Lead-Nurturing Strategy: How to Convert Leads into Customers

1. What is Lead Nurturing?
2. How do companies benefit from a lead nurturing strategy?
3. Three steps to creating a lead nurturing strategy
4. 5 Best Practices for Lead Nurturing
5. The best tools for Lead Nurturing
6. The most common mistakes in lead nurturing
7. Conclusion: More conversions with Lead Nurturing

Have you ever visited an online shop, put a product in your shopping cart and then not bought it? After a few days, you receive an email from the company about the said item. This strategy is called Lead Nurturing. It maintains the relationship with potential customers until they are ready to buy. We'll show you how to design a lead nurturing strategy and convert leads into buyers.

What is Lead Nurturing?

In Lead Nurturing you build relationships with your potential customers and accompany them through every phase of the Customer Journey. This includes answering their questions and educating them on how your services or products can solve their problems. But it also includes the provision of relevant content such as blog articles, video tutorials, and whitepapers, which accelerates the buying process. In short: Lead Nurturing is about meeting your customers' needs and not just achieving your sales goals.

How do companies benefit from a lead nurturing strategy?

Although the main goal of lead nurturing is to boost sales, it also offers the following benefits:

• Prospects are introduced to your company: Lead Nurturing is an effective way to educate your potential customers about your services and products.
• You increase the trust in your brand: By giving your potential customers useful tips and information, you show them that you are not only interested in making a sale. Instead, you address their problems and help them solve them. In this way, you build a relationship with them and win their trust.
• Your reputation is strengthened: Lead Nurturing involves the creation of content that adds value to your target group. This solidifies your reputation as the leading provider in your industry.
• Reducing customer acquisition costs: Companies that implement a lead nurturing strategy generate more ready-to-buy leads at 33% lower costs.

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Three steps to creating a lead nurturing strategy

1. Create lead profiles: Creating lead profiles allows you to develop a refined lead nurturing strategy. This is done in three steps:

1. Identify the best current customers
2. Research common characteristics of these customers (e.g. demographic characteristics, job title, or company size)
3. Segment them according to these features (more on customer segmentation)

With this information, you gain a better understanding of your target group. You will be able to identify your ideal customers, where you can find them and which communication channel they prefer.

2. Develop a communication plan: When customers go through your sales funnel, they should receive different brand messages. By developing a communication plan for each phase, you can guide them through the customer journey and increase their readiness to buy. In the awareness phase, they should receive a brief introduction to your company and your offers. In the consideration phase, the messages should include the reasons for buying your product and choosing your brand.

3. Use your CRM for lead nurturing: In addition to managing customer information and contact points, a customer relationship management system can also be used for lead nurturing.

Most CRM programs allow you to:

• identify ready-to-buy leads through lead scoring.
• label prospects according to various criteria, filter them and better segment them.
• align sales and marketing.

Depending on the CRM system, various aspects of lead nurturing can be automated. For example, you can send automated emails based on tags. Each time a lead is marked as "webinar participant," an automated personalized email can be sent to them.

5 Best Practices for Lead Nurturing

1. Align sales and marketing teams

Lead Nurturing is a team task. Both the marketing and sales team should be involved in the different phases of the lead journey. To avoid misunderstandings, the responsibilities for both teams should be clearly defined.

Typically, the marketing team's tasks in lead nurturing include the following points:

• Contact leads and educate them about the benefits of your product or service
• Create different types of content to engage with leads and potential customers
• Conduct lead nurturing campaigns across various channels

The sales team, on the other hand, is responsible for the following lead nurturing tasks:

• Tracking leads to stay in touch during longer sales cycles
• Providing leads with information on how to get the most out of your product or service
• Addressing the concerns and worries of your leads

2. Use Lead Scoring

Companies of all sizes have limited resources. Therefore, you need to set priorities for how you spend your time and budget. This is where lead scoring comes in. It helps you identify leads that have a high chance of conversion. In this process, prospects are classified according to their readiness to buy.

You can, for example, classify them based on their demographic data and assign points for different actions. This could include opening an email, requesting product demos, or visiting certain websites. Once a lead has reached a certain score, a sales representative can personally contact them.

3. Stay in regular contact with your leads

There is no rule of thumb for how and when you should follow up with your leads. Most companies and sales representatives contact at least once. However, it may take six to eight follow-ups before you get a response.

Here are some tips to optimize your follow-up routine:

• Keep an eye on when a specific lead was followed up to make sure you're not overdoing it.
• Create an overview of your lead's journey. This will help you determine when a follow-up is meaningful. Remember, too early or too late follow-up can ruin a potential sale.
• Some customers need more time to make their purchasing decision, especially when multiple interest groups are involved in the decision-making process. Therefore, you should plan your follow-up activities accordingly.
• If your customer does not respond to an email, try sending a message on LinkedIn. If both do not work, try a short call. Preferred communication methods vary from customer to customer, so you should use different channels.
• Make sure your contact provides value to your customers. Include relevant free resources (a link to a blog post they might be interested in, or an ebook).

4. Make communication personal

Personalization is a key aspect of the lead nurturing process. Today's customers don't just want to be seen as sales numbers. They want to be perceived as individuals and are looking for brands that treat them as such. There are many ways to personalize your communication with your leads.

Before you, for example, talk to them on the phone, you should thoroughly research their business and the industry they operate in. Offer them solutions based on their needs and not your sales goals. If you understand how to better address your customers, the likelihood of closing a deal increases.

Additionally, you can also send personalized emails using lead data. For example, you can insert the customer's name or their company and other data they provided when contacting your brand into the email.

5. Optimize reporting

Poor reporting can negatively impact your analysis and therefore your lead nurturing measures. When evaluating your results, you should not only consider the numbers but also their significance:

• If the email open rate is low, it might be time to experiment with subject lines or use a different communication channel.
• If you have a low click-through rate, you can include different content or adapt your call to action (CTA).
• If the conversion rate is too low, your approach may not have been personal enough, or you may not have followed up with the leads early enough.

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The best tools for Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing software helps you build sustainable relationships with leads by creating and automating various lead nurturing strategies.

Its key features include email automation, lead scoring, personalization, and lead segmentation.

Below you'll find some examples of lead nurturing tools:

The most common mistakes in lead nurturing

1. Average content

When leads go deeper into the sales funnel, they're looking for reliable information and relevant resources. They expect you to identify their problems and find solutions for them. Instead of mass-produced contributions, you should provide them with content that provides added value. You can save yourself the content that's already been posted online by hundreds of brands.

2. Slow response

According to a Harvard study companies contact new leads on average within 42 hours. Only 16% respond to new leads within 24 hours. A mistake that costs him dearly - the likelihood that a lead will enter the sales process is 21 times greater if he is contacted within 5 minutes (compared to 30 minutes). The faster you address your new leads, the higher the likelihood of a sale.

3. Insufficient follow-up

Lead Nurturing is a long-term process, especially in the B2B sector. It can take months or even years for a lead to become a buyer. In the software industry, for example, about 29% of companies take 6 to 9 months to buy new software. Some companies even take longer. To speed up this process, you should set up a lead nurturing plan. This includes sending emails to potential customers and providing them with useful information. It is also important to maintain the customer relationship even after the conversion, in order to encourage repeat purchases or another subscription.

4. Lack of research

If you do not identify and understand your ideal customers, you will contact leads that are unlikely to convert. This leads to wasted resources and missed sales opportunities.

To avoid this, you should engage with your target audience and do some research:

• Survey your customers to find out how they became aware of you and what they appreciate about your brand.
• Use tools like Facebook's Audience Insights to get a 360-degree view of your customers.
• Track your target audience's conversations on LinkedIn or see what questions they ask on Quora.
• Use trade shows to speak to your target audience in person and understand their main concerns.

Conclusion: More conversions with Lead Nurturing

Lead Nurturing is an important aspect of any marketing strategy. By identifying your customers' problems and helping them through the purchase process, you not only increase brand awareness and credibility. You also build trust with your target audience, which ultimately leads to more conversions and sales. You can find more information about lead nurturing and how you can use it in your company on OMR Reviews.