Why Lead Nurturing is So Important

John O'Shea

Lead nurturing is one way to foster personalised B2B relationships with prospective and existing customers through each stage of the sales funnel. Savvy marketers who are keen to drive high-quality prospects into leads swear by lead nurturing tactics to win deals or close sales.

The 2018 Lead Nurturing and Acceleration Survey Report shows 66% of marketers that automate their lead nurturing campaigns create more sales opportunities.

This article helps you to understand the lead nurturing process, why it is important, how to create your own lead nurturing strategy and the benefits of lead nurturing in your marketing strategies.

What is lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing is simply the process of reinforcing and developing relationships with prospects, buyers, and past customers at each stage of the sales funnel. It helps create a connection between leads and your brand by providing support and value in a personalised and delightful way.

Just like lead generation, the process of nurturing leads uses multiple channels: digital marketing, email, direct mail or ads that target specific buyer personas; therefore, it takes time. It’s a great way to keep your brand image fresh in the prospect’s memory until they’re ready to purchase.

This underscores the importance of nurturing relationships with buyers by having a strategic lead scoring system.

Why Lead Nurturing is so Important

96% of visitors on your website are usually not ready to buy and another 80% of new leads don’t convert to sales. However, you can turn things around with your lead nurturing efforts. Let’s look into 5 reasons you should nurture leads:

1. Increases brand awareness

Prospects will first be aware or your company and products/services, how you compare to your competitors and how your solutions will make their life easier before becoming customers. B2B lead nurturing will not just raise awareness for your brand but also shorten the sales process.

2. Boosts your KPIs

Lead nurturing is less costly but brings in better results. It’ll help you increase your conversion rate, engagement rate, boost ROI and reduce marketing costs.

3. Showcases your value

Lead nurturing lets prospects and customers interact with materials that address their needs so they have a glimpse into what they’ll get when they make a purchase.

For you to make the most of lead nurturing. You need to have a strategy.

Why have a Lead Nurturing Strategy?

For most B2B businesses, first-time visitors to your websites are not usually ready to make a purchase. Rather, they’re looking for information as they seek to understand what your product or service offers and if it’ll help solve their problem. It’s likely they represent the committee to make the purchase decision. While they may not be ready to purchase immediately, they will eventually.

Evidence shows that 80% of prospects that come across as bad leads will usually buy in 24 months. This is where lead nurturing becomes invaluable. When you have an excellent strategy in place you can be sure to capture what would otherwise be ‘lost revenue’ from non nurtured leads. With an excellent strategy in place, you can expect 50% more sales ready leads.

What Constitutes a Lead Nurturing Strategy?

Lead nurturing involves cross-channel communication, combining marketing automation and content marketing. A good lead nurturing strategy will have the following key elements:

• Lead Scoring – Here, you focus on identifying when and how you should address each buyer with relevant communication and in a timely manner. Lead scoring takes lead fit, interest behaviour and buying stage and time into account.

• Multi-channel Distribution – You need to interconnect your channels to ensure sustaining contact with leads across the board. This is vital if only to widen your potential audience and diversify ways to reach and maintain contact with your leads.

• Content Marketing – This involves creating marketing messages valuable and relevant to your prospects and customers. This content may be in audio, a blog post, or video format.

• Re-targeting – Don’t relax once a purchase is settled. Continue the nurture campaign through re-targeting and display ads that are personalised to specific customer segments help to create a consistent experience and gain their loyalty.

• Web – Your website provides a perfect platform to capture new email addresses as well as start and continue conversations.

• Direct mail – Email marketing campaigns to further personalise your marketing campaign while also injecting a personal touch.

• Social – Your lead nurturing strategy is incomplete without incorporating social media marketing. Run social campaigns to engage leads.
• Marketing automation – This technology lets you automate and streamline marketing efforts on various channels to drive more sales and improve efficiency.

Wrapping it up

A successful lead nurturing program will focus your communication and marketing efforts on tuning into the needs of your prospects. This, while providing answers and information they need to; increase brand awareness, build trust and maintain a connection with prospects until they’re ready to make a purchase.