The relationship between business and buyer is not always a simple one. Even if you’re able to stand out from the regular inbox clutter and make yourself notable, actually managing to turn a lead into a sale is a multifaceted process.

This is where lead nurturing can help you simplify things.

Proper lead nurturing is about developing relationships with your potential customers – not only at every part of the sales funnel, but at every part of the buyer’s journey. This can be accomplished using a strategic lead scoring system, a dynamic content marketing plan, and a data-centric approach to measurement and analysis.

Understanding the Sales Cycle

Even before analyzing and categorizing different buyer personas, effective lead nurturing begins with understanding the sales funnel. This not only helps distinguish the point of the sales cycle buyers are in, but it also reduces your guesswork in targeted marketing.

Lead Nurturing: The Art of Building Lifelong Business Relationships

Focus Your Content

Remember – Lead Nurturing is not a “one-size-fits all” strategy. Research the subject and you’ll find a strong focus on targeted content to improve marketplace tactics.

Lead Nurturing: The Art of Building Lifelong Business Relationships

 

However, in order to do this effectively, you may need to do a little housekeeping.

First off, you need to take an in-depth look at your buyer persona(s). A buyer persona is essentially a profile of your target customer. It focuses on who that person is and what they are looking for in a product or service.  Often, a company will be able to easily identify one or more personas for their business and build them out through surveys, interviews, focus groups, social media, and more.

If a few different personas emerge, you will need to create an assortment of targeted content designed to nurture each of them based on:

Focus on answering the tough questions your personas have brought up. If there are intricacies to your product or service that might be confusing or complicated, content can be created to help clarify. Content that educates and focuses on being completely transparent goes a long way in nurturing a lead.

Nurture Beyond Email

Although traditional lead generation relies heavily on email campaigns, things are expanding in different directions. The sheer volume of clutter plaguing most inboxes makes it hard to stand out, and whatever intimacy was once associated with email correspondence is mostly gone.

Lead Nurturing: The Art of Building Lifelong Business Relationships

Though emailing is an effective, important tool for jump starting the lead nurturing process, you have a lot more work to do if you want to see positive results.

Take Time to AnalyzeLead Nurturing: The Art of Building Lifelong Business Relationships

No matter what ‘quick fix’ you read on nurturing leads, it isn’t a perfect science. Changing marketplaces, business structures, location, etc. all play into how your specific business generates leads, and there’s never going to be one final, correct answer.

The absolute best way you can cement the proper lead nurturing practices is to measure your performance.

There are fundamental metrics to consider when any lead nurturing campaign is undertaken, such as:

These metrics can change based on business and product, but industry standards should provide a stable benchmark by which to judge valuable metrics.

Beyond the data, it is also a must to evaluate your internal outreach practices. Even when current practices are converting well, they could always convert better.

Don’t be afraid to test the water and always be focused on where you can improve.


Read more at the ROI Revolution blog!