Lead nurturing tactics

Inbound marketing is the new standard of marketing today. It has not only been adopted but it has scaled over the past few years. In this surrounding it requires a broader and sharper attention when it comes to creating and executing marketing strategies for your business. 

Achieving lead generation through inbound marketing is not enough. You must have a lead nurturing strategy which is applicable to almost 90% of those leads that have not made their purchase or closed the deal with you immediately. Choosing the right lead nurturing strategy can have a huge impact on your overall marketing strategy and ultimately on your business growth.

Only two years ago, lead generation, sales and lead nurturing were the top three organizational objectives for content marketers. 

What is lead nurturing? It is the process of engaging a defined target group by providing relevant information at each stage of the buyer’s journey. Providing information. How can you do that and why should you do it, you may be asking? You need to provide them information on how your service or product is addressing and solving their needs. You want the prospects you have provided with lead generation efforts to turn into paying customers. You can nurture leads through targeted content, multi-channel nurturing, multiple touches, timely follow-ups and personalization. Though it might sound simple, marketers struggle with these questions, and according to some research more than half of them gave their nurturing leads programs a failing grade. Inbound marketing surroundings have raised the standard in the marketing industry and you must create and execute effective strategies to gain advantage over your competition.

Lead nurturing is just one component of the whole inbound marketing strategy. You should think about what lead nurturing tactics work best for you and your business. If you are completely new you are thinking how to get started and of course wonder what is the secret of the super successful marketers and what do they do differently… 

Here comes in the detail closely looking at your web site, scratching around to find out how to attract more traffic, how to convert leads and close customers. So after all the research we have chosen to share with you some of the most effective lead nurturing tactics.

Targeted content

The most obvious tactic seems to give a headache to at least a third of B2B marketers. Targeted delivery of content can be a pain – delivering the right content, to the right people at the right time seems to be the biggest nurturing challenge. There is no universal formula and many times it is done on a hunch because even with good analytics behavioral factors can change under different circumstances. But it is worth the effort, because all research says it can significantly improve the results of your inbound marketing strategy. 

Targeted content requires good understanding of your unique buyer personas. Furthermore you need to create an assortment of content designed to nurture each of their interests, goals, objectives and marketing triggers. Scaling it up will bring you in need of an automated platform that will help you identify, segment and target your audience.

Omnichanneling lead nurturing techniques

The time when setting up an email drip campaign was enough to close the day for the nurturing of leads are long gone. Now, you have to cover all channels if you are in the game for the long run. Doing this is not easy, and you will probably at some point need to use marketing automation platforms. 

To achieve efficiency in lead nurturing strategies commonly involve combined marketing automation – email marketing, on and off page optimization, social media, paid targeting, dynamic website content and direct sales outreach. Since there are plenty tactics involved, execution of this requires a team that works cohesively. There are no more do-it-yourself ways.

Multiple touches

Research studies show that ten touches are received by prospects from the time they enter the top funnel until they are closed customers. On the other hand, about half of the marketers include less than five touches in their nurturing programs. 

Lead nurturing strategies should deliver content that helps prospects progress through their buyer’s journey by addressing their common questions and concerns. Besides email tactist you must develop a strategy on using a mix of content types like social media, blog posts, whitepapers, interactive calculators, quizzes and other content that will nurture your connection and interaction with your prospects.

Follow ups in timely manners

Immediate follow up gives evident results. This might be your advantage over your competitors. Many businesses still fail to respond and follow up quickly enough. Research showed that less than 40% manage to respond within an hour, and less than 25% respond in less than 24 hours. Some even never respond.

Automation will open the door for you to generate leads and reach out to a bigger number of prospects, but follow up in a timely manner by email, direct message or a phone call is still the best way to convert inbound leads to real opportunities. All analytics show that the conversion rate is the highest with prospects that are contacted immediately after the website conversion. 

Generally inbound leads are far more effective than cold calling. The longer interaction provides more information on your prospect based on their browsing behavior and some initial information that you can enrich with a little research on where they work and what their position is within the company.

Lead scoring

Lead scoring means evaluating the prospects perceived value. Ranking the prospects against a scale. It is usually implemented in most marketing automation platforms by assigning numeric values to certain website browsing behaviours, conversion events or social media interactions. The resulting score is used to determine which leads should be followed up with by a sales representative or if they need to be further nurtured down the funnel. Lead scoring is an effective lead nurturing tactic.

Sales and marketing teaming up 

According to recent research, companies who have tightly connected sales and marketing teams achieve around 35% higher customer retention rates compared to those who have separated or disconnected teams. It is visibible that companies who have shared responsibility for lead nurturing in both marketing and sales experience significant financial boost.

It is recommended that these shared expectations, responsibilities and goals between the marketing and the sales team are outlined in the so called Sales and Marketing Service Level Agreement (SLA). Doing this has shown to be an effective way for having both teams holding each other accountable for converting leads and effectively nurturing them into paying customers.

This way the best of the human potential in the company is used to contribute to lead nurturing and identify the prospects that need to move between teams as they progress trough the funnel. 

The transition of prospects from the automated environment to a direct one-on-one is best when done by a careful follow and identifying those who show the right level of engagement tracked through the lead scoring, page views, conversion events or sales contact. 

Personalized emails

Email marketing still is the most effective tactics for lead nurturing. Personalized emails produce far better results than generic marketing. Don`t take this for granted, latest research shows that more than 40% of consumers switched businesses due to lack of personalization. This fact shows the huge importance of personalization. 

Personalization can be executed in many ways – triggered emails when someone downloads gated content, clicks on links in your email, following the visits on certain pages on your website. Behavioral triggered emails combined with the power of marketing personalization can deliver the right message to the right people.