A Basic Guide to Lead Nurturing
The marketing landscape is quite unlike what it was just 20 years ago. But among all of the digital tools and expanded analytics, one facet has not changed: the need to create relationships with leads and potential customers.
It may sound quaint, but human interaction is still the best way to build and keep business, even in lead gen digital marketing. Lead nurturing is a strategy that facilitates that meaningful relationship.
What is Lead Nurturing?
Lead nurturing is essentially what it sounds like: curating a genuine interest and concern for people at all points in the sales pipeline.
Effective lead nurturing means showing personalized concern for each lead’s needs, communicating it both in personal dialogue and marketing materials.
Facilitating that human interest gives your marketing more credibility — and it does the same for the products or services you provide.
Why is Lead Nurturing Important?
Your customers, especially new ones, don’t want to work with a company that’s aloof or remote. Artificial intelligence can’t dictate the course of flesh-and-blood relationships. Leads want to deal with human beings, not logos.
Lead nurturing sounds quaint, but it’s staggeringly effective. According to Marketo, effective lead nurturing can create 50% more leads that are ready to make a purchase, all at a third of the cost. It can also shorten the sales cycle by almost 25%. Nurtured leads also tend to make bigger purchases than non-nurtured ones.
Most importantly, lead nurturing cements your company’s reputation as something more than a collector of subscribers and opt-ins. It puts a human face to your marketing efforts, likely generating new leads on its own.
Lead Nurturing Strategy
Lead nurturing isn’t a replicable science — it’s different for every business, industry, customer base, and location. But there are a few general approaches and thoughts that will guide your strategy:
Chart Your Leads’ Sales Journey
What is the typical experience your leads go through? Where do you usually find and identify them? How do they get to the sales flow? And how does your company engage with and guide them during the process?
Get to know every step and interaction in the process from start to sale. Note every part that may need improvement. Use web analytics to chart the length and depth of each phase in the sales pipeline.
Learn About Your Leads
This reads like an obvious step, but it’s not always obvious in practice. Know your leads from both personal and quantitative angles. You can get data on their companies, the technology they use, their budget, and their needs. Use the BANT framework for your analysis.
Think more abstractly about your leads, as well. What are their most pressing needs and concerns? What are the pain points in their business? How interested are they in your products or services — and are those something they can’t get better versions of from a competitor?
Develop Lead-Centered Content
Align your digital content to reflect your potential leads’ needs. Your website should be comprehensive, but structured so it makes users’ time well-spent. Brevity and approachability are always helpful in this regard.
Social media and email strategies are powerful marketing tools, so craft your posts with relationships in mind. These communications are about your customers, not yourself.
Make your content helpful, inclusive, and enlightening. Most of all, give them something that they can get from you and you alone — leave the memes to others.
Contact Us to Learn More
There’s a lot more that goes into effective lead nurturing. At Insights ABM, we are ready to help you develop a strategy that will turn leads into real clients and customers. Contact us to find out more about how our Dallas lead gen digital marketing agency can deliver meaningful results with lead nurturing support.