Marketers have to get leads to enter the top of a sales or marketing funnel. However, their work does not stop there because they must push them through the entire sales process. An effective lead nurturing programme for your business can help turn promising leads into conversions and sales.
What is Lead Nurturing?
Lead nurturing is the process of listening to prospects’ needs at different stages of the sales cycle and providing solutions that help build trust and maintain crucial connections. Since most B2B prospects are tech-savvy and are looking for solutions to their pain points in different places online, you should ensure your business is available across multiple channels for an effective campaign.
Understanding what it is, it is time to put a lead nurturing campaign in motion. But what core elements should you consider when doing this?
Personalisation
This is an integral part of any lead nurturing campaign. Once you have collected data on leads, you should clean and organise it, so it is easy to extract information that lets you personalise any communication with potential leads.
For example, the data you have should help you write personalised informal and formal emails that communicate with them in a friendly and conversational tone, and address your prospects by name every time you contact them. This will make them feel more connected to you and your business, strengthening relationships that could lead to business deals in the future.
Educating Your Prospects
To close the sales cycle, educate your prospects on the state of their phase in their buyer’s journey using different types of content. These phases and their respective content include:
- Awareness – Use blog posts your leads can relate to and align with their interests. Use these posts to educate them on what is happening in the industry.
- Consideration – Educate them on your products and services. You can invite them to webinars, show them a product demo, or share other information as necessary.
- Decision – This is the final step. Use customer success stories, product reviews and testimonials for the final push.
If you do not know what type of content to create for each phase, you can work with B2B lead generation companies that will help you strategize. These companies can also help you with A/B testing to ensure all content is engaging depending on the phase the prospect is on.
Retargeting
Retargeting helps you remind prospects that you, your products and services are still a viable option and available.
It can also help you provide the incentive they need to finally close a deal. Push notifications and retargeting ads are widely used for this, but you can also ask for feedback, provide an incentive or create urgency using emails.
Also, consider adding dynamic calls-to-action on your website for further re-engagement and retargeting.
Avoid Spam
Sending too many emails is irritating and can cause prospects to unsubscribe. Or worse, they can mark your emails as spam, which can hurt your campaigns if they do this enough times. Space out your emails or experiment to find an interval that works best for customers and businesses.
You should also use further customisations through segmentation and grouping to avoid being reported as spam. Segments and groups help you send out emails that include targeted messaging you know would resonate with your recipients.
You can start by segmenting based on the prospect’s lifecycle stage and personal. For example, you can have a segment for sales executives in the awareness stage or procurement officers in the decision phase.
Lead nurturing takes time, so it is best to start putting together your campaign right now. You should also start nurturing leads as soon as they engage with your business, whether that is through a blog post or leaving their email address in exchange for an eBook or white paper. Use the data you have collected to enhance your campaign, especially when personalising your messaging and types of content to send depending on the phase they are in their buyer’s journey.