What Is Lead Nurturing? 5 Techniques That Actually Work

3 Benefits of lead nurturing

1. Higher ROI

Lead nurturing can help you increase sales and ROI. Companies that nurture their leads well generate 50% more sales-ready leads, while only spending 33% more.

2. Larger purchases

Lead nurturing motivates larger purchases. If you specifically target the right consumers, they will on average spend 47% more than those who are not targeted.

3. More Sales

If you effectively nurture your leads, they will be more likely to make a purchase. The research suggests that only 21% of marketing leads convert to sales. This is because of a lack of lead nurturing.

8 Components of lead nurturing

1. Multichannel distribution

To create a lead nurturing campaign that is successful, you should have all of your channels working together. This allows you to keep in touch with potential customers.

2. Content marketing

Content marketing is a key element of online marketing success, involving the creation and distribution of relevant, valuable content. This means creating content for your emails, website, social media platforms, videos, podcasts, and more.

3. Lead scoring

Sales and marketing need to collaborate to identify where a particular lead is in the business’s purchasing process. The most important part of a lead nurturing system is being able to identify when, where, and how to communicate with each prospect in a way that is most personalized to them.

4. Website

Your website is a great place to capture new email addresses by adding engaging forms and popups. This is a great place to keep existing conversations going and to start new ones. Your website’s experience should be personalized for each visitor to continue the conversation started in emails.

5. Retargeting

Display ads and retargeting create a consistent experience for buyers across channels.

6. Social

Social media is a crucial part of cross-channel nurturing. Creating targeted social media campaigns is more effective than running general campaigns. If you connect your lead nurturing to your social media efforts, they will work together to improve your results.

7. Direct mail

By incorporating direct mail into your lead nurture campaigns, you are able to create a more personalize experience for your recipients by adding a human touch.

8. Marketing automation

Marketing automation makes it possible for businesses to save time and energy by automating their marketing processes. This includes tasks like sending out emails, creating and managing social media campaigns, and tracking results. This increases efficiency and drives more sales. Using automation for your workflow will ensure that your marketing strategy is aligned and that your messages are being sent to the right people at the right time.

How to create a lead nurturing strategy

1. Take a look at your previous lead nurturing efforts

If you have been running your business for a few years, you most likely have some processes in place. Some of these processes might work well, while others might need to be fixed. Some of these processes might be long outdated. You should occasionally take a step back to examine what has been effective and what needs to be improved.

If you’ve been with the company for a while, it’s not an easy task. You’re accustomed to the current way of doing things and may be unwilling to change it. It can be helpful to ask a new hire for their opinion on your current processes, or to look at how other industries handle lead nurturing.

2. Define your lead profile(s)

If you want your company to succeed in sales and marketing, you need to have a good understanding of your target audience.

But how can you get to know your leads? It is easier to schedule an interview with a customer than with a lead.

There are several things you can do:

•  Divide existing customers into different segments based on their demographics, job titles, company sizes, etc.
•  Have a closer look at how well each of these segments converts. This will help you decide what audience you want to attract, where to find them, and what communication channel they prefer.
•  Get to know your existing customers on a deeper level. You can get demographics from Google Analytics but this data won’t tell you much about why your customers chose you. That’s why it’s better to talk to your newly converted leads directly and ask them pointed questions.

3. Make it easy for leads to reach out to you

Effective lead nurturing requires cross-channel communication. To get leads to convert, you need to provide them with the information they need to make a decision. Make sure to offer a variety of communication channels to accommodate everyone’s different preferences. These can include live webinars, demos, chats, emails, and more.

4. Set key performance indicators in advance

Before starting a lead nurturing program, you need to decide what your goals are. Lewis Carroll once said that if you don’t know your destination, any road will lead you there.

Think about what you want to achieve (your goals) and what steps you need to take to get there (your objectives). Your goal may be general, but your objectives need to be specific. For example, you may want to generate a certain number of leads, and convert a certain number of them.

5 Effective Lead Nurturing Techniques

Lead nurturing is designed to provide value to potential customers, rather than simply promoting a company’s services. Here are five techniques that can help you build a robust lead nurturing process.

Align sales and marketing teams

Lead nurturing is a team exercise. Marketing and sales team should both be involved at various stages of your lead’s progress. In order to avoid confusion, it is important to have clear responsibilities for both teams.

Usually, marketing responsibilities in lead nurturing include the following:

•  Engaging leads and educating them about the benefits of your product/service
•  Creating different types of content to connect with leads and prospects
•  Distributing marketing messages via different channels

Sales responsibilities in lead nurturing are as follows:

•  Following up with leads to keep in touch during lengthy sales cycles
•  Providing leads with information on how they can make the most of your product or service
•  Addressing leads’ pain points and concerns

Make your lead communication personal

One of the most common pieces of advice given to sales and marketing professionals is to “walk in your customer’s shoes.” To ensure you have a productive conversation with a prospect or lead, you should set aside some time to research their business and industry.

You will need to listen to your potential customers during the call and ask questions. When communicating with others, it is important to make them feel as though you are having a conversation with them, rather than trying to sell them something. If you focus on how you can better serve your potential customers, you will be more likely to seal the deal.

When you’re talking to leads, it’s important to be careful about the details. For example, you can take notes in your CRM on even minor details, like if a lead mentioned they have two kids or are going on vacation to Paris next week. The next time you talk to this lead, you can begin with some personal information.

Use lead scoring

Every organization, even a large one, has limited resources. That’s why it’s important to be deliberate about how you spend your time and where you focus your attention. This is where lead scoring comes in.

Lead scoring is a system that ranks leads in order to determine which ones are the most likely to convert. It’s a way of figuring out which potential customers are most likely to buy something from you.

Demographic data, behavior, and engagement metrics can all be used to score leads. These are all different lead scoring models. The model you choose depends on the data you have, and how good that data is. You might use one model, or you might use several models together.

Lead scoring helps with prioritization. Not every lead needs your immediate attention. Gating content, such as e-books or webinars, often results in many people using fake email addresses to register. This means that you shouldn’t waste your time following up with every fake address you get.

Organizing and ranking your leads according to their potential value to your company is known as lead scoring. This process helps you prioritize your sales efforts by identifying which prospects are most likely to become customers.

Follow up with your leads regularly

There are several things that you can do to improve your follow-up routine:

•  Be diligent with your follow-up schedule. Keep track of when a particular lead was followed up to make sure that you don’t over-communicate.
•  Outline your leads’ journey. This will help you better understand when a follow-up is relevant. There’s a danger of both: following up too early and following up too late.
•  Space out your follow-ups. Some clients might need more time to make a decision, especially if there are several stakeholders involved in the decision-making process.
•  Use different channels. If your lead doesn’t reply via email, try a message on LinkedIn. If neither works, try to reach out via a quick call. Different people prefer different communication methods.
•  Make sure that your follow-ups create value for your leads. Include some valuable free resources (a link to a blog post that they might find interesting or an e-book).

Optimize your reporting

If your reporting is poor, it can have a negative effect on your analysis and make it harder to successfully nurture leads. When you measure results, look not only at numbers but also at what they can tell you:

•  If the open rate is low, maybe it’s time to experiment with subject lines or with the sender’s email address – or maybe emails are not your go-to channel.
•  If you have a low click-through rate, maybe you need to include a different type of content or change your calls-to-action (CTAs).
•  If the conversion rate is low, you might need to work on making your outreach communication more personal.

Reporting should go hand in hand with analysis. But it doesn’t end there. You also need to document your lead nurturing journey. This will help you understand your process and what worked and what didn’t in the future.