So your campaign is raking in some beautiful, exciting new leads – congrats! Now you may feel like celebrating and moving on to the next one, but I’m here to warn you not to put the carriage before the horse. Just because you’ve got the leads to come to your house if you will, you still haven’t got them past the front porch. To do that, here are some tips on how to make them more likely to continue their journey to your end goal, and why nurturing leads is so important.
Firstly, whilst your campaign/ad definitely had a target audience in mind, it still likely had to be quite general in order to attract a larger group of people. However, once those leads are generated, they don’t want to continue to see generalised content. It’s not personable, important to them and they’ll probably be thinking ‘I can find the same thing in plenty of other places’. Now is the time to get specific. Create targeted content that takes into account their objectives in coming to your site and what kind of lifestyle/ business environment they are coming from. Keep analysing this on a regular basis, so that if your target users’ goals and interests change, you’re on top of it and not spewing out targeted content that doesn’t apply to anyone.
Secondly: be fast! Potential leads can dry up incredibly quickly, so it’s important to start your nurturing strategy immediately. Some of the oldest, but nonetheless reliable ways to do this are follow up emails and phone calls. Make them feel seen amongst the crowd, think quality not quantity. Research has shown that just 25 minutes can make all the difference, with leads much more likely to follow up on converting after being contacted five minutes after submitting, versus 30 minutes after. Now I know what you’re thinking. If someone tries to contact us at 1am on a Tuesday and no-one is there to respond in five minutes, what the heck are we supposed to do?! Well that’s where technology comes in. Programs such as live chats provide an excellent stop gap where they can reply for you, getting the process started with the basics until you can take over. This makes the lead feel attended to, and you don’t have to sacrifice your sleep for it!
Thirdly – scoring leads. No no, get your mind out of the gutter, what I mean is that you need to pay attention to which leads are the most valuable to your company. Now whilst the leads that earn you the most money are without a doubt some of the most valuable, it’s also important to look at the ones that convert the fastest. Analyse these people, see what demographic and sector they work in, and find out exactly why their business needs what you offer so badly. Once you understand these valuable leads, you can start to tailor your targeted content more at a similar audience – so you only get the best of the best.
So far all I’ve spoken about is nurturing leads that have just entered the sales process, and how you get them to convert in the end. But like I said in last week’s blog post, it’s incredibly vital to your marketing strategy that you focus energy on nurturing existing clients as well. If they feel like they’ve been forgotten, they’ll leave without you even noticing. Regularly check in with emails talking about what’s new and how you’ve evolved and improved. It’s also a good idea to occasionally send emails/call to ask if they still want to hear from you. A lot of the time emails can get skimmed over, so they might have completely forgotten they subscribed in the first place. Whether your prompt leads to them unsubscribing or sparks their interest once again, it still cleans up your list whilst making them feel attended to and remember why they subscribed in the first place.
Lastly, use multiple channels when nurturing leads. I’m not saying bombard them from every angle so they’re thoroughly exhausted with trying to escape you, but utilising all of the tools available to you increases your chances of connecting with more people, on a platform that they understand the most. Whether this be via email, direct marketing, social media or something else, you are essentially changing your tone to suit each one whilst still conveying the exact same message. That message being, I’m what will work for you – let me prove it! It’s also an excellent idea to utilise surveys on these channels, so you can get a feel for the user and they can find out even sooner how you offer solutions specifically tailored to what they need.
So there we have it – sorry nature, but in B2B it’s all about nurturing leads.
