There are certain necessary components to an effective lead nurturing campaign that every business should consider. Neglecting to first segment leads, rushing the relationship with obvious sales pitches, or offending customers by sending them irrelevant content will have a noticeably negative impact on results. Fortunately there are proven methods to improve the chances of converting a qualified lead into a sale.

Here are the top five components in every effective lead nurturing campaign.

Qualified and Segmented Leads

The first step in any lead nurturing campaign is to qualify and segment each lead. Lead nurturing is based on providing relevant content to each lead and it is too difficult to personalize the content for every individual lead. If each lead is divided into groups based on their demographics, online profile, and personal interests, campaigns can be created for each group instead of each person.

An Intent on Building a Lasting Relationship

Lead nurturing is not supposed to be used as a gimmick to quickly convert leads into sales. All lead nurturing efforts must be focused on building a long-term relationship based on trust. By establishing a business as an expert in their respective field, the potential consumer will be more likely to buy from them in the future, when they are ready. If the sales pitch is too strong or obvious, it could rush the decision and lose the customer in the process.

A Strategic Timeline

The frequency of lead nurturing attempts is also crucial to success. Most leads do not want to receive a new article or tutorial from the same business every day. Their inbox’s are already filled with messages from work, family, and friends. If lead nurturing is done too often, the lead could become annoyed and opt out of future messages. The same negative result can happen if the content is not sent often enough, since a lead will pay very little attention to a message they receive from some random company every few months. Depending on the business, 2-4 times per month seems to hold a lead’s interest without overwhelming them.

Interesting and Informative Content

The material that is being sent out to each lead needs to offer value to their lives or their business.  It has to capture their attention and make them want to continue reading. Use the information gathered through the lead segmentation process to determine what the lead is interested in learning. Focus on general information that highlights the benefits of specific products or services without making it sound like a pushy sales ploy.

Method for Measuring Each Campaign`s Effectiveness

Every lead nurturing campaign will bring different results and it is essential that there is a way to analysis the results and their effectiveness. Certain content will draw a greater response and it is important to recognize which lead nurturing campaigns have the greatest conversion rate. Analyze results monthly to determine which nurturing campaigns are working and which need revision. Use a CRM to attribute revenue back to your nurture marketing campaign to measure ROI. Feed your prospects nurture campaigns that produce the highest ROI.

Lead nurturing has been proven time and time again to effectively convert leads into sales, but it has to be done right. Leads need to be qualified and segmented first and then a lasting relationship needs to be built using useful content over a strategic timeline, which will later be measured for effectiveness. Failure to consider any of these five components could negatively impact the effectiveness of a lead nurturing campaign.

When a suspect enters your lead management system, how long will it take to move her into your CRM? That depends. Today’s B2B buyers are more reluctant to speak with a sales agent until preliminary research has been done, typically through the Internet. It can take weeks, months or years to elevate that contact to a sales-ready prospect. This is partly due to the risks that buyers take on when making a purchase decision. In summary, lead nurturing takes time to get great results.

Organizational Risk

The buyer must determine how a purchase will affect an enterprise. For example, the purchase of a capital asset, such as a conveyor system, may allow the production line to increase efficiency by 20%. But it if it adds another line position, that purchase can force the company to modify controls, safety procedures, and employee management practices. Bringing in a new purchase can increase performance expectations, alter internal relationships or require structural changes, so there is much more at stake than making a payment; by nurturing your leads you can build buyer confidence and help him evaluate post-purchase benefits to the organization.

Personal Risk

Each decision maker in a B2B purchase decision is faced with a certain amount of personal risk when selecting a product or service. In situations where the enterprise relies on a sole decision-maker to purchase assets, that person can take on personal risk of loss – specifically, job loss. If an executive voices a negative opinion about a vendor being considered for a purchase – even if it’s determined to be the most qualified vendor – the buyer may be reluctant to select that vendor, choosing to avoid job loss rather than selecting the best vendor for the company. On the other hand, a vendor that isn’t being considered which receives praise from an executive may become an attractive choice, so the buyer can continue employment. Although a buyer may not receive a reward for a good purchase decision; a bad choice may put her job at risk. This can place some emphasis on fear in making decisions; that is why a good lead nurturing program can be successful over time. It can be effective at reducing fears by educating your buyer and providing support material for choosing your company.

Financial Risk

Often the greatest risk that a B2B buyer must contemplate is financial risk. Not only is there a risk a product will not perform as promised but the purchase may require additional costs. For example, adding a new asset like the conveyor system incurs expenses that accompany headcount increases, including salary, benefits, training, and insurance costs. It can take time to convince a lead that your product is the right solution financially. For high-cost assets, you may need eight or nine contacts to simply convince a buyer to consider your solution. Addressing financial considerations should be a significant part of your lead nurturing strategy – expect multiple engagements to yield results. All these risks cause a B2B buyer to contemplate, research, and prioritize purchase options. You must be present throughout that process. Use your lead nurturing program to educate, inform, and convince your leads, and have patience – it takes time.

The majority of marketing leads, regardless of their quality, are lost before being converted into a sale. In today’s competitive global marketplace every company needs a system for improving their conversion rate and capturing more leads. B2B marketing and lead generation experts have determined that a lack of effective lead nurturing is the primary cause for many missed opportunities. In this article we’ll discuss why lead nurturing is necessary to convert leads into sales, what lead nurturing can do for you and how to nurture leads.

Why is lead nurturing necessary?

Lead nurturing is necessary to build relationships with future consumers. The majority of site visitors and leads gained from landing pages are not ready to buy right away. Instead, buyers are using online resources to research products and services before they are ready to make a purchase. They are comparison shopping for budget approval and the actual decision may not be made for weeks or even months.

Handing over semi-qualified leads to sales people before they are ready wastes time and resources. After first contact is made and it does not appear there will be an immediate sale, the sales person assumes the lead is cold. This could result in the lead being discarded, lost or ignored by a lack of follow-up or attention. That is why these leads need to be nurtured first.

What can lead nurturing do?

Lead nurturing is the process of cultivating prospects that are not yet ready to buy. Research has shown that lead nurturing does produce measurable results compared to traditional methods. Considering 79% of all leads generated by marketing are not followed up by sales and out of the remaining 21%, approximately 70% are discarded by sales as not being qualified, that means less than 10% of all leads are actually followed up, if there is not a lead nurturing strategy in place.

Lead nurturing is necessary since it reduces the number of marketing-generated leads ignored by sales to as low as 25%. Instead of 90% going unanswered, only 25% will be ignored. That difference alone justifies the need for lead nurturing.

Lead nurturing also improves the conversion rate by up to 7%, due to the trust that is built between the lead and the business prior to the sale. Lead nurturing is designed to build brand awareness by developing a mutually beneficial relationship with the potential customer without forcing them into a situation where they feel compelled to make a purchase.

How do you nurture leads?

Content is what drives the lead nurturing engine. It is not just about posting random white papers, case studies, articles, online demos and webinars and hoping that someone will download and read them. Neither is it sending out a mass drip email campaign to every possible lead.

Lead nurturing should be about providing the right content at the right time that addresses a problem that a prospect is focused on resolving. Lead nurturing can be done via email, but it’s not about the delivery system of email, it’s about the perceived relevance of the content delivered via the email as well as the timing of the delivery. Quality content at the right time is essential for success.

To get the most out of leads and save valuable time, it is necessary to implement a carefully planned lead nurturing strategy as part of a complete marketing automation program. Significantly less leads will be ignored, an increase in trust will be established, and as a result more leads will be converted simply by using lead nurturing.

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B2B lead nurturing programs begin with research. Overcomplicating processes which have been proven to already work make B2B lead nurturing far less desirable than intended. By simple planning before execution, businesses who’ve already formulated sales funnels, landing pages and every bell-and-whistle in between could enjoy much more simplistic processes of taking leads, dripping campaigns or offering companion products or services to customers hesitantly approaching your high dollar offerings.  To make B2B lead nurture campaigns much more effective, pump synergy into your campaigns through careful research of tactics that effectively win relationships with businesses instead of fretting over one-off customers.  Here’s how to move forward.

Identifying Pipelines

By definition, pipelines do what most manufacturing companies perform daily: feed something into one main source through channels which nourish that source.  To melt aluminum for extrusion, one needs metal scrap; in B2B nomenclature, one would need resources, direction and nourishing to drag B2B leads through pipelines.  Once these pipelines have been adequately setup, they turn into processes.  Your initial goal, then, is identification of single processes which work for constantly delivering accurate lead funnels for nurturing with campaigns that speak to potentially closable leads.

In identifying B2B channels, bear in mind traditional gauging methods which previously proved successful need reevaluated since digital standards of information collaboration, collection or nurturing have changed when mobile marketing exploded several years back.  Secure data from Marketo or other data sources to determine which source of nourishment B2B lead nurturing will require in specific pipes.

Nurture B2B Leads To Next, Not Final, Step

Critically committed lead nurturing errors cost potentially long-term lucrative deals from closing.  When doors shut, getting that prospect to come back takes more work than you’re prepared to cope with; therefore, hold your B2B client by the hand through each step of your business model, dropping hints leading towards the final destination.  Expecting potential clientele to jump from hello to checkout simply won’t fly in our apprehensive closed wallet society.

Reduce your previous B2B lead nurturing path to solutions less unobtrusive than campaigns before, allowing potential customers to see each door being passed through as individually tailored solutions rather than being forced into the big picture without warning.  Remember, you wouldn’t force an apple down a newborns throat; carry that ideology into all lead nurturing initiatives for unfathomable results.

Test, Test Again, Then Exam Results

Finally, nothing really could be construed as ‘concrete’ until it’s tested several dozen times over.  Pipelines which you’ve established above must be proven viable, the B2B leads which you’ve accumulated need verified, and you’ll need to kindly option them into your database, thereby establishing permission-based communication.  Your lead funnels must consist of contingency plans allowing the marketing professional to seamlessly integrate proper demographical demands into their campaigns which, in turn, allows the leads collect to flow directly towards the department of interest.  Split-testing every campaign against parameters which deliberately kick out leads will allow future campaign infrastructures to self-solidify based off test results observed.

Is 2013 Your Synergetic Year?

Kicking off the New Year with strong tactics for pipeline enhancements, B2B lead nurturing and qualification campaigns while having perfectly timed steps in place to enhance the quality of leads received will prove immeasurably positive. Remember to lead your prospective client down clearly lit paths towards the inevitable relationship consummated through transactions well-deserved for your nurture efforts.