Lead Nurturing Best Practices and Stages
There are several lead nurturing best practices and stages to be aware of. Absence of effective lead nurturing practices results in the loss of 79% of generated sales leads according to a research by MarketingSherpa. Lead nurturing has emerged as a key concern for organizations as today’s B2B buyers prefer to educate themselves about a product before committing to buy it. They spend more time on research and studying info about product features, usability and customer services before engaging with the seller’s representative. Again not all prospects are interested in buying your products. But you can attract and drive their interest through constant engagements and by conveying time-appropriate messages.
All these present before us challenges of a sales funnel with a widening top and a complex sales cycle that require an organization to nurture leads with efficient process and targeted content while preventing any leakage of leads. An ill-equipped and inappropriate lead nurturing process may lead to a leaky sales funnel and high customer acquisition cost, blunting effective utilization of marketing automation strategy. The following are some important steps to streamline your lead nurturing practices for better results.
Start With An Impression
Start on an influential note. Identify and analyze the interests, exact needs, and behavior of prospected customers and help them build awareness accordingly. Create a pool of sources to enable yourself to draw and share explicit and implicit information as industry trends and customer behavior. Present yourself in an attractive way to generate their interest and influence their choice. Make sure the information you provide exactly matches what they look for. A deeper relationship and sense of trust thus created over a period of time is certain to influence the purchase decision.
Reinforce Impression
Send timely and personalized messages to reinforce your impressive start. You must have meaningful communication with focus on educating customers. Wherever possible, share whitepapers, podcasts, blogs, videos, which will reinforce your brand identity and product value proposition. Also, share your success story and demonstrate your value over competitors.
Sustain Prospect’s Interest
At this stage, keep your focus on maintaining the level of interest you have created in prospective customers and steer their choice to your advantage. Share feedbacks, show third-party information, and organize webinars to sustain communication. It is important to plan and control the process so that the relationship does not face any bottlenecks and create trust deficit.
Seal The Deal
If you have sufficient indication to think that a prospective lead is “purchase ready,” then propose a deal to them. The sales team should take over and send them a proposal based on your awareness of their purchase need and references. Follow up with a personalized message seeking their response. If possible, offer a free trial.
For sustained communication leading to a high percentage of lead conversion, keep a few additional things in mind.
- Keep the communication language simple and comprehensible with a considerate view of the real world
- Focus on prospective customer’s interest, likes, and dislikes while following leads or nurturing campaigns
- Ensure that your interaction with prospective customers is not highly pitched or of low mettle
- Send right message at prospect‘s time of preference
- Keep the communication meaningful and responsive
- Messages must include personalized and customer-specific message
- Avoid generic contents to the extent possible
