Lead Nurturing 101

Disclaimer: Originally published at resources.salespanda.com.

In my last post, I discussed lead generation in great detail, but lead generation by itself is incomplete and a job only half done when it comes to acquiring leads for your business.

After generating and capturing your leads, you have to nurture them to get them to convert repeatedly. This is precisely where lead nurturing comes into play. So let’s take a look at what lead nurturing really is and how to you should implement it in your marketing as well as selling processes.

What is lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing refers to the process of anticipating your buyer’s needs based on who they are, what they need and where they are in the buying process. It involves keeping your prospects engaged by providing the most relevant content at the right times via the right channels. Implementing lead nurturing into your marketing and selling processes, will give you an opportunity to influence your prospects and strengthen their brand loyalty even before they are ready to make the purchase.

In simpler words, nurturing helps move leads through the funnel towards conversion. But what is a lead nurturing funnel?

What is a lead nurturing funnel?

The set of steps through which you guide a lead or a prospect through the ideal buyer’s journey (both marketing and sales funnel) by offering the right information at the right time is known as the ‘lead nurturing funnel’.

While lead nurturing funnels tend to vary according to business goals and practices, here’s what a typical lead nurturing funnel looks like:

Why do you need lead nurturing?

Here are 9 reasons why your lead generation campaign must be followed by a lead nurturing campaign:

1. Better contact establishment

According to a study by Inside Sales, about 35–50% of sales are made by the first vendor to respond to a lead. One of the keys to connecting with your leads, is establishing contact with them as soon as possible — before anyone else in your industry does. The response rate from leads declines with their maturity, so it is wise to engage with their interests right from the beginning.

2. Strong trust building

People trust other people more than brands. They tend to engage with businesses they know of or trust themselves. A first look at your website might or might not do the trick, and that’s exactly why you need lead nurturing. It gives you an opportunity to showcase your expertise in your industry and convince them to pick you over your competitors.

3. Consistent communication

According to a study by G3 Communications, 66% of buyer choices are influenced by consistent and relevant communication with the sales and marketing team of a business. Tools such as SalesPanda can help you get a foot in the door towards consistent communication with your website visitors, by using engagement windows, multiple call-to-actions and content showcases to encourage visitor engagement.

4. Better customer understanding

Lead nurturing campaigns give you another chance at understanding your leads — what challenges they are facing, what kind of solutions — products or services are they looking for and what problems they have been facing with their current solutions. Ask them different questions or share different types of content via lead nurturing e-mails — it’s is a great way to figure out what they best respond to and qualify them accordingly.

5. Better target segmentation

Since consistent communication helps you understand your leads better, it also makes it possible for you to segment your target audience more efficiently. When you figure out which type of leads best respond to what kind of messages that you have sent them over time, you can segment them based on their interests and responses.

6. Boosts engagement

Lead nurturing is a great way to give your engagement rate a boost. Be it a new lead who you need to keep engaged till conversion or one that has already converted, these campaigns helps you remind them about your business every now and then. Boosting your engagement via lead nurturing campaigns keeps you in the eyes of your target audience and reinforces your competitive advantage (value proposition) over market competitors.

7. Shorter sales cycle

According to a study by Market2Lead, nurtured leads have a 23% shorter sales cycle. Hence, lead nurturing campaigns provide a way for marketers to help in the sales processes by nurturing leads through the sales funnel and closing them more efficiently.

8. Cross sell and upsell opportunities

Market2Lead also found that nurtured leads convert on a 9% higher deal size. This only goes to say that lead nurturing doesn’t just increase the number of sales but also the size of sales by giving you the opportunities to cross sell and upsell.

9. Boosts referrals and lead generation

Lead nurturing gives you the opportunity to attract new leads. If you’re running a referral campaign or have been sharing valuable content with your leads over time, they will most certainly spread a good word in their circles.

How do you create a successful lead nurturing campaign?

Lead nurturing campaigns can be tough to create. From understanding your audience and market trends, to identifying the solutions you can provide and the channels you can reach out to your target audience on, the process can be really daunting. But here are the must complete 5 steps that will get you through without compromising on any aspect of the campaign:

1. Define your target audience and segment them

Every business has more than one kind of prospect and each one of them has different needs, that require different solutions. In order to create an effective lead nurturing campaign, your first step should always be to identify your target audience and segmenting them based on their interests.

2. Offer something valuable first

Just because you have generated a lead, doesn’t mean you bombard them with sales messages every other day. In order to successfully nurture them through the sales funnel, you need to ‘convince’ them first. Instead of trying to sell your products, offer something valuable first — product trials, webinars, ebooks, whitepapers or case studies. Remember, what you offer, needs to add value to the lead.

3. Set clear objectives for your campaign

Before you start pushing out content to your leads, remember to define the objectives for each of your steps. It is important to identify what will appeal to your audience the most and then use that to lead them through the customer journey. A few questions to start with:

• What type of content appeals to your leads?
• What goal will the piece of content help achieve?
• How long will it take for you to create the content required?

4. Define a timeline for your campaign

It is important to define a clear timeline and sales cycle for your lead nurturing campaign. A good practice to follow is sending across 2 to 3 emails to your prospects, spaced out accordingly. For example, if someone signs up for your free trial, you could send them an email on their 1st day to ask for an appropriate time for a demo, an email on 7th day to ask if they are facing any problems and one on the 14th day to understand why the user is inactive or how their experience has been.

5. Measure your campaign results and optimize

Measure your campaign results consistently to understand what works with your audience and what they don’t engage with at all. Experiment with different approaches — marketing messages, offers, subject lines and call-to-actions. Optimize your campaigns accordingly to get maximum results from your campaign.

To conclude, lead nurturing can be very effective when executed properly. So make sure you don’t cut corners while creating your campaign!