Lead nurturing refers to building relationships with sales prospects, whether they fall in the ‘ready to buy’ or ‘not ready to buy’ category. Since over 50% of leads fall into this latter category, it’s vital that you implement a proven lead nurturing strategy in order to maximize sales results.
Below is a model of a lead nurture system broken up into three crucial areas.
Lead Nurture Program
- Target Personas - Create your content and messaging based on the actual person who needs your product. A broad way to segment this is via industry, company size, job title or role, and timeline to buy. Further segmentations include: age, college education background, preferred style of communication, offline, and online activities. This will give you a good indication on how to prioritize your buckets for lead scoring and lead segmentation purposes.
- Lead Scoring - When done right, lead scoring can produce an amazingly high quality of leads. How you are targeting your leads’ online and offline behaviours; and by using negative scoring attributes, it will help refine the quality of your leads. However, marketing departments feeling the squeeze in budgets and shrinking staff numbers may not have the expertise, bandwidth, or automation tools to do ensure this area is done right. Ultimately, it's about the People, Process and Automation.
- Content Strategy - Decide on what your offerings are going to be. Are you going to be generating white papers? Offer webinars? The one crucial component here is relevance. Keep that in mind when targeting your personas. Understand their profiles and offer accordingly. For example, a CEO of a Fortune 100 company would probably be less likely to attend a series of webinars and more likely to download a white paper so he can read it on the plane to his next meeting. A good content strategy will help you deliver content that
- Inspires trust
- Drives action
- Builds loyalty
- Is on time
- Involves one budget.
- List Segmentation - Are you going to be segmenting your list according to industry, job titles, size of company and/or timeline to buy? Or is everyone going to get the same offer? Bottom line is the same: - the more segmented your list is, the better you can tailor your offerings and messages to your target audience. It’s often good to start simple. Begin by segmenting according to most recent sign ups, inactive subscribers, and by those who opened your email but did not click through. Once you have this determined, the information gathered from your recipient’s recipients’ emails will help you refine the process.
- Website & Landing Page Optimization – This is one of the most crucial aspects of lead generation. Keep in mind that landing pages are read just as we would glance at a magazine - Left to right, down and back up to the top within 3-6 seconds before taking action or leaving.
Some key points:
- Clear offer or message – Present the offer or your message clearly and place it as the first thing a reader sees the moment they land on your page. Use simple English because most people scan pages before making a decision to read further or commit to an action.
- Keep a simple page design - Include some images but ensure that your images do not drown your text. Readers need to see your one clear key message so some amount of white space is encouraged.
- Have one clear call to action - As a general rule of thumb; you have 3-6 seconds to grab the attention of the reader. Too many offers will confuse the reader that will result in no action and your page abandonment rate. .
- Conversion form placement - Simplify your request form: put it on the right side of the page and keep it to the minimal but with crucial information you need to help you in your lead scoring. Bear in mind that with each question you pose, the drop-off rate increases. If you never use snail mail to follow up with customers, don’t ask for the company address.
- Marketing Automation - Encompasses all the areas we have discussed here thus far. Advances in marketing automation and CRM software is making it easier to collaborate and streamline the process internally between the sales and marketing departments. The 4 main areas of marketing automation:
- Data from lead scoring and lead segmentation
- Developing your content
- Executing your campaign
- Tracking your results
- Tracking Results – Before tracking and starting your lead nurture program, you should have a goal and target in mind. Being able to work backwards from a set number would make your marketing automation and lead nurture program more effective.
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