As any marketing head will tell you, converting your existing customers is just as important as retaining new ones. In an ideal world, businesses wouldn’t need to work hard to keep the customers they convert. However, in today’s world businesses are required to develop a lead nurturing salesforce. This is done to ensure they can retain their existing clientele. The salesforce has only one job: Lead Nurturing.
What is lead nurturing?
Lead nurturing is a simple marketing technique. It requires businesses to reinforce the relationship they’re building with the customers. This reinforcement should ideally be done at every stage of the marketing funnel. This technique aims to ensure the customer has a positive experience and will move on to the next stage. Employing a lead nurturing strategy is an excellent way to figure out what customers are looking for and how your business fits the bill.
How do you nurture lead generation?
Lead nurturing is often known as Lead generation. It helps your business develop a positive relationship with the customer. As a business, you may have hundreds or thousands of potential customers in your CRM. However, not all of them are ready to invest in your products or services.
You may have gotten their information or the ‘lead’ from a survey or an opt-in form. However, this does not mean the customer is actively looking to buy. Approximately 50% of customers on your CRM are not yet ready to listen to your product. They have displayed only the most basic interest in your business. And to convert them, you’ll need to provide them with more information.
This cannot always be done through a cold email process. Instead, you have to provide information at the relevant stages to get them interested. An email that directly pitches your product may end up in spam, but a simple thought-out phone call may help you take the customer to this next step. This process is called nurturing a lead.
What are the elements of lead nurturing?
For any lead nurturing strategy to be successful, it requires five essential elements:
Goals
The first thing to do before employing a lead nurturing strategy is to define your campaign goals. What do you aim to achieve by using this tactic? Is your goal to increase your customer base? Do you wish to increase the number of followers on Instagram? Are you trying to increase your sales? Lead nurturing can also be used to determine whether you should enter a new demographic of customers. Therefore, the first thing to do is determine your campaign goals.
Persona
Every campaign requires an ‘ideal’ persona. This persona is your target customer. The persona is a generic model that will help you flesh out your campaign. It should fit the specific demographic of your targeted customer (age, gender, location, occupation, etc.). Most businesses need to develop more than one persona since they target multiple customer bases. When you define your persona, you can get a more accurate understanding. You can understand who you are targeting and how to reach them.
Content
The type of content you use for your campaign is important. The type of content you should generate depends upon the lead nurturing stage your customer is in:
Top of the funnel
Customers who are at the top of the funnel are looking at basic information. This information is often generic to the industry or the product. They are in the ‘curiosity’ stage of the business and therefore, providing them with too much information can turn them off.
Middle of the funnel
Customers in the middle of the funnel are often looking to buy the product but haven’t decided the specifics. For example, a customer may have decided to buy a car. But they haven’t decided on the size, model, brand, etc.
The content for these types of customers should be specific and rich. There should be little-to-no fluff in the content and should give an overall view of the product.
Bottom of the funnel
These customers have decided to invest in the product. However, they’re at the key stage:
Why choose this business?
Therefore, the content you provide should display your strengths and weaknesses. It should highlight what the customer will get by choosing you for the product over your competitors. Customers in this stage often prefer in-depth reviews and information.
Timeline
The lead nurturing timeline begins when you first receive the contact information for your customer. This sets the beginning of your sales cycle. You can complete the process through lead nurturing email marketing. You can also use other lead nurturing tools to engage your customer. However, you should develop an accurate timeline. Lead generation software can help you track your timeline.
KPIs
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the key requirement of a lead nurturing strategy. How do you define whether your lead nurturing activities are a success or not? The simplest KPI that any business can use is engagement. Has the engagement of your content increased or decreased after you employed the new marketing campaign?
Can you optimize the lead nurturing to maximize ROI?
Yes. An optimized lead nurturing campaign can make a significant difference in the ROI of your business. To maximize your ROI on lead nurturing, you can:
- Reduce your sales cycle by targeting the stages that cause delay.
- Target customers who are ready to learn about products and aim to convert them in the long run rather than the short run.
- Increase brand awareness by using reputation management services.
- Generate accurate, more qualified leads instead of generic ones.
- Increase lead-to-customer conversion rates.
Lead nurturing examples
Lead nurturing can be done through a variety of methods. The most common lead nurturing examples include:
- Lead nurturing email campaigns that target a specific customer base.
- Personalized and frequent email newsletters to all subscribers.
- Personalized and frequent sales call to target customers.
- Optimized social media and content marketing
- Social media, search engines and PPC ads.
These are the most common lead nurturing examples and tools. They can be used by businesses of all sizes, industries and localities.
Lead nurturing is an excellent method of converting and retaining customers for any business. Instead of focusing on customers at the bottom of the funnel. It is important to target customers at the very top of the funnel. With an effective lead generation strategy, you can ensure maximum customer conversion.
