Getting new customers is what every business is constantly fighting for, regardless of its size, product, and service. It goes without saying that businesses love their existing customers and go out of their way to keep them happy. But at the same time, they want a regular inflow of leads to keep the business going. This is probably why 53% of marketers spend at least half of their budget on lead generation.
At the same time, it’s also true that not everyone who visits your website is going to make a purchase from you. Because of the fierce competition these days, buyers know that there are several brands offering the same services and products and they may get a better deal. Today’s buyers just don’t chase businesses anymore until they get rewarded for their loyalty.
There are some customers who are not ready to buy straight away. They will wait for several interactions with the brand before considering making a purchase. With such customers, you must build relationships because you won’t buy a $2,000 watch from a street vendor you just met. Similarly, you can’t expect a customer to be interested in your brand before you have several interactions with them.
This is what you need a lead nurturing strategy for. It will help you map out the lead’s buying process and cater to their needs at different stages.
1. What Is Lead Nurturing?
In simple terms, lead nurturing can be explained as the process of engaging with your prospective customers, helping them understand how you can help their business, and driving them to make a purchase with you. You must know that nurtured leads tend to make 47% larger purchases than leads that aren’t nurtured.
It’s not forced marketing but a process of cultivating good relationships with your prospects to convince them of the value of your offering. It involves providing your leads with relevant content as per their position in the buyer’s journey. Consider these small interactions as the building blocks of long-lasting customer relationships. If you fail at this point, it would be obvious to expect your leads to go elsewhere.
When a lead enters the sales funnel, their journey is divided into three steps:
1.1. Top of the Funnel (TOFU)
At this stage, leads need to know about your business, products, and services. You can share introductory videos with them to help them understand their issues and how to overcome them.
1.2. Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)
This is the stage when you have to convince your leads that you are better than your competitors. So, you might have to share your case studies, comparison guides, etc. that tell them about your achievements.
1.3. Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)
This is the stage when your leads are close to making their final buying decision. This is the time when you share promotional offers to encourage your buyers to choose your business over your competitors.
In a nutshell, the objective of lead nurturing is to educate your leads in the best way possible. From capturing leads to engaging them with your content, it involves everything you do to convince your leads that you have the right solution for their challenges.
2. Why Is It Important to Nurture Your Leads?
Not every lead you generate is going to buy from you. They may need some more content and convincing to make the decision of buying from you. This is what you need lead nurturing for. It is all about making active contacts with valuable leads to build trust and great relationships. If you don’t nurture your leads, be ready to lose 80% of new leads.
If you are not sure why you would need a lead nurturing program, let’s clear your doubt and understand its importance.
2.1. Gain your Audience’s Trust
When you focus on educating your prospects about your product/services and empowering them to make their own decisions, they will obviously prefer you over others. When you show them that you care about their pain points and help them understand their audience more clearly, it builds trust and helps you enter their good books.
2.2. Improve Conversions
A well-planned nurturing strategy helps more leads move quickly through the sales funnel. Did you know that nurtured leads have a 23% shorter sales cycle? And when there is a lack of such a plan, a great number of leads can be untapped and hence, reduce your sales.
2.3. Make More Sales
With a nurturing program, you can convert more leads into sales. Nurtured leads are more likely to buy from you because they trust your business and believe that they have enough information to make an informed decision. By planning to nurture leads, you pave the way to close more profitable sales.
2.4. Generate More Leads
When you understand your customer needs better, you sell better. With this understanding, you can enable the marketing team to understand the type of leads that fit your customer profile and help them generate more qualified leads. According to Forrester Research, companies that are successful at nurturing leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost.
2.5. Become Unforgettable
For any business, good communication is the key. If you communicate frequently with your prospects, they will remember you. When you are on top of their minds, they will turn to you when they need the products or services you offer. Lead nurturing can help you with exactly that.
Apart from helping you increase your sales, lead nurturing can also help you build a brand reputation that becomes a plus for you over time. Before you try to sell your solutions to your leads, you help them understand their challenges and how your brand can help them overcome those. This won’t just build a good relationship but will also help you sell to them because you won’t appear as a mere seller to them.
3. Nurturing Best Practices to Boost Your Sales
Let’s keep it simple and straight! Your lead nurturing strategy must take into account your customer’s journey and needs. So, it means that it can take many forms depending on the buyer’s persona and what they prefer. So, here are a few lead nurturing strategies that will help you boost your sales.
3.1. Segment Your Leads
Lead qualification is essential for effective time and resource management. When you have a lead scoring system in place, you will know which leads need to be nurtured based on their budget, authority, need, etc. This will also help you build and send relevant emails to each one of them.
Know your buyer persona and compare the generated leads against it. Then, segment leads on the basis of their interests, preferences, demographics, and other such factors. With lead segmentation, you will be able to target them better and offer more personalized experiences to your leads.
3.2. Send Personalized and Targeted Emails
After segmenting your leads, the next comes email marketing. Probably, it would need more work and dedication than other ways of nurturing. With the right and relevant email outreach, you can build trust and drive more leads to conversion. This will in return form a stronger relationship with your prospects.
55% of marketers believe that email marketing drives the highest return on investment of all digital marketing strategies. This means if your prospects can relate to your emails, you have a higher chance of converting them. Share personalized emails with your prospects to make them feel valued and modify emails as per their requirements.
3.3. Follow Up in a Timely Manner
50% of buyers pick the vendor that responds quickly. Making quick follow-ups does have evident results but still, not many companies are following up well in time. With automated lead nurturing, you can send immediate responses to any number of prospects in a timely manner. But if you connect over a phone call or personalized email, you will be able to convert more inbound leads into qualified sales opportunities.
If you are able to convince a single inbound lead with a well-planned call, it will turn out to be more profitable than a large number of cold calls. You may make quick follow-ups with the leads through the channels that you use frequently. By addressing their pain points before anyone else does, you will automatically increase your conversions.
3.4. Utilize Targeted Content
What works for one prospect may not work for the other one. This is why you need customized, targeted content that can help significantly improve your results. Try to understand your customers more deeply to create targeted content to nurture your leads. Consider things like customer challenges, concerns, industry trends, interests, goals, etc.
The content that you share with your target audience doesn’t have to be promotional but educational. Your prospects must feel that you understand what they are facing and that you are the right brand for their needs. This is the way of maximizing conversions from your content lead nurturing efforts.
3.5. Align Marketing and Sales Team
For successful lead nurturing, you will have to bring your sales and marketing team together to uncover common business objectives. The sales team knows that the price is common displeasure for most leads but if the marketing team doesn’t know about it, they won’t be able to create the right resources around it.
By getting clarity at different touchpoints in the buyer’s journey, you can optimize your content as per the need. For this, you can consider different triggers like workflow enrollment, lead scoring, and conversion events. When the marketing team has insights from the sales representatives, they get a clearer picture of which prospects qualify as high-value and which sources bring in such leads.
3.6. Create Landing Pages
Landing pages play a great role in lead nurturing. As a landing page acts as an entry point to your website, you must make sure that it is able to capture your viewer’s attention and make them interested in exploring further. Give close attention to the design and feel of the landing page as per the latest trends.
If your landing page is able to grab your visitor’s attention, they will want to know more about your business. Keep the form short so that it doesn’t irritate the visitor and still gets you all the information you need for further processes. Questions like name, email address, location, and phone number should be enough for your landing page.
3.7. Use Multiple Channels
Email is a powerful lead nurturing tool. But at the same time, there are many others too that you better don’t overlook. Boost engagement with as many tools as you can use to connect with your audience. Consider your audience’s preferred channels to build their trust in your business. Channels like social media paid retargeting, and offline advertising can do wonders if done rightly.
Remember that your ultimate goal is to stay on top of your customer’s minds so that they buy from you when they need your solutions. You will have to connect with them over and over again to boost their interest in your business and motivate them to convert. With multiple channels, you can remain in constant touch with them without being too intrusive.
4. Role of CRM in Lead Nurturing
When it’s about lead nurturing, no technology can help you as much as a CRM can. With a great CRM tool in place, you can automate the nurturing process and set up email automation, personalize outreach, and track leads’ positions in their buying journey.
A CRM will let you send an automated responder email once a lead enters your system via your website for the first time. By introducing your business, you take a step closer to your lead.
You can also set up an automated marketing process to send regular emails to your prospects to update them regarding your social media accounts. By communicating often with your leads, you encourage them to interact with you and discuss the issues that your solution may solve. This further takes them down the funnel more quickly.
When you get a complete view of everything about your lead, you can stay connected with them throughout their buying process. Track the position of the lead in the sales process and easily determine what you need to talk about at a certain stage to improve conversions.
5. Lead Nurturing- With Vs Without CRM
It’s clear and obvious that a CRM can do wonders when it comes to lead nurturing. And if you don’t use one, you may miss out on a lot of things that may make selling more challenging for you. Let’s take a look at what lead nurturing looks like with and without CRM.
6. Conclusion
Lead nurturing is the need of the hour for every business. It doesn’t only benefit you but also helps your prospects make an informed decision. When you gain your prospect’s trust, you are able to enhance your brand image and make a more credible position in the market.
Moreover, it helps you keep up with the changing market conditions and helps you optimize your content as per the gauged customer needs.
Kylas can be your effective lead nurturing software that automates campaigns, tracks the movement of every sales opportunity, and guides your prospects through the sales funnel easily.
