4 Tactics for Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with new, existing or potential customers at each stage of their purchase journey. Lead nurturing requires tailored communication to your customer segments. This communication can inform, inspire or encourage them, so they’ll take a desired action *Almost 80% of new leads never become sales. Most people in your lead system are not yet ready to buy. Lead nurturing helps you communicate with them until they do. This post includes 4 tactics for lead nurturing that, with the right tools, you can apply in your business today…

• Segment your leads and produce targeted content
• Cross channel nurturing
• Have multiple touchpoints
• Give em’ a call and follow up!

The biggest mistake businesses make, is using the same communication strategy or message for their entire audience/database. Sending content that does not resonate with your audience is like trying to clean a red wine stain with red wine – it just won’t work. There are many ways to segment your leads. We’ll talk more about lead segmentation in our next blog. The most common ways are by demographic, behavior and interests. Of course, segmenting your leads by where they are in their journey is important too.

Once you’ve segmented your leads. Build a communication plan with messaging that will appeal to each group. Think about what motivates them and what they need to know about your product, service or offer. Rather than telling them everything about your product, pick three key things they must know.

Use marketing automation from platforms like Infusionsoft to help manage your segments and marketing communication.

If your measurement numbers are looking low. It’s time to start looking at nurturing leads on other channels. Measurement metrics to keep an eye on:

• Email open rate
• Click through rate
• Time on site

If people aren’t opening your emails, clicking your ads or spending much time on the site, there’s a good chance your nurture strategy needs some redirection. Use a combination of SEO content (blogs, informative articles, and stories), paid search advertising, social media, email marketing, and even traditional media to make sure you’ve got all your bases covered. If you’d like to build and unleash your very own marketing department to run campaigns on these channels – we can help. Learn more here.

Every marketer knows that items with a higher value have a longer purchase journey. Long purchase journeys naturally need more touchpoints with the lead before they convert. But how many and where is the question…This differs by industry, but on average it takes about ten touchpoints from funnel entry to conversion. Of course, there are loads of variables. But with the right strategy, content, systems, and tools your leads will flow smoothly down the funnel until they convert.

Again, use multiple advertising channels trigger these touchpoints: social media, SEO tactic, SEM (Google AdWords), email marketing and traditional media.

The easiest and most cost-effective way to nurture a lead is to call them. It takes a few minutes and adds a nice personal touch to their sales experience. It could be a call after an online enquiry to see if they need any further information or have questions. Post-purchase follow up calls are good too! Taking time to ring your customers for their feedback on your product or service shows you care about their experience. It makes them feel acknowledged and gives them an opportunity to share negative feedback which they may have not felt comfortable doing otherwise. It provides a safe space where constructive feedback can be shared and hopefully smoothed over. Keep an eye out for future blogs that cover off some tips on follow up calls.

Products don’t sell themselves. Leads need to be communicated with and nurtured through a process before they buy. There are many ways to do it, but one thing is for sure – it needs to be done. If you’d like to get a better handle on nurturing your leads so you can make more sales more often – get in touch with us.

*MarketingSherpa