When people first enter your sales funnel, they often spend some time in it before purchasing.
These ‘floating leads’ may want more information before deciding, or they may want to compare your products and services with your competitors. Should you wait for that lightbulb moment or be more proactive?
While a 10% conversion rate is something we all aspire to, the reality is that average conversion rates hover around 2%–5%. A lead nurturing strategy can help you aim for that 10% figure and turn hesitancy into certainty.
So, what is a lead nurturing strategy, and how can you develop one that will improve your figures?
What is a lead nurturing strategy?
A lead nurturing strategy is a series of tactics that help your leads move from the top of your sales funnel to where they are ready to purchase. A good lead nurturing strategy recognizes where a customer is in the sales funnel and proactively addresses any pain points or worries the customer may have.
Lead nurturing is about further developing your relationship with customers you’ve already attracted using tactics like B2B lead generation strategies. They may be very aware of your brand and what you do, but they still feel an element of uncertainty. That uncertainty may be because they lack in-depth knowledge of your products or have encountered something that worries them.
Your job is to allay customer worries, provide information, and personalize interactions to make the relationship meaningful. This helps drive customers to the bottom of your sales funnel, ready to make that all-important purchasing decision.
How to develop a lead nurturing strategy
How do you currently deal with qualified leads that have entered your sales funnel? Do you just let them move through your funnel naturally and hope they eventually make a purchase? If that’s your current strategy, your conversion rates probably sit around that average of 2%–5%.
To see improvements, you need a robust lead nurturing strategy that gives those leads a ‘helping hand.’ Follow these ten tips to get your lead nurturing strategy on the right track.
1. An optimized sales funnel
Think of your sales funnel as a road from A to B. If that road is full of potholes and other obstructions, drivers will likely seek an alternative route. You must ensure your ‘road’ is obstruction-free and recognize where ‘travelers’ are on their customer journey.
Different stages of that customer journey will require different types of nurturing. An optimized sales funnel that recognizes both stages and needs will help smooth the journey. It will also help your team provide the help needed to move them to the next stage of the funnel.
For the purposes of lead nurturing, think of your sales funnel in three stages: top, middle, and bottom.
- Top. Once a customer is aware of you, they will consider your brand a possible choice. You should offer targeted content that increases awareness and gives them more information on your products or services. This could be in the form of blog posts or free eBooks.
- Middle. In this stage, potential customers become real prospects. Now is the time to build trust and develop the relationship further. You want them to see that you can solve their problems and fulfill their needs. You can recommend products or services at this stage or highlight the benefits for customers if they purchase. Introducing a tailored business proposal could also effectively showcase how your offerings fit their specific needs.
- Bottom. It’s crunch time, and your customer is almost ready to buy. This is where you should address pain points or objections and show them why you’re the best choice. At this stage, you could provide them with white papers or customer testimonials or offer a one-to-one chat or in-person meeting. To further enhance this engagement, incorporating an appointment setting at this stage allows for more personalized interactions, ensuring that any final questions or concerns are addressed directly and efficiently.
To ensure transparency and cater to customers’ need for detailed cost breakdowns, providing an itemized receipt at this point can be very effective in finalizing their purchasing decision.
2. Make your content targeted
Not all customers are created equal, so avoid providing generic one-size-fits-all content. Consider what your potential customers want and need, then tailor your content to suit the different groups. You may decide to apply segmentation here to make things easier. For example, one group may want to focus on the technical aspects of a product, while another may be more concerned about costs.
One way to identify different segments is using interactive content such as surveys or polls. These can help you understand what customers want so you can provide targeted content that will lead to better conversion rates. Targeted content gives potential customers the information and answers they need to make an informed decision.
3. Personalization
A crucial part of both B2C and B2B selling strategies is personalizing relationships wherever you can. One of the main areas where you can do this is in your marketing emails. You may already have sent the potential customer a welcome email when they signed up to your mailing list, but you should also be using personalized email as part of your lead nurturing strategy.
Personalization goes far beyond simply using the recipient’s name or job title. It’s an extra layer of targeted content that helps move the customer through the funnel. You can also use these emails to send the customer interactive content. This can give you more data and provide valuable insights into what customers want.
4. Communication
Potential customers want to feel valued by your brand, so keeping the ‘conversation’ going with them is vital. At the same time, you don’t want to be overly intrusive and overload them with information. The ideal frequency can vary, but consider contacting them 3-6 times over the first two weeks after any initial contact.
In some cases, the customer may continue the conversation, but the general rule is to be proactive without being pushy. Another thing to think about is customer preferences for communication. They may want you to only send them emails, or they may be open to receiving notifications from your SMS for business system.
5. Think interactive
Interactive content can be an effective way of collecting further information on what customers want and their concerns. It’s also a fun way of developing your relationship with them.
The segmentation achieved through interactive content can also help you tailor your marketing efforts as prospects move through your sales funnel. Make sure any interactive content is relevant to your brand and your customers. The answers a customer provides in a quiz may help you narrow down choices when it comes to things like product recommendations. Gamification can help both generate and nurture leads.
6. Use AI-powered chatbots
When nurturing leads, it’s crucial to provide the communication channels that customers prefer. More than 63% of customers show a preference for live chat, so a good service here can be a win-win scenario. Live chat can also help drive customers towards conversion and can improve your retention rates.
Employing creative automation tools like AI-powered chatbots can further enhance these interactions, providing not only immediate responses but also personalized engagement based on the user’s history and preferences.
Live chat is a must-have feature for most businesses nowadays. While unable to handle overly complex queries, AI-powered chatbots can answer simple questions, check availability, or provide order status. They can also be used to gather more pertinent data through interactive question-and-answer sessions. This can be part of a wider strategy of using AI to boost your digital marketing efforts.
7. Sales and marketing alignment
When nurturing leads through your sales funnel, it’s crucial to remember that your different teams have one common goal: sales. It takes teamwork to achieve that goal, so it’s important to ensure that your sales and marketing teams are aligned in their actions and tactics as a customer moves forward (or downward).
Collaboration between your teams can also prevent repetitive information from being sent to the customer. If a customer makes an inquiry about a project management platform solution you offer, they don’t want to receive the same technical information or a white paper on how effective it is. A team effort can also give insights into customer behavior and interactions and can help you score leads.
8. Score your leads
This is another area where not all customers are created equal. Customer A may want to make a final decision within weeks, while Customer B may be in no hurry to decide. Being able to score leads means you can segment your potential customers based on various factors, such as the likelihood of conversion and the urgency shown by the customer.
Your marketing team can also look at other factors such as demographics and interactions with your brand and assign a numerical score. The higher the score, the more likely that lead is to convert to a sale. It all comes back to where an individual is on their customer journey and where they are in your sales funnel.
Lead scoring can be an integral part of an effective lead nurturing strategy. It allows your teams to focus their efforts on the short-term leads most likely to convert. You can also identify the ‘slow burners’; those leads that may eventually convert in the long term.
Ask leads to accept push notifications
Although you may be connecting with leads in your sales funnel using email or SMS, your website remains the central focus of lead nurturing efforts. It provides product information, and it will likely host any blog posts you or others write. The information on your website can change daily, so push notifications can be a great way of keeping your leads updated.
Your leads don’t need to be on your website to receive notifications; they just need to be online. They can receive product updates, special offers, and news of product launches as part of your go-to market sales strategy. You can even send notifications to their mobile device if enabled, making it easy to nurture leads even when they’re on the move.
Push notifications can be useful for various tactics other than lead nurturing. You can retarget previous customers who haven’t made a purchase in a while, or you can upsell or cross-sell based on their previous buying behavior. You can even use push notifications in the event of cart abandonments to try to identify why a purchase wasn’t completed.
Tailor campaigns
Your sales and marketing teams won’t focus on just one task at a time. While they’re nurturing the current leads you have, they will also have one eye on generating new leads for the future. These different tasks do not always need to be completely separate, and there will be many circumstances where there will be a good deal of crossover in terms of content and information.
Where you can tailor new campaigns to fulfill both tasks: nurturing the leads you have and attracting new ones; this can save time and, in some cases, costs. Although there may be some necessary information replication, you should include enough new information to make campaigns meaningful to current leads. For example, your new campaign for a SaaS solution could also highlight other product updates and new features.
The takeaway
Your conversion rates may currently be average–or even below average. Ideally, you want to be aiming for that magic 10%-or-above threshold. A big part of achieving that figure is how you deal with any leads currently in your sales funnel. Through attentive and personalized nurturing, you can boost your sales figures and achieve higher levels of customer loyalty.
Your buyer personas may vary greatly, but one thing every potential customer has in common is a desire for a smooth customer journey that’s free of pain points. That means having a lead nurturing strategy that recognizes what information to provide and when to provide it and communication that is welcome but not intrusive.