What is Lead Nurturing?
In the flow of business, the sales and marketing team is always hard at work in generating more leads and following up on them to close the sale. Yet, many fail to realize the importance of nurturing leads. For those who do not know what is lead nurturing, it is the process in which a relationship needs to be developed with the potential buyers at every stage of the customer journey, throughout the funnel. This can be achieved through effective marketing and communications, such as addressing the received feedback and reverting it in the best possible manner.
Key Ways To Nurture Leads & Customers
To effectively be able to nurture the leads, one has to have a lead nurturing strategy in place. So here we have discussed some of the key ways to nurture leads that can help you strategize well.
- Understanding the lead journey:
Generally, there are two types of leads that come up, sales leads and marketing leads. Sales follow up their leads, and marketing forwards their leads to the sales team. But there are some leads which may come up that are not yet ready for conversion but can be converted in the near future. It is important to shortlist these leads and keep them warm to ensure they reach the conversion state and hence here is where lead nurturing tactics come in handy. - Develop targeted content:
Now that we have the leads whom we have to nurture, it is time to give them the nourishment needed, which means pitching personalized content, tailor-made only for them. They should feel special, and also look towards us as someone who can solve their business problems - we have the solution. Developing this targeted content and pushing it helps not only stay connected with the leads but also makes the case strong to consider you are a business vendor. - Align the sales and marketing teams:
These two teams shall always be on the loggerheads, yet important to every organization, the reason why it is important to have them both aligned on their respective tasks. Sales need to help provide information to the market team as to what their leads require for nurturing, while the marketing team does the nurturing. - Identifying touchpoints:
Touchpoints are important as an ideal customer journey contains at least 10 touchpoints, if not more. These are important to maintain relationships with the leads, lest they go cold. If any of the touchpoints is missed, there could be a risk of losing the lead. Hence in lead nurturing best practices, it helps to have multiple touchpoints and are followed to the T. - Personalized marketing:
Personalized marketing helps keep the relationship warm between the seller and the buyer. This can include emails, newsletters, etc. all targeting the lead and boosting your pitch towards them for them to consider buying your products or services. - Regular follow-ups:
In the entire lead nurturing process, this is by far the most important, yet the most ignored sometimes. Following up on your leads to check how far they have come in the customer journey is important. This feedback allows you to check on your activities to see if they are yielding any results, and if not, you can make the necessary corrections and proceed again.
