Answering 3 crucial questions about lead nurturing
Your business’ sales cycle and eventual success hinge on customer-business relationships to a great extent. Therefore, it’s important for you to nurture a relationship with your audience at every stage in their purchase journey. Lead nurturing helps you do exactly this. But before we dive into the best lead nurturing tactics, let’s take a closer look at the basics.
What is lead nurturing?
A lead is not a guaranteed sale, and expecting one to become a buyer right away is presumptuous. After all, any buyer needs information regarding your business, be it your work ethics, details about a specific product or service, etc. Instead of a direct hard sell, lead nurturing involves adopting a softer approach. Here, you focus on holding a prospective buyer’s attention for a prolonged period of time and help them understand at their own pace why you’re the right fit for their needs. By providing contextual information at every stage, you naturally steer them towards a purchase.
Why is lead nurturing important?
Lead nurturing is critical because of the following factors.
- It can generate 50% more leads at a 33% lower cost.
- The sales cycle reduces by 23% for nurtured leads.
- Leads that are nurtured make 47% larger purchases than leads that aren’t.
In addition, lead nurturing helps build brand awareness, trust and loyalty. As you’re constantly creating value for your target audience, it helps you eliminate dormant leads in the process, drive engagement and optimize expenditure.
What are a few effective lead nurturing tactics?
1. Multichannel nurturing
The days of cold calls and generic e-mails are over. Customers are looking for more meaningful interactions. With the help of numerous powerful marketing automation tools, you can build lead nurturing strategies that take into account the best resources at your disposal, be it dynamic e-mail marketing, social media marketing, paid ads, or website content. As a marketer, you can create a mix as per your unique offering and your audience’s preferences.
2. Targeted content
We are about to approach 2022, and you cannot provide generic or similar content to your entire target audience. You need to segment your audience and define the buyer persona and pain points for each. Then create personalized content as per the interests, objectives, goals and most importantly, the purchase triggers that you have identified.
3. Retargeting
Retargeting buyers is a great way to keep your business fresh in your audience’s mind. However, the strategy must not look pushy, or you will end up driving them away. A meticulously-planned, well-researched campaign that errs on the side of caution is most likely to succeed. It is best to get in touch (via e-mail, social media, phone calls, or display ads) with a prospect at regular intervals depending on their past behavior. Also, make sure that you do not repeat content—it is a sure way to drive your customers away from your business.
4. One-on-one interactions
The most personalized lead nurturing approach is a one-on-one interaction. As a business owner, you can introduce several direct interactions during the process of lead nurturing. These can be inserted in between automated processes. Your sales reps can also physically meet prospective buyers in an informal set-up and discuss business through casual conversations. Meeting virtually is another option, and Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google are all great platforms for it.
These interactions have a lasting impression on your prospect and will resonate with them for years to come. In this scenario, your representatives take on more of a PR role and subtly highlight the relevance and benefits of your products or services. Instead of a traditional hard sell, they go for a gentler approach with an aim to build a lasting relationship. Although they aren’t as simple or quick as an automated tool, one-on-one interactions are an unbeatable way to create value for your target audience and shape purchase intent.
5. Data insights
You can use a combination of surveys and behavioral data for more effective nurturing. This activity will help you determine where a customer is in their buying journey and how to approach them.
For instance, assume that your lead has subscribed to your newsletter for educational purposes only. Similarly, another prospect has found your website organically and is spending a considerable amount of time on it every few days. While both may convert into buyers/customers at some point, the latter individual has a higher chance of doing so. Through surveys and data analysis, you can understand characteristics of both types of leads and how best to approach them. When you create content that aligns with a prospect’s buying journey, it can help you boost conversions by a whopping 72%.
Implementing an effective lead nurturing strategy can be immensely beneficial for your business. So, start with the tactics we’ve discussed in this article and enjoy improved customer retention, better conversions, brand loyalty, and a noticeable boost in revenue too.
