Getting leads and converting them into customers is an important step to build the success of any venture, so today we will teach you what lead nurturing is and how you can apply it in your marketing strategy.
If you already have a marketing plan for your business, then maybe you have realized that the most complicated thing is not to get leads, the most complicated thing is to keep those leads and convert them into real customers, so today we want to teach you the lead nurturing strategy that helps you to maintain and convert your contacts.
What is lead nurturing?
Inbound Marketing can provide you with excellent leads, because its advertising with valuable and non-intrusive information makes your brand friendly and attractive to the general public and to your potential customers, however this strategy is not everything. Having a huge database with contacts interested in our brand is not much use if you lose many of them in the buying process and end up with few conversions. The goal of lead nurturing is to avoid losing your leads.
When we talk about nurturing your contacts, we are saying that we are going to provide our contacts with valuable content and information, so that they have our brand as a reference in the market niche they are interested in.
This practice has been done for many years. The lead nurturing process starts with the creation of a database of your contacts. In the past you could make some calls, send them your catalogs or even make a magazine dedicated to your niche market and send it by conventional mail, this helped you to qualify your contacts and to have your brand always present.
However, in recent years we have seen an exponential growth of lead nurturing and this is undoubtedly due to digital media. For some time now we have the ability to take information directly from users and create a digital base with thousands of contacts, allowing you to do the work of nurturing in a much more scalable way, i.e. today with less effort you can reach thousands or millions of people.
The databases we have today are huge so we can not do a manual work, as was done some time ago, much less work one by one, that’s why we have to make wise use of the tools that allow us to maintain that relationship, to prepare and educate contacts, so when the customer is ready to buy we accompany him in the process by making offers totally relevant.
How to design a lead nurturing strategy?
Now that we know that lead nurturing is all the messages and information that we are going to exchange with contacts or customers to help them in the buying process, it is time to make a strategy for this communication to have the best results. Here are some of the key points for you to design a successful lead nurturing strategy.
Measure the time to purchase
You must start by understanding the buying process of a user, that is to say, how long it takes from the moment he starts looking for information about what he needs until the moment he makes the purchase. Your work is developed precisely in this period, because at this time you must try to influence the purchase decisions so that they choose you and not the competition.
The type of product, the need, and the competition will determine the time it takes for a customer to make a purchase. For example, a customer who wants to buy a bottle of soda is not the same as a customer who wants to rent or buy a house. In the first case the decision time will be very short, it may even take only microns of a second, while if you want to rent or buy a house, there are several factors that you have to evaluate before making a decision, so surely the time with this client can be a few days to weeks or even months.
This does not mean that if you offer fast consumption products you cannot maintain contact with your client, but in these cases the nurturing work must be done before the purchase process, so that the public has identified your brand and prefers it over others.
Long purchase processes, where the customer evaluates several factors before buying, is where lead nurturing has more work to do, because we will have time to work with the customer and convince him/her of the benefits of buying your product or hiring your services.
The message is everything
Once we know how long it takes a customer to make a purchase and above all the steps it takes to complete the purchase, you have to determine what messages and what information can be most useful to them depending on the stage of purchase they are in. Here we can use any method: for example an email, chatbot, social networks, calls, catalogs. The important thing is to determine what message you will send to that contact, because you must present your business as the best option, the one they can consider satisfying a need.
Continuing with the previous example, if a client needs to buy or rent a house and this is the first contact he has with your company, the first messages you can send are with general information about how to buy a house, tips for choosing a property and, above all, how your company can help him. If he is already looking for the financing of the house, you can send him concrete information about mortgages, or credits.
Filter contacts
One of the most important parts of a winning lead nurturing strategy is to filter contacts correctly. For this, there is no way to use digital marketing optimization tools such as Mautic, Nocrm or any other. The best thing about these tools is that besides helping you to have your database well organized, they also allow you to filter your leads according to the point in the sales funnel where they are.
This way, you can send the right messages, so that each user moves onto the next step of the sales funnel you have designed.
Another way in which you can filter contacts is by giving each one a rating, you can base it on their likelihood to buy, their objectives or the interest they have shown in the messages.
Build customer loyalty
In addition to achieving a purchase, lead nurturing can also be used to build customer loyalty. The suggestion is to do retargeting. To direct advertising and messages to customers, according to the behavior they have shown in the purchase process, at the end of the day they already know your brand and you already know them, now you just have to direct the messages so that they know you are there and that they can consume you again.
We can continue to cultivate communication with customers so that they can then take some action such as leaving a positive comment or talk about our brand and thus turn them into a high-value contact, of course this would already be the last step in our strategy.
How can we enhance lead nurturing?
After knowing what lead nurturing is, maybe you have realized that you already use something similar in your marketing strategy, especially after capturing leads through landing pages; that is why we will give you some tips to measure the effectiveness of your strategy to improve it as soon as possible.
The most important thing to evaluate your lead nurturing strategy is to measure each of our actions, to know how many times the first contact emails were opened, how many people who receive an email have completed the purchase.
In this way, you will have to evaluate each of the messages between you and your client, to know what is working and at what moment. This way, you will know if you have to change something and what works best.
The lead nurturing strategy can be summarized as maintaining constant communication with your leads to educate them and help them move to the next step in the buying process. In order for you to value the power of these strategies, tell us, as a customer you have surely felt part of lead nurturing, how much has it influenced your purchase decision or your loyalty to a brand?
