What is Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of educating and building relationships with potential customers until they are ready to buy. By paying attention to needs and questions, lead nurturing works to build trust and connection with potential buyers and can be an effective way to increase return on investment (ROI). The lead nurturing process typically starts with a high-level offer, which highlights an incentive as to why the potential buyer should be interested. From there, you can move prospects through the next steps that include more personalized and relevant offers.

How it Works

If you’ve ever made a purchase online, you’ve most likely done a little bit of digging before finding the perfect fit. Most sales do not happen after a potential buyer’s very first interaction with a brand. As lead nurturing continues throughout the customer lifecycle, marketers can stay connected with prospects regularly while monitoring their interests and engagement history. This helps marketers gather critical insights about which assets resonate best with each contact so they can tailor future messages accordingly. Here is a simpler way to start tackling lead nurturing:

1. Establish a goal
2. Find your audience
3. Tailor content to prospective buyer
4. Measure success of plan and adjust

Best Practices for Lead Nurturing 

Lead nurturing is ideal for B2B and B2C marketers looking to build relationships with customers to influence buying decisions. Marketers who can effectively communicate why their product or service matters to existing and future customers stand the best chance of developing long-lasting customer relationships. Some best practices include:

• Lead scoring: This consists of creating a unique scoring plan to help determine how strong the lead is. Lead scoring consists of assigning points to different factors that are important to the overall success of the lead and/or individual company. Examples include demographics, budget, timeline, and/or the overall interest of a buyer.
• Multichannel distribution: Opening more channels of communication between you and a buyer is a huge tool when building relationships. Content distributed across emails, websites, and social media expands the potential to nurture an audience and gain potential buyers.
• Personalization: Tailoring content to a certain audience is another way to draw in potential buyers. Personalized emails and other content help to build stronger connections by intriguing the buyer and keeping the content memorable.
• Follow ups: Following up with an audience or buyer ensures that the relationship will not be forgotten. Reassuring needs or questions help to keep the customer engaged, interested, and trusting of the brand.
• Automation System: Implementing a marketing automation system can help make the process lead nurturing easier and more efficient. Things like personalized messages and emails can be automatically sent out to a prospective buyer or audience to further continue the connection.

What Makes Lead Nurturing a Valuable Tool

There are many benefits associated with lead nurturing, including increased ROI, reduced marketing costs per sale, reduced distribution list churn, improved website traffic-to-lead conversion rates, and better positioning for sales. It can also help you gather critical insights on your target market that will help inform your product road map and overall business strategy moving forward.

Lead nurturing also helps to educate others about your offerings, which can help you close sales down the road. For instance, a lead nurturing campaign tailored around a prospect's interests might pave the way for a formal demo or product trial. In this way, marketers can increase conversion rates and sales by keeping in touch with prospects throughout their buyer's journey – not just at the initial awareness stage.

Overcoming Common Roadblocks

With every great idea comes challenges, right? Lead nurturing can be tricky since success with each potential buyer can be based on various factors. There are, however, some strategies to overcome common roadblocks in lead nurturing.

First, doing enough research is key

If you are unsure what is the best content to pick to move forward with lead nurturing, strategize around the information you can gather. Picking the best content requires truly understanding your target audience, and what they are the most interested in learning. In addition to speaking directly with a potential buyer, case studies are a wonderful way to gain insight into what they may be looking for.

Next, knowing the right time (and way) to follow up

The most effective follow up method heavily depends on the industry and audience. If a potential buyer tends to communicate better through email, then focusing in on that line of communication may help get the sale. Also, you want to communicate in a way that will not turn prospective customers away. If communication is too frequent, it may become overwhelming, and drive them elsewhere. If communication is lacking, it may break trust and undermine engagement with the potential buyer.

Lastly, writing content that’s not too generic

Like mentioned before, personalization can do wonders for intriguing a prospective customer. If marketing materials are not geared toward the individual needs of the buyer, it may not work to keep interest, and the possibility of the sale slips away.

Here at Roger West, we are the experts at boosting business! By helping organizations implement lead nurturing, we have seen ideas turn into leads, and leads turn into customers! If you are interested in learning more about lead nurturing and how it can work for your company, keep in touch here.