Converting a lead into a sale does not happen overnight, unfortunately, and that's if it even happens at all! In fact, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales and a lack of nurture is the main cause of this.
This is especially true in the B2B space, where there is a longer sales cycle as a prospect is less likely to become aware of your company and instantly decide to make a purchase. There is a critical consideration stage in between that is often overlooked – you must nurture your leads until they are sales-ready. Don't let your leads go cold and certainly don't let them go to your competitors!
What is Lead Nurturing?
Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with your leads. These individuals may not be ready to buy just yet, but they hopefully will be in the future. The goal of lead nurturing is to educate the prospect to inform and influence their decision-making process while building their awareness of your brand and gaining their trust along the way. Successful lead nurturing will increase your conversion rates as leads will be more likely to choose your brand when it comes to the time to purchase because you are top of mind and have demonstrated your knowledge and expertise, providing evidence to support their decision.
Lead nurturing is a vital part of the sales process however, nowadays most lead nurturing activity can be done by automation set up by the marketing team – not relying on manual processes by the sales team.
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What do Lead Nurturing Campaigns Consist of?
At the ‘nurture’ or consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, the prospect is in the middle of the funnel. They know who you are and they know what you offer. It’s at this stage of their journey that you want them to remember your solution when they think of the problem that you could solve – you want to remain in the front of their mind.
You are in a battle with your competitors at this stage, and you must prove why your solution is the best fit to meet the needs of the prospect.
Automated Nurture Emails
Nurture emails are a great way to do this. Emails are cost-effective, targeted and customisable. They will offer your prospect with actionable insights that will drive whatever action you want them to carry out. When you combine emails into an automated sequence, you can set up a customised nurture email journey, that is tailored to the actions that the prospect takes and their key interest areas. So, if they click on a call to action that says, “tell me more about B2B lead generation for SMEs”, you can do just that.
Digital Ads Remarketing
Digital advertising is another great way to nurture your prospects – but not by using top-of-funnel ads targeting anyone. Instead, add your prospects that are interested in B2B lead generation for SMEs to a remarketing audience on Facebook, Google or LinkedIn, with specific messaging about what they are interested in? These tailored Ads, along with a strong call to action that takes them directly to a landing page to book a free consultation with your team, for example, to push them down to the next stage in the funnel and closer to a sale.
Social Media
Social media is another great way to nurture your prospects – but you must be clever. On social media, you can be less targeted, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Social is a great way to showcase your offering and how great your business is when compared with your competitors.
Upload customer testimonials and videos of your clients, or behind the scenes images of your office/staff and take the opportunity to showcase your people. After all, humans buy from humans, so the more engagement you can gather from social media the better.
Blogging
Blogging may not immediately come to mind as a player in the middle stage of the funnel. Typically, blogging is used as a tool to ‘attract’ prospects to your brand, because it makes for such good social media content and is discoverable by search engines. However, your blog can also be used as a lead nurturing tool, for those readers who are already known you but maybe not ready to convert to a sale (yet)!
There are several ways you can get more out of your blog as a nurturing tool:
- You can send an email to those leads you’re trying to nurture, with relevant content that links back to your blog. Remember our prospect who was researching B2B lead generation for SMEs? Well, why not email them a link, with a CTA to read your blog outlining the latest and greatest in B2B lead gen for SMEs?
- On that note, don’t forget your call-to-action within the blog! Link to other relevant parts of your website within your blog and include specific actions at the end of the blog for what you want your reader to do next. With our B2B lead gen prospect, you could include links to your SME page within the body of the blog, and a large CTA at the end for them to talk to your sales team.
- Talk to your sales team for insights – they are talking to your prospects every day and so will know their pain points, topics they’re interested in and what messaging they react to best. They may have some good ideas about blog content you could be writing about and sending to your leads that require nurturing.
- Case Studies are the ultimate middle of funnel content to help convince a prospect that is considering your company to reach out to you – it's better for them to hear how great your product/service is from others and see real results rather than just go on your word alone!
This may all seem like a lot – blogging, social media, automated emails, digital remarketing advertising – but don’t worry. Through the Zymplify platform, you can build, launch and manage all of these channels from one platform. That means that no matter where you are in the world, you can set up a fantastic multichannel, lead nurturing campaign from start to finish, from one platform, within a matter of hours.
Use our free marketing consultation available now to find out how you can quickly and easily build a lead nurturing plan that keeps working even when you're not! We'd love to talk to you about how we can help you boost your business, fast – click here to find out more.
Sources: Strategic-IC,
