Lead nurturing is an important, yet largely ignored aspect of the marketing and sales process. Nurtured leads increase sales by 50 percent, yet only 36 percent of marketers are actively taking time to nurture their leads.
Some businesses may think it’s too time-consuming to implement lead nurture tactics. Many marketers just don’t understand how to effectively guide those leads through the sales funnel.
There are steps you can take to understand the process and make it easier. In fact, I have consolidated a list of seven lead nurturing tactics you should start implementing today.
Lead Nurturing Tactics
There are two important factors when it comes to nurturing marketing. You need to understand who your leads are. You also need to find automation tools to make the process easier.
Understanding your leads will help you take them through the sales funnel more efficiently. This is about creating lead personas.
You will want to create these personas for each type of lead you have.
The persona tells you who they are. What are they interested in? What are their questions and concerns?
Once you have a lead persona, you can set up automation tools to help you reach those leads effectively. How does this work though?
Crafting the perfect content is much easier with a well thought out customer persona.
1. Marketing and Sales Teams Need to Work Together
For effective lead nurturing, your marketing and sales teams need to work closely together. You have to put together a transition agreement for the two teams to share information so leads go to the right place.
A CRM is useful to help with this strategy. With a CRM, your teams can share information about where the leads are in the process. They can also create effective strategies together to push the leads to the next step.
2. Lead Ranking for Lead Nurture
Part of the process of sharing where a lead is in the process is to create a ranking system for your leads. You need to assign a value to the leads based on what step they’re at in the sales funnel.
These values are set based on how leads have responded to content they’ve already interacted with. The values tell you how close each lead is to the final sale. This will help your team determine how to follow up effectively.
3. Quick Follow-Up
One of the biggest mistakes made is waiting to follow-up. Leads are more likely to move on to the next step in the sales funnel if you follow-up with them after initial contact.
A good rule of thumb is to follow-up within 30 minutes of initial contact. If you wait more than an hour they’re more likely to lose interest and move on.
Don’t lose a potential lead by not following up!
4. Personalized Follow-Up
Another important aspect of the follow-up process is to personalize it. You need to respond to leads based on the interest they’ve already shown.
Email is the easiest tool to create personalized follow-up outside of a call. You can automate the process to send emails based on behaviors and content interest. This makes sure your leads get information that’s relevant to their concerns.
5. Multiple Connections in the Sales Funnel
You can’t expect every lead to turn into a sale on the first contact. It takes about 18 contacts to connect with a buyer.
When you lead them through the sales funnel, you’re taking them on a journey to get them to the sale. This means making sure each contact is geared toward moving them to the next step. You want to make it easy for them to make the decision to purchase.
Make sure you answer their questions and concerns at each step. Using automation tools to share content that answers questions based on their last interaction is a good way to do this.
6. Use Targeted Content
Targeted content goes back to understanding who your leads are and what they’re looking for. This involves creating the lead personas to create content geared towards the different types of leads you have.
- What problem are they trying to solve?
- What tools have they used in the past to solve these problems?
- What is their budget?
- What purchasing power do they have?
- If your product is geared towards multiple industries, which industry do they represent?
- What are their interests?
You want to reach them where they are. Once you understand this, you can create content to target each type of lead that comes through. You can also use automation tools to make sure the right content makes it to the right leads.
7. Implement Multiple Channels to Reach Leads
While a website and email campaign are necessary, you can’t rely on these alone. It’s important to use multiple channels to reach and nurture leads. There are many tools available to help you stay in contact.
Email Campaigns
Emails are still the best way to reach out to leads and customers. You want to build your email list and nurture it. An email campaign only works if you take the time to understand your leads though.
You want to share information that interests them. This is why you want to do more than a drip campaign. Don’t just share generic information.
The truth is, many people will just delete emails. This is why you need to use other channels to reach them. With a combination of channels, leads are more likely to pay attention to your email campaigns.
Social Media
Social media is a useful tool to help you stay in contact with leads and keep their attention. Sales people that use social media have 78 percent more sales than those that do not. The important thing here is to create relationships with your leads.
This means responding to inquiries, drawing them in with interesting content, and interacting regularly. Once you build relationships, you can use social media ads to target their interests. You can also use these ads as a re-targeting program to remind them what you have to offer.
Social media is also great for sharing your brand personality with leads. Sharing videos and pictures can help people feel like they know your brand better. This also makes them feel connected to your business.
Search Engine Ads
While search engine PPC ads are usually seen as a way to draw in new leads, they’re also effective for re-targeting existing leads. With the right keywords, you can reach existing leads that are still doing research.
The more you can get your name in front of leads, the more interest you can generate. You can create ads that speak to concerns based on lead personas.
Search engine PPC ads can also increase your SEO which will create more trust in your content. People are more likely to interact with a business that ranks higher in search engine results.
Review Pages
More than 80 percent of internet users rely on reviews to help them make purchasing decisions. This means you should make sure your business is listed on local review pages. This also means you need to optimize all your contact channels for local SEO.
Ask customers to leave reviews on these pages. Keep your business information up-to-date. Make it easy for leads to find you.
You can even use these review pages as part of your sales funnel. Sending a lead to one of these pages could help them make a decision to do business with you.
To get the most out of these sites, it’s important to ask for reviews from your customers. Remember, customers still need nurturing and helping remind them why they like doing business with you is one way to do this.
Blogs
If your website doesn’t have a blog, you should consider adding one. A blog allows you to share content that can help answer questions and concerns that leads might have.
This also gives you a way to show expertise and credibility. You can share relevant news and tips. You can also use a blog to create content that gives detailed answers to frequently asked questions.
If you do create a blog, make sure you use your multiple channels to share the content you post. Blog posts are great marketing tools if you take the time to promote the information.
Combining Your Nurture Marketing Strategies
It’s important to remember that these lead nurturing strategies are not independent. The tactics work best when you create a cohesive strategy to combine these efforts.
Using automation tools such as a CRM, email automation, and other tools that can interact with each other will help you stay on top of the lead nurturing process without eating up valuable time. It’s important to make sure that your automation processes are compatible to effectively create lead campaigns.
You want to share content on multiple channels. You also want your different marketing platforms to present a unified and recognizable brand. A cohesive brand message creates trust and recognition with your leads.
You also want your nurture marketing to create relationships with the people contacting you. This is why personalization and creating connections is so important. People are more likely to purchase from someone they believe cares about them and their concerns.
An Effective Marketing Strategy
Lead nurturing is only one aspect of your overall marketing strategy. While important, you don’t want to ignore potential leads and current customers.
An effective marketing strategy requires multiple tactics such as SEO, digital marketing, and local marketing. If you’re not sure where to start, contact me for a free consultation.