Businesses will often think that lead generation would be enough to improve their company’s bottom line. You will capture leads, convert them into customers, and take their money. However, you need to pay attention to what happens between the lead gen process and closing the sales. It won’t be realistic to say that you will start selling your product after collecting your leads. Remember that leads are just your prospects; they are not guaranteed sales. Therefore, you should understand what lead nurturing is.
What is Lead Nurturing?
In the simplest definition, lead nurturing strategy is developing your relationship with your prospects and nurturing them to encourage them to buy your products or services. If you have a lead list, understand that more than half of it will not be ready to commit to your company. Perhaps you collected the leads through an opt-in form or sales prospecting. However, just because you manage to capture their contact information does not instantly mean they will be willing to spend their money. You are naïve if you think that you are their only option.
Why Is It Important to Nurture Your Leads?
According to the reports, at least 57% of marketers believe that a lead nurturing campaign is crucial for marketing automation. When collecting a significant volume of leads, it is essential to have automation software to help you nurture your leads. It ensures that you reach out to all your prospected customers during the crucial part of the buying process. If marketers focus on nurturing their leads, their sales can increase to at least 50%, and their marketing cost will decrease to about 33%. Moreover, 47% of the large purchase is due to nurturing leads. These are just some of the reasons why it is vital to promote your relationship with your customers.
What Are Some of the Problems that Lead Nurturing Can Fix?
Marketers will encounter a range of challenges and headaches when launching their campaigns. If you have a robust lead nurturing marketing campaign in place, you will be a step ahead in developing brand loyalty and closing deals.
Dormant Leads
Nurturing leads increases the possibility of the leads buying by developing a relationship with them. Forging relationships is critical in establishing sales. With sales nurturing, you have the chance to build trust and loyalty.
Long Sales Cycle
It is natural for the consumers to take some time to explore the market. They want to educate themselves on their options before they decide. In today’s age, when information is accessible, it is common for the sales cycle to be significantly longer than before. However, you shorten the process and convert more sales leads into paying customers through lead nurturing strategy.
Lower Engagement
You may have an effective marketing strategy in place, but it is not translating into a desirable engagement rate. When you communicate with your leads and listen attentively to their needs, you demonstrate your knowledge and value and establish impact and trust.
What Are Some Effective Lead Nurturing Strategy?
Nurturing leads has become a critical part of the business’ success. The tactics that you will implement will always have a direct impact on the decision of your customers. There are different ways to nurture them, but below are some of the most effective for general types of businesses.
Content Mapping
About nurturing leads, there will be on one-size-fits-all strategy. Based on the study, the best lead nurturing strategy should speak directly to your target market. Therefore, you can nurture them by creating targeted content. It is the process of creating content that is relevant to your consumers. Always remember to create something that will be in line with your challenges and goals. The best way to understand the best content you should make is to rely on content mapping. Map your content depending on the buyer’s sales cycle stage and persona.
Using Multi-Channel Techniques
Years ago, a lead nurturing campaign involved the process of launching email campaigns to a generic lead list. Today, marketers hunt for new technologies and strategies that will help them go beyond the email nurturing procedure. Using a range of marketing automation, marketers now have the power to launch multi-channel strategies. An effective multi-channel technique must involve comprehensive paid retargeting, email outreach, direct outreach, dynamic web content, social media, and marketing automation. Since there are so many things involved, executing the strategies appropriately could be daunting to some. Therefore, you need to ensure that your marketing department is aligned correctly and functioning cohesively.
Multiple Touches
While the buyers’ journey and process in reaching their decision are entirely different, research showed that implementing simple touches will prompt the public to be more aware of your company and product. Eventually, you will convert them into customers. On average, it will usually take 7-13 touches before you successfully convert these leads. The best lead nurturing marketing campaign will support the lead to progress naturally through your sales funnel. You can do this by answering some of their most common concerns and questions. You can reach out to them using different channels like social media, white papers, direct mail, interactive calculators, etc.
Follow-Up Your Leads
Some of you may think that it is pretty apparent why it is necessary to conduct a follow-up call immediately, but many marketers are missing that golden time. Perhaps this is due to the large volume of leads. In this case, automating your lead nurturing strategy is extremely important. A timely phone call or email message is an excellent way to convert your leads into sale opportunities. Reports showed a higher chance for the leads to be converted if you call them immediately after capturing their information.
When you managed to make a well-planned and timely call, this would be far more effective than cold calling. You are most possibly aware of what the user is searching for, and you can personalize your message to them depending on their online behavior. Additionally, you also have all the information you need to do basic research about the person. Find out which organization they are working for and their role in the company.
Developing Personalized Email Messages
Some marketers will tell you that email marketing is dead, but it remains one of the most effective lead nurturing marketing strategies. Personalization of your messages through this channel will produce a far better result than the standard type of email. Based on the report of Accenture, 41% of the consumers choose to look for other options due to a lack of a personalized marketing approach.
There are various ways on how you can personalize the message. For instance, you can develop triggered emails that you will send to the prospect once they complete an action on your web page. For example, they can get a free ebook on your site, click on the link, or download content. When you take advantage of personalization, you can deliver the appropriate messages to the right people at the best time.
Lead Scoring
Not a lot of you will be familiar with the concept of lead scoring. In this method, you will be ranking your prospect depending on their perceived value. The numerical value you will assign to each lead can be related to their browsing activities, social media engagement, conversion events, and other online interactions. The score will determine which lead should be handled directly by your sales representative. You will also identify the leads that you must nurture.
Aligning Your Lead Nurturing Strategies
When your sales strategies and marketing tactics align, a lead nurturing campaign will produce your desired result. Moreover, there should also be a noticeable improvement in your customer retention rate. Both marketing and sales influence your way of nurturing leads. It would be best to identify the buyer’s stage on the sales cycle to activate the right kind of triggers, such as conversion events, workflow enrolments, and lead scoring.
Cross-team collaboration is necessary to optimize your lead nurturing process. Your team should be aware of the shared responsibility, expectations, and goals of the company. It would help to create an outline of the vital things. It will make the team accountable and dedicated to converting the leads.
What Tools Can I Use to Automate the Lead Nurturing Process?
Generating leads will not be a small project but lead nurturing can be a more overwhelming process. You can compare it to gardening. Lead generation is like buying the seeds from the local garden shop, while nurturing pertains to sowing, watering, cultivating, pruning, adding fertilizer, and taking care of the plant to bear fruit. That seems a lot of work, but you will find it less complicated with the right lead management tool.
Outgrow
Interactive content will help massively in your lead nurturing strategy. About 32% of the marketers are using this and finding it effective. Perhaps, you should also try to implement this in your content targeting strategy. Outgrow should be able to assist you in developing this type of content. This platform is value-driven and trustworthy. It also offered a personalized approach, which will help in producing relevant content for your leads. It helps in boosting the conversion rate.
Sales Handy for Lead Nurturing
Since you’ve got a handful of email addresses in your list, you need to take advantage of it and nurture them all. To nurture your leads and transform them into loyal customers, you need to be consistent with your email messages. With Sales Handy, you can automate the process of sending news and at the same time create a personalized email. It also offers Auto-follow options that will depend upon the behavior of your customers. According to the recent stats, email personalization can increase the open rate to at least 26%. Marketers also believe that it is integral in improving the engagement rate of their prospects.
LuckyOrange
You need a tool that will monitor the activities of your online audience, and LuckyOrange would be a good option. Knowing why your audience keeps on scrolling your website and then leave without taking action will help you understand which part of your website lacks the appeal. It comes with a chat and polling system, which can help you collect information from your audience. It is also essential in understanding a variety of factors such as location, tweets, and keywords. This lead nurturing tool will help you track the digital footprint of your audience on time.
Pipedrive
Lead Nurturing marketing campaign will also involve your CRM (Customer Relationship Management). It is like the life of your brand. You should look for a CRM feature if you need a tool that will nurture your lead. With Pipedrive, you will be able to integrate all emails to have a central location. It also comes with a visual dashboard that enables you to take the necessary actions. Pipedrive is vital in catching leads that are slipping through your system. It is also helpful in running your sales funnel through an autopilot system. Â
Lead nurturing is a complex task, but it should never be an arduous journey. You can follow the effective methods to improve your strategy and use the tools above to automate the process. Nurturing is a never-ending procedure that serves as the backbone of your lead conversion rate.
