Most organizations are adopting an inbound marketing approach to gather more high-quality leads. It has made effective lead nurturing more clear to all organizations and businesses.
Usually, a small percentage of the gathered leads will immediately purchase, while the rest will be idle in the sales funnel. Designing and enforcing an Efficient lead nurturing strategy can tremendously impact marketing operations. Organizations with the best practices of nurturing leads can help accomplish desired business goals like customer loyalty, retention, revenue, and more.
In this blog, let’s cover the best lead nurturing strategies that CMOs can consider to improve their sales funnel:
Ways to Nurture Leads
The lead nurturing process involves:
- They are intentionally engaging the total addressable market by providing relevant information.
- Helping potential clients with whatever they need.
- I am maintaining a trustworthy relationship at the stage of the B2B buyer’s journey.
Lead nurturing is essential for an organization’s success because it has a direct impact on customers purchasing decisions. There are various ways that organizations can leverage to nurture their leads, like targeted content, omnichannel nurturing, multiple touch points, frequent follow-ups, and customization.
Also Read: Top Viral Marketing Approaches Businesses Must Know
Irrespective of the immense benefits of lead nurturing, many B2B marketers find it difficult to find the right strategy to nurture leads. The market has tremendous opportunities that marketers can leverage effectively to nurture leads and get a competitive edge in the industry.
What is the Importance of Nurturing Leads?
Lead nurturing is building relationships with potential customers, intending to convert them into paying customers, maintaining contact with leads, and providing them with relevant information and resources to help them make informed decisions about purchasing the product or service.
There are several reasons why lead nurturing is important:
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Introduces Prospects to the Company
Lead nurturing is an efficient approach that educates prospects about companies’ services and products. Organizations might not have enough space on the landing pages to explain the USPs and impacts of the products and services. However, with lead nurturing, businesses get an opportunity to portray to the potential clients a holistic picture of the brand and how the product and solution will help to overcome their operational challenges.
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Builds Trust
Lead nurturing helps establish trust between the brand and its potential customers by providing valuable information and insights demonstrating the expertise and authority in the industry.
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Increases Sales
Lead nurturing allows businesses to stay top-of-mind with potential customers and keeps them engaged with the brand, which can lead to increased sales and revenue over time.
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Improves Customer Retention
Nurturing existing customers helps to build long-term relationships and increases the likelihood of repeat business and referrals.
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Cost-effective
Nurturing leads is often less expensive than acquiring new ones, making it a cost-effective strategy for increasing sales and revenue.
Overall, lead nurturing is an important strategy for any business looking to grow and succeed in today’s competitive marketplace. By providing value to potential customers and building relationships, Businesses can increase sales, improve customer retention, and drive business growth.
Best Practices to Nurture Leads
An efficient lead nurturing strategy enables organizations to connect with the leads during different stages of their purchase cycle. The following are the best practices to nurture leads:
Create Alignment Between the Revenue Operations (RevOps)
Nurturing leads is not a job team; instead, it is a team effort. All the presales, sales, and after-sales teams should get involved in the various stages of lead generation. CMOs, to streamline the process, should set clear responsibilities and relevant KPIs for all the teams to monitor their performance. For marketing teams, marketing leaders should assign responsibilities like engaging leads and educating them about the products and benefits. Furthermore, they should be responsible for generating different content types to interact with leads and deliver content through multiple channels. Sales team should have responsibilities like lead-follow-ups during the lengthy and complex B2B purchase cycles, offering potential clients all the information they need to make the most out of the products and services. The aftersales teams need responsibilities like addressing the client’s pain points and concerns to improve client retention. Aligning the marketing, sales, and aftersales teams to achieve the lead nurturing goals is essential for all organizations, regardless of size or type.
Customize Lead Interactions
Often customer service, sales, and after-sales teams get advised to put themselves in the customer’s shoes before offering a solution. Hence, before any team member interacts with the prospect or lead need, they must thoroughly research their business and the industry they deal in. While nurturing the lead, team members must actively listen to the potential clients and ask questions to understand their pain points and needs. It is crucial to have non-sales-driven interactions to convert more customers. Organizations should note every customer interaction at every stage of their B2B purchase journey to customize the interactions with them.
Embrace a Lead Scoring
All organizations, even large enterprises, have limited resources to make the most out of. Hence, businesses must prioritize their goals and allocate resources based on them. Lead scoring is one of the most effective ways to help organizations maximize resources and accomplish presales goals. Marketing automation allows organizations to set criteria based on the ideal buyer persona so businesses can determine the potential of the lead converting into a customer. Lead scoring allows businesses to rank the leads based on their readiness to purchase. Organizations that embrace such an approach can concentrate on leads with a high potential to become customers. Effective lead nurturing based on a high lead score gives organizations a higher customer conversion rate. CMOs can score the leads based on their need, purchase patterns, demographic data, or engagement rate. Depending on the type and quality of the data organization has, they can customize a lead scoring model that fits their presales operations.
Also Read: The Rising Need for a Revenue-Driven Marketing Approach
Constant Lead Follow up
RevOps teams must follow up with the leads to get a response regularly. Customer-facing teams should diligently follow the follow-up schedule to get the expected response. Organizations must monitor when the last follow-up was taken and when the next follow-up is required. CMOs can create a road map of the lead’s journey from the first interaction to becoming a client. Marketing teams need to identify the touch points that need client follow-up and get in touch with them to improve engagement.
Lead nurturing is the only way organizations can leverage to improve their conversion rates. CMOs can consider these strategies to nurture their leads and develop trustworthy relationships with potential clients.
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