It’s no secret that the buyer’s journey has changed and that these changes have transformed how B2B marketers must communicate with their prospects.

B2B buyers are now self-educating online. They search the Internet for product information, they visit vendor websites, and they consult with their peers on social media. Forrester Research has estimated that 90 percent of the buyer’s journey is complete by the time a prospect reaches out to a salesperson.

This change means that the marketing team must nurture prospects through the large majority of the buyer’s journey, and the most effective marketers are building always-on lead nurturing programs. This LinkedIn SlideShare, The 7 Building Blocks of a Successful Lead Nurturing Program, outlines seven steps for building lead nurturing programs that work. Here’s a brief look at the seven building blocks you can use to develop your own powerful lead nurturing effort:

Work with sales and other departments to define what a good lead looks like. 

Go beyond job titles to dive deeper into what your customers want – what are their needs and what are their fears?

Segmenting your audience enables you to personalize messages to the various elements of your targets.

For each persona, you should have content that speaks to their needs at every stage of the buying process from awareness to consideration to purchase.

Be constantly vigilant in measuring, testing, and optimizing your lead nurturing program to ensure it maintains its effectiveness.

Research shows that 66 percent of prospect data is missing industry and revenue data. Your nurturing can be more effective and efficient with data that is consistently vetted and updated.

Lead nurturing via email has its drawbacks that can be boiled down to these two statistics: 1) 95 percent of website visitors don’t sign up for email, and 2) 80 percent of those who do sign up don’t open your emails. Effective marketers are embracing multi-channel lead nurturing products, such as LinkedIn Lead Accelerator, which enables targeted of anonymous website visitors and lead nurturing via display and social advertising.

It’s a given that an always-on lead nurturing program is a given for B2B marketers. For tips on how to make your own program more effective, take a look at this LinkedIn SlideShare, The 7 Building Blocks of a Successful Lead Nurturing Program.

The 7 Building Blocks of a Successful Lead Nurturing Program from LinkedIn

For a more in-depth look at how to build a lead nurturing program, download The Sophisticated Marketer’s Crash Course in Lead Nurturing.