What is lead nurturing? It is essentially relationship-building. It’s a process of developing a relationship with your lead, attending to (or “nurturing”) him through every step of his buyer’s journey and at every stage of the sales funnel.
Just how important is it? A lack of it may render your leads cold, or worse, dead. A study states that 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales—and the culprit is lack of lead nurturing.
But if you do it correctly, your leads can easily convert into wins.
Here are eight lead nurturing strategies your team can implement today:
1. Start now
Anytime a potential buyer engages with your brand—even with just a visit to your website or a comment or like on your social media post—is a good time to start the lead nurturing process. You don’t need to wait for a formal inquiry on your product or service.
Most salespeople fail to recognize this and only begin the lead nurturing process when a prospect has openly expressed an intention to purchase. Most buyers won’t do this; most buyers explore many options and a little nudging from your end is necessary.
2. Build a smart sales cadence
A sales cadence is an integral part of lead nurturing. It is a timeline or sequence of sales activities, involving different touchpoints (email, phone call / voicemail, and social media), that sales professionals follow to engage and, hopefully, convert a lead.
But you can’t just randomly create a sequence. You have to be smart and thoughtful when building a sales cadence.
3. PersonalizeAll efforts should be personalized for your target.
Email, for example, is one of the touchpoints or channels in a sales cadence. Be smart about mapping out your email marketing strategy too. Send relevant content to your lead by personalizing the content of your emails.
By personalizing you become more relevant. And remember: lack of relevance leads to lack of engagement. And if you want to properly nurture your lead, you have to keep him engaged.
Personalization also means making time for some one-on-one interactions. It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing everything virtually, especially if you have the tools. But meeting with leads in person is a time-tested way of cultivating relationships.
Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels
4. Work on your response time
Lead response time is critical. When a lead moves past Awareness and into the Interest or Consideration stage and starts responding to your emails or voicemails, don’t make him wait. Respond immediately.
Reps who called within five minutes of a lead engagement—an inquiry, a form submitted on your site, etc.—yielded 900% more interest than those who contacted potential customers in 10 minutes.
A study also confirms that firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead (defined as having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker) as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.
5. Don’t be timid about following up
We cannot stress the importance of following up enough. It is important. The key is doing it properly. Timing must be considered. Time your strategies and follow-ups. Don’t be everywhere and anywhere all the time. Give your lead the time to digest every contact you make with him.
6. Use multiple touchpoints
Don’t stick to one. Don’t keep making calls if you’re only getting voicemail each time. Think outside the “inbox.” We recommend maximizing the use of your social media accounts and engaging in some social selling.
7. Align Sales and Marketing
Smarketing is the process of integrating and aligning Sales and Marketing processes within the organization, and it’s proven effective in in closing deals and driving more revenue for a business. It will most definitely have a positive effect on your lead nurturing.
With Sales and Marketing synergized, you can create all the sales tools you’ll need to convert leads—whether it’s a presentation, a promo, a campaign, or the content you send to your prospect. There are proven ways to successfully align Sales and Marketing.
8. Automate
Nurturing leads can be a long, tiring process and automating can go a long way in helping you through the process. Create your custom workflow, set contacts and contact (phone or email) frequencies, and automate some of the processes. Automation helps streamline even the most complex processes to make you more efficient. And efficiency is the name of the game when lead nurturing.
Main photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash
