wanted marketing teams to escape the MQL hamster wheel. I wanted MAPs reimagined from AI-first principles. Wanting something badly can blur the line between forecast and wishful thinking.

The gap between LinkedIn and reality remains wide. Everyone talks about being customer-first, tracking buying groups, and investing in brand. Far fewer are actually restructuring their organizations and budgets around these principles.

And technology moves faster than adoption. AI agents exist and work, but organizations need time to integrate them, build guardrails, and figure out where humans add most value. Having the capability and scaling it across an enterprise are different problems.

LOOKING AHEAD

I'm deep into my 2026 predictions now, armed with this scorecard. They'll publish in a few weeks.

This time, I'm being more careful to separate what should happen from what will happen. The AI transformation is real. The shift from MQLs to buying groups is happening. Brand investment is gaining traction.

But these are multi-year transformations, not annual pivots. The gap between what's possible and what's practical remains wide.

What patterns are you seeing as we head into 2026?

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The Future of B2B Marketing: New Playbooks, Strategic Brands, and AI Agents (11 Predictions for 2025)

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The Future of B2B Marketing: New Playbooks, Strategic Brands, and AI Agents (11 Predictions for 2025)

Two forces are colliding in B2B go-to-market: the decline of the traditional playbook and the meteoric rise of AI.

In 2006, we founded Marketo and I helped create that traditional playbook — the one built on MQLs, marketing automation, and tracking every click. For years, it worked brilliantly… until it didn't.

Now, the “gum ball machine” approach to marketing (“budget in, MQLs out”) has become unsustainable. Buyers are burned out by relentless outreach, and trust is at an all-time low. It’s time to reframe marketing’s role in revenue and lean into brand-building as a long-term differentiator.

At the same time, AI agents are reshaping how we work and buy. They’re handling repetitive tasks like qualifying leads and building campaigns, and helping us make purchases by filtering and summarizing information. In this world, experiences that can't be filtered or summarized will become marketing's new currency.

These two trends are driving the most profound transformation in B2B marketing since the advent of marketing automation.

And they work together. As AI finally delivers on the promise of “automation” in marketing automation, it will free us to focus on the strategic, creative work that truly moves the needle. Put another way, if AI can handle the "-ing" in marketing, then we can focus on the "market": understanding our buyers, crafting compelling narratives, and building memorable experiences.

This shift is at the heart of my 11 predictions for how B2B will evolve in 2025 and beyond.

Here's a sneak peek:
1. Companies will slowly break from their "gumball machine" MQL addiction 🍬
2. CMOs will work to reframe marketing's role in revenue 📈
3. Marketers will rebalance budgets toward brand 🌟
4. AI agents will gain early real traction in the enterprise 🤖
5. MOps teams will use AI to trade tactical tasks for strategic impact 👩‍💻
6. AI will start to replace junior sales roles but augment strategic sellers 🤝
7. Companies will adopt AI SDR agents — but automated cold prospecting will fall flat ❄️
8. Seat-based pricing will give way to value-based models 💺
9. Agents will begin to transform how we buy — and how we go-to-market 🛍️
10. Experiences, relationships, and original content will stand out as AI filters out traditional marketing 🎉
11. Marketing automation will be reimagined for the AI era 🚀

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Particle Physics Meets Pipeline: Introducing Atomic Buying Journeys

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Particle Physics Meets Pipeline: Introducing Atomic Buying Journeys

Introducing Atomic Buying Journeys – a model that views your brand as the nucleus of an atom and your customers as electrons orbiting in different energy states.

As B2B marketers, we're always searching for new ways to understand and engage our customers. We've gone from megaphones to magnets, from campaigns to conversations, from funnels to flywheels. What if the next analogy came from Physics and Chemistry?

In this model, your brand sits at the center as the nucleus. Around it orbit your customers and prospects in different shells, each representing a stage in the customer lifecycle.

This model flips our traditional thinking on its head. Instead of a funnel where customers fall through stages, we now have a model where moving customers outward — towards advocacy — requires energy input.

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From MQLs to Meaningful Connections: The New Rules for B2B Go-To-Market Success

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From MQLs to Meaningful Connections: The New Rules for B2B Go-To-Market Success

“Marketing is not a gumball machine.”

Our addiction to MQLs has led us astray. We've taught people to view marketing as a "budget in, leads out" machine, and became hooked on the sugar rush of MQLs.

By bombarding buyers with unwanted emails and aggressive SDR tactics, we're not building relationships — we're burning them. These short-term tactics might boost MQLs, but they erode trust and hurt the customer experience.

The result over time? Missing pipeline, low SDR productivity, high CMO turnover, and poor alignment.

It's time for a new approach. One that shifts from quantity to quality, from quick wins to long-term relationships. One that treats buyers as people and seeks to help them succeed.

This new approach starts with the fundamentals: product-market fit, positioning, and brand. Get these right, and even an average marketing team can shine. Get them wrong, and no amount of heroic execution will deliver results.

  • Product-market fit: Your product satisfies a strong market demand and solves an urgent problem. 

  • Positioning: You're differentiated and own a distinct place in the buyer's mind. 

  • Brand: It's how people feel about you when you're not in the room. It's why they choose you over a cheaper alternative.

Driving this change requires a new kind of CMO. One who excels at collaborating with peers, who elevates marketing from a tactical lead gen function to a strategic driver of company growth: The Chief Market Officer.

It also requires new metrics. Brand awareness and reputation. Account engagement. Shared pipeline goals. NRR and NPS. Metrics that align with the new realities of B2B buying.

The old martech stack must evolve too. We need AI-powered solutions that support personalized, adaptive customer experiences while providing marketers with new efficiency and insights.

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The Marketing Playbook I Helped Create Doesn’t Work Anymore. Here’s the New B2B Marketing Playbook.

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The Marketing Playbook I Helped Create Doesn’t Work Anymore. Here’s the New B2B Marketing Playbook.

Are you feeling like your marketing has become less effective? Like your digital, content, and email campaigns are not creating the same amount of pipeline as they have in the past?

The marketing playbooks we’ve used for years just aren’t working. Buyers are numb to our traditional tactics. 

In this post, I explain why nothing works anymore and share the new playbook, filled with go-to-market techniques that are working today, including conditioning the market to your solution and engaging the right accounts at the right time with the right plays.

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B2B Marketing Predictions for 2024: 8 Trends That Are Changing the Game

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B2B Marketing Predictions for 2024: 8 Trends That Are Changing the Game

In this post, I first look at my 2023 predictions, examining what I got right, and where I missed the mark including the unexpected impact of AI. And then I focus on exploring the trends that will shape our industry in 2024.

From the short-term challenges and long-term potential of AI to the evolution of email marketing, I delve into the forces driving change in B2B. I also discuss the decline of the traditional demand gen playbook and the rise of original research and data-driven content as the new thought leadership currency.

I explain why leading companies are investing in owned media and engaged communities, and why blended go-to-market approaches are becoming the norm. I also tackle the impending end of third-party cookies and why many B2B marketers aren't prepared for this significant shift.

Finally, I introduce the concept of Qualified Buying Groups (QBGs) as the new benchmark for success, replacing the outdated MQL.

Join me as I explore the challenges and opportunities that await us in 2024 and discover what the future holds for B2B marketing!

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What Physics Taught Me About Marketing

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What Physics Taught Me About Marketing

In this post, I share how my background in physics has shaped my approach to marketing. While these two fields may seem worlds apart, I believe that the rigorous, quantitative thinking I learned in physics has made me a better marketer.

I challenge the notion that marketing is a purely creative, "arts and crafts" function. Instead, I argue that marketing can and should be a data-driven, scientific discipline that can be tested and measured.

Drawing from my physics background, I discuss how the principles of harmonic oscillators, resonant frequencies, and other concepts from classical mechanics can be applied to marketing challenges. I also explore how mathematical skills and fundamental truths from physics have informed my marketing strategies.

Join me as I share the key lessons from physics that have guided my marketing career and discover how a left-brained approach can elevate marketing to a science.

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Can AI Really Make Go-to-Market More Productive?

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Can AI Really Make Go-to-Market More Productive?

Recent studies are shedding light on the impact of AI in the workplace, particularly in the context of B2B go-to-market strategies. The findings reveal a nuanced picture: while AI can significantly boost performance and productivity, it also has limitations, especially in areas requiring accuracy and creativity.

A Harvard Business School study found that consultants using ChatGPT-4 outperformed their non-AI-using counterparts in various tasks, completing more work faster and with higher quality. However, another study highlights how humans, not AI, still produce the most creative ideas.

I explore the concept of "The Jagged Frontier" – the unclear boundary between tasks where AI excels and where it falls short – and the risks of over-reliance on AI, which can lead to disengagement and poorer decision-making.

I present two approaches for integrating AI into workflows: the "Centaur" approach, which clearly divides tasks between humans and machines, and the "Cyborg" approach, which deeply integrates the two.

I discuss the implications of these findings for various aspects of B2B go-to-market, from ABM and content marketing to sales and customer success. I argue that a hybrid approach, combining AI's strengths with human creativity and nuance, is the most effective strategy moving forward.

Discover how to navigate the complex landscape of AI in the workplace and harness its power while avoiding its pitfalls.

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What is the Difference Between Thought Leadership and Content Marketing?

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What is the Difference Between Thought Leadership and Content Marketing?

Thought leadership and content marketing are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. In this post, I explore the key differences between these two important marketing concepts.

Content marketing is a business process that involves creating and distributing valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined target audience, with the goal of driving profitable customer action. It's about both the creation and distribution of content, and it needs to be tailored to a specific audience, provide value, and drive measurable business outcomes.

In contrast, thought leadership is the work product of individuals or firms recognized as authorities in their specialized fields. Thought leaders offer guidance, clarity, and sometimes contrarian ideas that require attention and can lead people in unexpected directions. When done well, thought leadership builds trust in your brand because buyers trust experts.

While both thought leadership and content marketing can build awareness and brand, true thought leadership is much rarer. If a firm wants to create thought leadership, it must hire genuine thought leaders.

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How Do You Explain Marketing to a Six-Year Old?

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How Do You Explain Marketing to a Six-Year Old?

Sometimes you write a simple post that seems to capture your audience's attention more than you'd expect. That certainly happened to me in my post How Do You Explain Marketing to a Six-Year Old?

It all started one day when I was trying to explain to my (then) six-year old son what I do, and he asked “what is marketing?” I thought for a second, and came up with this: “Marketing is what you do in business when you want to help persuade people to want and to buy what you have to sell.”

After my basic explanation, I tried to use the example of a lemonade stand. I asked my son what he might do to sell as much lemonade as possible. I expected him to talk about signs (that’s where my head went first), but he actually started by talking about pricing. (Start high, he said, and then lower the price if we need to.) And then he talked about making sure we had a good location. And only then did we talk about advertisements. (We also talked about the product itself, making sure the lemonade was good in the first place.)

For me, it was a great reminder that marketing is much more than just promotions and marketing campaigns. The 4 Ps (product, place, price, promotion) still matter, and marketing has a strategic role to play in the success of the business.

So, how would you explain marketing to a six-year old?

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The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Marketing Analytics

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The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Marketing Analytics

The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Marketing Analytics is one of my best pieces of thought leadership.  Seventy pages long, it covers everything I've learned about:

  • How to build marketing respect and accountability

  • Which metrics to use (and which to avoid)

  • The best ways to measure marketing program ROI

  • How to forecast marketing's impact on revenue

  • How to design the best dashboards for your business

  • And much more!

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Lessons on How to be a Leader

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Lessons on How to be a Leader

As an executive, the journey of learning and growth never ends. In this post, I share some of the key lessons I've learned from various sources, including CMG Partners CMO's Agenda™ and Paul Albright, Marketo's former Chief Revenue Officer.

First and foremost, executives must be business leaders, not just departmental managers. This means earning a seat at the revenue table, balancing vision with action, and combining creativity with hard data and measurement.

Customer intimacy is another crucial aspect. Every successful strategy starts with a deep understanding of the target market, and high-growth companies are more likely to tie marketing executives' compensation to customer satisfaction.

Innovation is about transformation and reinvention, but it can be challenging, especially when it means moving away from what made you successful in the past. Effective executives continually ask how they can transform their marketing and business, even if it means embracing strategies that are alien to them.

Managing a high-performance team is also critical. This involves cultivating an execution-driven culture based on facts and results, setting goals and measuring progress, being data-centric and customer-focused, taking the initiative, and being direct and real with your team.

I conclude by asking readers where they go to learn and what their favorite lessons are, inviting them to share their own insights and experiences.

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Using Sales Development to Turn Marketing Leads into Qualified Sales Leads

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Using Sales Development to Turn Marketing Leads into Qualified Sales Leads

I've long argued that the effective use of a Sales Development team is an essential component to a truly high-performance revenue engine. This team is also sometimes called Lead Qualification or even Business Development, but regardless of what you call it, this team has one exclusive focus: to review, contact and qualify marketing-generated leads and deliver them to Sales Account Execs.

In March, 2011 I authored a Marketo ebook called The Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development.  (It has since been updated, download the latest copy here.)

Here are a few highlights from the guide, starting with Seven Ways that Sales Development Reps Drive Revenue:

  1. More consistent and better quality follow-up on leads = better conversion of leads into opportunities. When you have a qualified lead, it's too valuable to call once and leave a voicemail.  You want someone whose sole job is to contact your leads, answer questions, make sure they are a fit, and get them connected to sales teams.
  2. Faster lead response times = better conversion rates. When a lead submits an inquiry on your website, the faster the response the better.  According to a Lead Response Management study, a five-minute lead response is 21X more likely to convert than after 30-minute wait.  SDRs can focus on this fast response time.
  3. Better economics. Salespeople are expensive and you want them focused on closing business, not qualifying raw leads, talking to people who don’t want to talk to them, or worse, wasting time with unqualified prospects. It makes sense to have lower-cost SDRs talking to leads and passing just the right ones onto sales. 
  4. The human touch enhances lead nurturing. Whether or not leads are sales-ready, SDRs can nurture relationships with each interaction. By talking with more leads, you can offer personalized thought leadership and value around a lead’s individual pain points, and cultivate future demand. 
  5. Superior data. It's easier to require SDRs to enter proper information about lead qualification and disposition, so marketing gets better data accuracy and information they can use to optimize future efforts.
  6. Improved revenue cycle analytics. By adding a stage between marketing and sales, you’ll be able to track conversion rates for each step. This means you can isolate problems and resolve them faster than if you lump together the responsibilities of qualifying and closing leads.
  7. Talent development for sales. Your Sales Development reps can play an important role in your sales talent pipeline, effectively serving as your “farm team” for future quota carrying reps. 

The guide goes on to cover these common questions about the sales development process:

  1. When Should Marketing Pass a Lead to the SDRs?
  2. When Should SDRs Pass a Sales Lead to an Account Executive?
  3. How Do You Determine Which Leads are Accepted by Sales?
  4. How Should I Allocate Leads to SDRs?
  5. What Kind Of Conversion Rates Can I Expect?
  6. Should Sales Development Report to Marketing or Sales?
  7. How Many SDRs Do I Need / How Big Should The Lead Qualification Team Be?
  8. How Can I Hire the Best SDRs?
  9. How Much Should I Pay My SDRs?
  10. How Should I Best Train my Lead Qualification Team?
  11. Can I Outsource My Lead Qualification Or Do SDRs Need To Be In-House?

Check out my Definitive Guide to to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development for my detailed answers to all these questions.

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The Expanding Role of Video in Online Marketing

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The Expanding Role of Video in Online Marketing

We have only just begun to realize the impact that video will have on online marketing. Remember how much of a game-changer television ads were to print and radio? Just imagine what happens when online video does the same thing to internet advertising.

From Lean Forward to Lean Back

Millennials today watch less live "traditional" TV than other groups (41% to 59%), and nearly 3X as much online video than non-Millennials (34% to 12%) (source).  They are watching on mobile devices and connected TVs, which allows for individually addressable advertisements. This is driving yet another revolution in online video: in recent history, watching online video meant sitting at our desks in a “lean forward” mode. Now, online video is now available to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Now, we can watch video in line at Starbucks, or surf through videos while leaning back on our couches at home.

Soon, it will be possible to watch a custom-curated channel of online videos tailored just for you.  Sometimes, you'll want to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones; other times, your custom channel. Such personalization and accessibility are especially important to marketers who know that buyers are extremely adept at filtering out unwanted marketing messages.  A marketer may not be able to reach a prospect through e-mail or phone, but once a video gets into a customized feed that reflects the prospect’s exact personal interests, the video will stimulate action.

How to Optimize Your Marketing with Online Video

In February, 2011 I explored this topic in my blog post, How to Optimize Your B2B Marketing and Sales with Online Video. In it, I shared my top 10 recommendations to promote your online videos (which do you think are still true?):

  1. Search optimize your video with text summary.
  2. Replace static ads with viral pay-per-click (PPC) displays.
  3. Capture sales leads with longer form video.
  4. Bolster conversion with YouTube promotion and Call-To-Action overlays.
  5. Integrate video into your email marketing.
  6. Increase downloads of marketing collateral with a video-enabled landing page.
  7. Leverage social media.
  8. Feature videos on your website.
  9. It’s all about control… and a consistent brand.
  10. Create sales videos to engage and qualify buyers.

 

 

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Marketing Forecasting: Why Marketing Should Forecast Revenue

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Marketing Forecasting: Why Marketing Should Forecast Revenue

At executive staff and board meetings, the number one topic of discussion is never the upcoming marketing program or the new brand strategy – it’s almost always the revenue forecast. Everyone wants to know if the company will make the target for this quarter and what next quarter is going to look like.

Invariably, this discussion is led by the sales executives, with little or no input from marketing. This ability to make revenue forecasts – and to be held accountable for delivering against them – is the single biggest factor that gives sales more credibility (and power) than marketing at most companies.

But in a world where buyers are doing their own research and delaying engagement with sales, the sales team has less and less visibility into future revenue; a traditional forecast completely misses the opportunities that are being cultivated by marketing but have not yet entered the sales pipeline.

This is why marketing forecasting is so important. I am not talking about “traditional” marketing forecasts, which take the form of a top-down market size analysis. I am talking about bottoms-up predictions of future revenue and pipeline based on a quantitative understanding of how potential customers move through the revenue cycle. Done right, the marketing forecast gives the CMO the confidence to stake a portion of his or her compensation on meeting the goal, and the CSO relies on marketing’s input to make a valid forecast for the period.

For details on why marketing forecasts are so important in the age of information scarcity, and detailed step-by-step instructions on how to implement them at your company, check out my ebook: Marketing Forecasting: The Hidden Secret of Today’s Most Accountable CMOs.

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Full-Funnel Marketing - Nurturing Relationships Without Contact Information

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Full-Funnel Marketing - Nurturing Relationships Without Contact Information

I introduced the term "seed nurturing" in early 2010 to describe the practice of building relationships with qualified prospects before you have their contact information (e.g. personally identifiable information).

This concept has become known as "full-funnel" marketing, and it is increasingly important since prospects are educating themselves long before you actually identify them. They are on your site as anonymous visitors, and researching your products with third-party resources, word-of-mouth, and social media. Just because you can't identify these individuals doesn't mean they aren't qualified prospects — and because of this, you must nurture them just as you would the known contacts in your database.

In my blog post, Introducing Seed Nurturing, I introduced the following requirements for successful full-funnel marketing:

  • Personalize interactions with anonymous visitors
  • Make valuable content freely available on your site and over social media
  • Use social media to build a rock-solid reputation that builds credibility and trust with prospects

UPDATE: Since 2010, there are additional options for marketing to "anonymous" visitors and nurturing relationships outside of the inbox, including ad retargeting, sophisticated display targeting, and rich audiences on social media.

I'm excited to see how these concepts play out.  LinkedIn's July 2014 purchase of Bizo is a key validation of these concepts... stay tuned.

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