What is Lead Nurturing?
Leads are among the most vital resources for any business. Without having enough of them to work with, sales will be incredibly difficult to come by.
However, it isn’t the case that new leads are just brought in and automatically get converted into sales right away. Instead, they need to be carefully moved along the sales process until the time is right to sell something to them.
This is where lead nurturing comes into play. It is a smart process that moves your leads in the right direction until they are ready to become paying customers. This isn’t about putting pressure on them to buy something or issuing them with constant reminders that they are running out of time.
Instead, it is a way of engaging with the people who are most likely to buy from you. Keep their attention and educate them so that when they are ready to buy it feels natural to do so from your brand rather than from a rival.
The Benefits of Lead Nurturing
There are a few reasons why this is such an important matter. First of all, in most companies not all of the leads are ready to buy at any given time. A substantial percentage of them may need more time, while it’s also certain that some of them are never converted into paying customers.
However, through the process of lead nurturing you can turn more of them into sales at a lower cost. Nurtured leads also tend to spend more when they do eventually pay for something.
It is no surprise that studies consistently show the benefits of lead nurturing. Brands that work in this way will typically out perform those that don’t in terms of sales.
How to Understand Which Leads to Nurture
One of the key points is that you need to understand which leads you plan to nurture. This is crucial to your success, as you only want to include those that have a strong chance of being converted into sales at some point.
This is where you need to have a lead scoring system in place. What this does is allow you to prioritize your leads effectively. Those with a high enough score are strong enough to be added to your nurturing strategy. Those that score poorly can be discarded.
To do this well, you need to first of all understand what type of customer you are most interested in. Then you will look at what kind of behavior you need them to have shown so far. Points are allocated based on these factors.
As an example, a lead who is the right age and in the right income bracket may have been browsing the list of prices on your site and then asked for more information. This person is likely to score near the maximum number of points so that you prioritize them.
On the other hand, you may have a lead who doesn’t fit your profile. Maybe they were browsing your home page but didn’t look at the prices or ask for information. This lead will score more lowly and is unlikely to enter your list to be nurtured.
The Importance of Content Marketing
You will now want to see how to take your most valuable leads and move them through your sales funnel effectively. This is how you will gently encourage them to buy, with your content marketing strategy the key to doing it well.
You will be keen to give them valuable content that is relevant to them and helps them decide what to do. This content can come in the form of blog posts, videos, and any other format that helps you to get your message across.
The right content can attract people at any stage of the buying process and guide them through it. This can be on your main website, on social media, on your blog, or elsewhere. The key is to keep them engaged and build up a good level of trust.
The Use of Email
The majority of your strongest leads will be comfortable receiving emails from you. By this stage, you will already know that there is a genuine interest in what you can offer them.
It is important to remember that the wrong email strategy can ruin your prospects, even when it is a highly promising lead. You need to make sure that your messages are relevant, polite, and highly targeted.
How will you know whether your email campaign is having the desired effect? This is why it is important to get back as much information as possible on the campaigns that you carry out.
Can It Be Automated?
This might sound like a lot of work so far. Of course, the end results will be worth it if you can bring more leads to the conversion stage successfully.
However, what if you simply can’t commit the necessary time to it? In this case, an automated lead-nurturing process will help you immensely.
In this way, you can set all of the important criteria in advance. It is then a question of keeping track of the results in order to understand whether anything needs to be tweaked.