You’ve worked hard to build a stunning, SEO-friendly website for your business and the number of visitors is steadily increasing. Your hard work is starting to pay off, but you’re not done yet. Research shows that the vast majority of a business website’s new visitors – a staggering 96% – aren’t ready to make a purchase right away. That means that being an amateur b2b lead nurturing specialist who can attract potential customers to your site isn’t enough; you also have to know how to nurture leads as they make their way through your sales funnel. A strong nurturing leads strategies is a crucial step in translating the leads into paying customers.
Our lead gen company based in Nashville, TN, can teach you everything you need to know about nurturing B2C and B2B leads. To get you started, this article breaks down some of our skilled b2b lead nurturing specialist’s favorite tricks for making sure your leads are always excited to hear from you and see your brand as the only answer to their problems.
What is lead nurturing?
Whether you’re going after B2C or B2B leads, the process of lead nurturing centers around building a relationship with potential customers. Crafting engaging and informative email campaigns, coupled with targeted social media interactions, is a key component of nurturing leads strategies, fostering trust and keeping your brand top-of-mind for potential customers.
From the moment a lead becomes aware of your brand, you have the chance to shape the way they view your company. This can mean lots of different things depending on your business and target market:
- Automated email campaigns
- Sales calls
- Special offers
- Retargeting ads
Whether you handle it on your own or with the help of a B2B lead nurturing specialist, a lead nurturing strategy can drastically improve your sales at a fraction of the cost when done right.
Do your prospects feel harassed?
As any b2b lead nurturing specialist will tell you, annoying leads is the last thing you want to do if you’re trying to convince them to buy from you. Yet about 50% of consumers get annoyed by brands that email them too often, and 34% report getting emails that don’t even match their interests.
When you’re trying to understand how your leads will respond to your emails, the first question to ask is, do you feel harassed by emails sent to your inbox? If the answer is yes, consider doing things a little differently.
Take the time needed to understand who your target market is and how to best let them know why your product or service will be the best fit for their needs. It takes a little more effort to direct your lead campaigns to a specific type of prospect, but the results are well worth it.
Our lead gen company has taught many clients how to make the most out of their lead nurturing efforts, and the following tips will set you well on your way.
Top 10 nurturing leads strategies
Working with a lead gen company that understands the importance of guiding prospects all the way through the sales funnel can be an invaluable aspect of your marketing strategy. But if you’re not quite ready to hire someone just yet, these tips from our b2b lead nurturing specialist will set you up for success in the meantime.
1. Create buyer personas before starting
Before spending time, money, and energy on putting together a lead gen campaign, you need to understand who you’re trying to attract. Buyer persona marketing helps you get a feel for the people most likely to buy from you, what their pain points are, and what they need.
Instead of wasting marketing efforts hoping to attract the widest audience possible, trade in your generic marketing for targeted messages delivered to the prospects who will get what you’re doing. Consider it for a second – running ads all over Tennessee doesn’t make much sense if you’re a local bakery that only serves Nashville.
2. Warm your audience up with ads
Some lead gen companies treat ads and content marketing as an either/or scenario. But the truth is, using both together can be incredibly effective.
Warming up your target audience with ads before reaching out to them increases brand recognition and awareness, making you seem more “legit” in their eyes. In today’s digital world where people are constantly bombarded by businesses that want their attention, letting them warm up to the idea of your brand before approaching them can make leads more receptive.
3. Don’t ask for the sale during cold outreach
It’s a phrase every salesperson has heard countless times: “Ask for the sale!” But our b2b lead nurturing specialist has learned that asking for the sale too early, especially during cold outreach, is the quickest way to get a lead to shut down.
If you focus first on establishing a relationship and proving that your brand can be a valuable asset, your prospects will be much more likely to trust you when they’re ready to make a purchasing decision. This can be especially true with B2B sales that generally have a longer sales cycle – prove that you’re reliable by providing value from day one.
4. Provide quality content before selling
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – if you want to convert leads, you have to show value before you sell. Provide your audience with quality content like:
- Engaging social media content
- Insightful blog articles
- Educational webinars
- Personalized emails
Show prospects who you are and why you’re the best brand in your industry to solve their problems.
5. Personalize your messaging
Personalized marketing emails increase open and click-through rates, potentially increasing your bottom line by 760%. It’s easy to do, too: simply plug your lead data into your email manager to customize fields such as:
- Name
- Location
- Purchase history
Not only does email personalization nuture leads but also make leads feel like you’ve tailored your message directly for them, it also allows you to send them more relevant content.
Implementing effective nurturing leads strategies involves building meaningful relationships with potential customers through personalized communication, timely follow-ups, and valuable content, ultimately guiding them towards conversion.
For example, if your store has a location in Memphis and one in Nashville, you can customize messages that send prospective customers offers that are good for the location nearest them.
6. Keep email touches lower
51% of consumers prefer to be contacted by a brand via email, but it’s easy to overdo it. After all, most of us have had the experience of finding a promising new brand, only to be turned off by an avalanche of marketing emails every time we check our inbox.
You definitely want to send more than one email when you’re trying to get a lead’s attention, but we recommend limiting it to five per campaign. After all, you want to come across as eager to help, not desperate for business.
7. Use triggers for most reach-outs
Using triggers for most reach outs helps make sure you’re only contacting prospects when they’re actively thinking about your brand, and more likely to be receptive to your contact. Triggered emails are incredibly effective lead nurturing tools; you can program relevant emails to trigger when a lead takes any number of actions, such as:
- Shopping cart abandonment
- Viewing a product online
- Clicking a “view offer” link
- Making a purchase
8. Let your prospects off the hook
Like we mentioned earlier, you want to avoid doing two things to effectively nuture leads: annoying your leads, and coming across as desperate. Our Nashville team calls that “letting them off the hook.”
After a certain number of emails, it may become clear that a prospect is simply not interested in what your brand offers (or isn’t interested at this time). Sending them one final email that lets them know you won’t be reaching out anymore will allow you to leave on a good note, increasing the chances that when they’re ready to reevaluate their options, you’ll come to mind as available but not pushy.
And remember, you can still use ads for awareness without being intrusive.
9. A/B test your email touches
The best way to optimize your email copy is to let your prospects decide what resonates with them. A/B tests can do just that by allowing you to:
- Test out multiple campaigns at once (sending some to one group and some to another)
- Monitor which one gets the best response rates
- Adjust as needed and only use the successful campaign for future mailings
An A/B test can also help you craft further emails based on what people have been most responsive to so far.
10. Adapt your campaigns
When it comes down to it, there is simply no “one size fits all” solution when it comes to lead generation and nurturing. It’s crucial to constantly analyze your data including:
- Open rates
- Reply rates
- Click-through rates
As you learn what’s working and what’s not, you can make simple tweaks to improve your marketing emails and make sure your leads are finding value in what you send them.
Low conversion rate? Let our b2b lead nurturing specialist help.
Are you struggling to generate new B2B leads or nuture leads? Or do you feel like the ball’s getting dropped in the lead nurturing phase of the sales process, leading to low conversion rates? If so, you’re not alone – 59% of marketers struggle with lead nurturing.
Take the Stairs is a lead gen company headquartered in Nashville, TN. We specialize in helping small businesses grow their lead and customer lists, and increase their bottom line. If you’d like to learn a little about how we work, or you’re ready to take the next step and speak with a b2b lead nurturing specialist, contact us to set up an obligation-free discovery call.
