Every business wants to increase its sales. Some will try to generate more leads by using lead magnets, and others will want to improve lead management and optimize the flow. However, nurturing leads is another tactic that can bring significant benefits.
Even though lead nurturing strategies are constantly shifting, some primary methods can help you engage with the leads and build relations with them, turning targeted leads into customers.
Read on to learn more about the lead nurturing process and some lead nurturing best practices to facilitate you getting more sales.
How Can You Define Lead Nurturing?
To start with, lead nurturing is a strategy or process that the business implements to engage with the leads and build relationships with them, usually offering them information that will answer their needs and affect their decision to buy a company’s product.
As a process, nurturing a lead should consider various factors. Why? The main reason lies in the different groups you are targeting, their behavior, preferences, and niche specifics.
Moreover, the lead nurturing process usually includes understanding your customers, engaging with them, and answering their needs.
Ideally, you first generate leads (with a contacts database, lead magnet, or targeted ad). Notably, any audience you reach requires nurturing.
After you understand the level of the audience’s interest, you can start lead nurturing campaigns aimed at particular groups.
For instance, people from cold outreach may first need to agree to get news. Yet, you can still nurture them as targeted leads with particular articles or solutions to their issues. In terms of subscribers who came from lead magnets, you have more certainty and can send them developed messages knowing they are interested or ready to buy a product.
Finally, upon their reactions and actions, you push the nurtured leads into testing or buying a service or product.
Importance of Lead Nurturing
So, the significance of lead nurturing lies in the ability to build relationships with customers and leads. It allows marketers to push ideas, sell packages, and re-invite people to the sales journey. Interestingly, Invespcro underlines that nurturing a lead can make them buy more, while for businesses, this strategy grants 50% more prospects and leads that are ready to purchase a product.
As a result, leads nurturing is a compelling tactic that can help:
- Boost sales.
- Bring various options for leads in the pipeline (so that they remain in the funnel).
- Prepare leads for purchasing products.
- Develop strong relationships with leads (making them come back or repurchase products or services).
Lead Nurturing Best Practices
Developing a lead nurture campaign is far from easy. Why? You should consider many factors, analyze your audience and provide content that will be interesting to them, as well as coordinate efforts within the team and channels.
Let’s consider the main lead nurturing strategies that will help you engage with leads effectively:
Understand, Segment, and Target the Right Groups
Before all, lead nurture campaigns should always follow a goal. And the plan comes from the audience you are to approach. Thus, first, you need to understand what stage they are on.
Are they just interested? Are they ready to buy? Have they made the decision? Will they come back? The answers to these questions allow you to at least divide your leads and prospects into four groups. From there, you will have four different lead nurturing campaigns.
Besides, one of the steps to do is to segment them by age, profession, interests, and point points. It will allow you to create content that will answer their needs and questions. It will help you to develop the proper wording and style for emails. Ultimately, the lead nurture campaign should be targeted and specific, providing a correct path for a lead to follow within the customer journey.
Apply Multiple Platforms and Channels to Support Leads Nurturing
Also, there is a lead nurturing strategy that can bring you more sales-ready leads. What is it? Leads nurturing on various platforms. How does it work? For example, you have email as the main channel for content distribution. After you provide a link to a new guide, a lead can click it and visit a website.
Next, you can follow up with targeted ads based on their browsing behavior or interaction on your website. Moreover, there is an option to start sharing posts on social media as a part of your lead nurturing campaign. That way, you will scale the reach of your message. If it is specific enough and reflects the primary email message, you are likely to make the targeted leads buy your goods.
Use Lead Scoring to Define Targeted Leads
Defining the right leads from the campaign can be of higher importance among all lead nurturing strategies. Why? If you develop a lead nurture email to a person who has just entered your customer journey, you may think of inserting a link to a guide or some articles. At the same time, targeting a lead ready to have a solution would require you to send an overview of your product, even a demo.
In this regard, it is vital for you to know what leads are priorities: who needs to be pushed to a deal or simply provided with exciting insights. Lead scoring allows doing it and defines the value of a prospect. In particular, you will need to spend more effort on the leads with higher scores.
Support Cross-Team Collaboration
When you have multiple lead nurturing campaigns taking place, it is important that your marketing and sales teams work as a unit and communicate effectively. The better they collaborate in terms of the goals, materials, value provision, and lead distribution, the higher your sales may be. The cross-team collaboration is a necessity for adequate lead nurturing campaigns, as both have insights for moving the leads through the sales funnel.
Focus on the Content Pieces you Produce
The most crucial lead nurturing strategy relates to providing quality and engaging content. The content becomes the instrument to show the value you can provide. Thus, it is in your best interest to create quality and insightful pieces.
One of the options you have is to invite experts to help you with writing guides, case studies, and ebooks. Such practice can bring quality leads for a B2B lead nurture campaign. For instance, organizing a webinar as a part of a lead nurturing campaign is impossible without niche specialists being invited as guests.
Thus, it takes time to produce quality pieces with a focus on the solutions, insights, needs, and pain points that are relevant to the audience.
Follow Up Even if Leads Become Customers
Notably, the lead nurturing process should not stop when the lead purchases goods or services. Especially in the B2B lead nurture practice, the customers can come back to renew subscriptions or order new packages. It means that you should create a specific lead nurture campaign to re-engage the leads. For example, you can provide guides on how to use a product or maximize the workflow. The people will return for more, and you will be able to upsell a product.
Organize a Solid Workflow
Lastly, before implementing lead nurture campaigns, you should prepare the system for it. In this regard, the lead nurturing workflow is an integral part of such a system. What is it about? Well, it contemplates how you will use automation software, available tools, and resources to achieve the goal. The well-thought workflow on how to send relevant messages, deliver touches to your target audience, and manage communication will allow you to optimize your sales and create a clear structure.
There, you should consider segmentation and personalization and think through how you will use the information from CRM in the development of drip lead nurturing campaigns or targeted ads.
