5 Effective lead nurturing tactics to take your sales process to the next level

Lead nurturing is the process through which you develop a relationship with the buyer at every stage of the sales funnel. It involves listening to the needs of prospects through marketing and communication efforts, providing relevant information and answers that will help them make the decision to move forward in the buyer journey. In this article, we will discuss 5 effective lead nurturing tactics to help you convert more prospects into customers.

Why is lead nurturing important?

Lead nurturing is an essential element to your business’s success because it will directly impact the customer’s decision on whether or not to convert into a paying customer. Getting interest from prospects is just one part of the entire sales conversion process. You need to be able to address any questions these prospects might have at every step. As the name suggests, lead nurturing tactics help you “nurture” your relationship with a prospect, building trust and confidence in your brand, your products and your people. Leads can be nurtured in a number of ways, including connecting with leads on different channels, targeted content, timely follow-ups as well as personalisation.

Tip 1: Timing is everything!

When it comes to nurturing leads, timing is paramount. It’s great to get contacted by a prospect, but if you don’t maintain the flow of communication then you risk losing the interest of the lead. So, how can you capitalise on this? Here are some ways to remain visible in front of your prospects:

• Correspondence on emails. It helps to send a thank you email to a lead that got in touch with you. You can recap the conversation you had with them with some suggestions on the next steps.
• Make phone calls. This is a tricky one, as not everyone likes receiving phone calls. When you call a lead, you need to be concise and keep the conversation down to two or three things. Have some solutions to combat any objections the lead might have.
• Connect on social media. You can send your lead an invitation to connect with you on the social networks they prefer, such as LinkedIn. It can be a great way to offer an invitation to an upcoming free webinar or virtual event that you might be hosting on your social media platforms.
• Capitalise on email marketing. A consistent email marketing strategy is a great way to nurture your leads. Sending relevant, helpful information like guides, articles and other educational material to your leads can really help build a strong relationship with them.
• Continue to ‘delight’ post-sale. You don’t want to stop the relationship with your leads at the point of sale. Make sure you adhere to agreements, regularly if they are happy with the service and if they’d like to see something improve. Thank them for their loyalty and give them exclusive offers.

Tip 2: Prioritise prospects based on lead scoring.

When you’re getting leads, you need to prioritise them based on their value to your business. This is where you need to have a lead scoring tactic, which will involve you assigning values to your leads, based on certain criteria or behaviours. For example, a lead that has browsed your website, read multiple articles and visited your LinkedIn profile should be prioritised over one that has only been to your website and not taken any further actions.

Why did we score the first lead higher than the second? Because that lead has shown stronger intent of doing business with you. The good thing is that you don’t have to do this manually, as most of the modern marketing automation platforms will do lead scoring for you. In fact, platforms like HubSpot will give you complete visibility of the entire user journey, including how many times an individual has interacted with your team.

Ultimately, lead nurturing allows you to better understand which leads need to be followed up with directly by someone from the sales team and which ones need to be further nurtured.

Tip 3: Utilize lead profiles

For effective lead nurturing, you need lead profiling. A lead profile is an overview of your lead - who they are, where they work, the benefits your products or services can provide them, etc.

Better target your leads

Lead profiling allows you to better target your leads, based on their stage in the buying journey. Instead of showing the same content to all of your leads, it helps to give more relevant information that will help them move further down the funnel. Use scripts, templates and social media ads that speak directly to the users, based on their profiling.

Use marketing automation for lead profiling

Just like lead scoring, lead profiling is best done with the help of a marketing automation platform. Their software uses the website’s visitor tracking to find out what information a lead is seeking out. Which pages or articles they have viewed, as well as any demographic characteristics that can be obtained through online registries or IP addresses.

Tip 4: Add a personal touch.

A study by Accenture states that 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that recognizes them by name, recommends options based on past purchases or knows their purchase history. With lead nurturing, you’re trying to build this personal connection with your leads.

Being human is the key

Giving recommendations that are relevant to your leads shows them that you care about them and you want to help them. While we’re living in an ever-automated world where everything is done online, people still like to do business with humans. With the help of a CRM, you can add all the custom fields to get a better understanding of your prospects, so that you can say what they want to hear. CRMs can also help you send targetted emails, based on your user’s behaviour - making the entire interaction as ‘human’ as possible.

Tip 5: Provide your leads with relevant case studies.

For B2B leads, the best material to share are case studies. It is an excellent way to show them the success you’ve achieved for other clients, how you did it and what you can provide for them. Nothing attracts clients more than success stories from other, recognised businesses.

It further helps if the case studies include any testimonials from the clients, highlighting how they were happy with your service. You should also personalise your case studies and provide the ones that are the most relevant to your potential client. Think about their industry and what issues they might be looking at you to resolve, and then offer them a solution by showing how you’ve successfully done something similar for another client in the past.

The best lead nurturing tactic for your situation

Interested to learn more about which lead nurturing tactic you should prioritize in your sales process? Feel free to shoot me a message. I’d love to discuss the best options for your specific situation.

At LeadHQ, we specialize in helping B2B clients scale up their sales efforts. Feel free to reach out to me for any advice on how your business can benefit from things like:

• Lead nurturing
• Marketing/sales automation
• Lead scoring
• Implementing HubSpot CRM for improving your lead nurturing

No strings attached! You can reach me through LinkedIn or you can visit https://leadhq.io/ for more information.