Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the method of establishing and emphasizing on the relationships with buyers in all phases of the sales funnel. A strong lead nurturing program emphasizes on the marketing and communication abilities by being attentive to the requirements of the buyers and giving them the details and responses in order to develop trust, expand brand awareness and nurture the buyers till they are prepared to purchase the product.

With the help of the marketing automation program, marketing teams can create workable, compatible communications by creating a lead nurturing strategy. This helps in forming a roadmap through which relationships are built with the prospective buyers and help them move through their transit at their own speed. With the strategy of Lead Nurturing in place a relationship for the lifetime is made, there is growth in the click-through rates (CTRs) which leads to the readiness of the purchase for the product while promoting the brand.

The buyers of today want to be heard first and not be sold products which are of no interest to them. Hence, as a good Lead nurturing professional, one should know the exact requirement of the buyer which helps them to serve the buyers in an appropriate way and receive their patronage by truly being considerate towards their business concerns. Lead nurture is till date focused on email marketing, but the buyer experience needs to cover all mediums in order to encourage engagement till the point of purchase.

Some of the regular Issues that can be taken care of by Lead Nurturing are:

1)?????Lots of inactive leads in the database: ?Lead Nurturing helps in growing the inclination to purchase by preserving the association with customers. These associations are important in the present-day sales cycle. Nurturing leads helps in preserving the association by gradually establishing brand loyalty and trust.

2)?????Sales Cycles are too lengthy:?In the past buyers used to go by what the seller had to offer. But, as of today the scenarios have changed. The buyers take more time by looking at various options available online, educating themselves and then deciding on the best option which meets their criteria to purchase the product. Hence, the lead nurturing strategy should be followed which helps in reducing the sales cycle and transforming leads into buyers.

3)?????Technology not in place to assist lead nurturing strategy: In today’s scenario execution of a manual guide is expensive and tedious for a lot of businesses. The solution to this issue is, “Marketing Automation” which helps in handling extended sales cycles, lead scoring, lead lifecycle management, personalization and analytics.

Steps required in setting up a Lead Nurturing program:

1)?????Specifying the Leads:?The main point about lead nurturing is that there has to be a continuous to and fro communication between the sales and marketing teams so that they are on the same page with regards to the buyer information. Decide on the market, look into the database for existing customers, current buyers, the buyers who have already decided to go ahead and close the deal; these guidelines should be availed off in order to set up the inception of lead nurturing.

2)?????Expansion of the lists is needed: ?In order for the business to expand, a strong lead nurture program is needed.?There should be continuous flow of data with regards to finding new customers, the method of building this list should vary from time to time. There should be systematic assessment of the leads, find out and eliminate the duplicates and discard the passive or unwanted contacts.

3)??????Divide the buyer groups:?Lead bifurcation is important for the success of marketing especially with lead nurturing. The more bifurcation is done; ?the lead nurture programs will be more authentic.?It is suggested that the primary lead nurturing programs use two elements of bifurcation. The first one is; when the buyer has crossed the buying stage and the second element suggested is behavioral segmentation.?The second bifurcation could be any other assessment criteria as deems fit for the organization.

4)?????Evaluate and maximize the campaigns:?Lead nurturing must be observed and evaluated frequently in order to continue the program’s validity. Evaluation is done to determine how to maximize the features of a nurture trail in addition to keeping a tab on how many times should a lead be contacted in a fixed period of time, the kind of messages that should be relayed, also it should be kept in mind as to the time when the lead should be contacted etc. It is required to maximize the lead nurture recurrence, course of action and content mix.