Once you’ve generated leads, however, you need to know what to do next. It’s at this point you need to ask, “what is lead nurturing?”
Lead nurturing consists of the actions you take after generating a lead to guide the lead through the purchasing process. This can include qualifying your leads, following up with them, booking demonstrations, providing more information, and pitching to them. If your lead nurturing efforts are successful, you’ll turn a lead into a customer.
Lead nurturing sounds straightforward, and it can be. There are many different ways to go about nurturing a lead, however, and some are better than others. If you’re doing any of the following, you’re making some mistakes that could be costing you leads.
Your marketing efforts have paid off, and you’ve generated several new leads. Now it’s time for marketing to turn the lead over to sales. Sales can then follow up.
If you’re ready to hit the “send” button on your email, you might want to hold off for a moment more. Consider how qualified this lead is. Is this person a high-up decision-maker or are they lower down on the totem pole? Do they work in a department that uses your product or service?
Before you follow up with any lead, make sure you’re qualifying them. To qualify a lead, you’ll need to do some research. Consider who the person is and what position they hold in their company. Think about what content they looked at on your website and how long they spent clicking around.
Qualifying the lead is one of the most important steps you can take. Nurturing leads takes time and effort, so do your research first.
If you don’t already have a lead nurturing campaign in place, now’s the time to create one. This provides you with the roadmap for achieving your goals. It can also save you time and effort, allowing you to pre-write many of your emails and then add in customization later.
To create a successful campaign, you’ll want to define your goals. What actions should leads take, and which products or services should they purchase at the end of the process? You’ll want to create a segmented list, as not every lead will end up purchasing the same product or service.
Once you’ve determined the goals and divided up the list, you can create response emails in sequence. This will allow you to follow up with the leads appropriately.
Once you sent out your campaign, you started to get some responses. Some of your leads are interested, and they’re asking you for more information.
Make sure you actually follow up when someone expresses interest. This may seem obvious, but many sales professionals and marketers fail to follow up with someone who has expressed interest. They may be busy and simply forget. Most of these lost leads then turn and purchase from a competitor.
Lead nurturing is sometimes an ongoing experiment. How many people responded to the email you sent out? Who responded, and what do you think they were responding to?
If you can, send out two or three variations of a campaign and see which gets the highest response rate. Be sure to measure performance. Successful campaigns can be used as a model for tweaking less successful campaigns to get better results.
Nurturing a lead can be time-intensive, but it doesn’t need to be difficult. Avoid these mistakes and you’ll see your efforts bear more fruit.