Best practices for lead nurturing aside from automated email tools

Lead nurturing is the process of nurturing your previous or existing leads or clients with your services through different platform and method.

It helps you build an indirect relationship with your buyers by showcasing your skills, past works and achievements.

It is a sales process where you build a relationship at every stage the lead passes through the sales funnel. It is also carried out through marketing which is believed as the most effective way to reach the buyers.

Lead Nurturing can not only help you reach the buyers time to time but also help you keep them involved and engaged in your company.

Not everyone will be ready to buy your services or become your buyer but you should not also let them go off at any cost and hence must involve this activity to build up an indirect relationship with those buyers which will eventually have you in their mind if in need of the services like yours. This has worked for many of the top notch companies and have been doing till now as a main part of their routine.

Many companies generate 50% leads from the one that were not ready to buy earlier. Also the process is very cost effective (Marketo)

Processes carried out for Lead Nurturing

Lead Scoring

You must prioritize your lead based on its importance and capability to be nurtured for your future profits. A proper plan always leaded with correct execution always gives the desired results. Hence here also you must categorize the lead and prepare an appropriate approach for each category which will provide you meaningful result.

Lead scoring does the same. As the name suggests, you will have to rank your leads in different terms and know their rank that which one should be given the priority for the next process earlier. Following are some categories based on which you can score the leads:

Good Fit or not

The first and most important aspect is to identify if the lead really fits under your criteria. Are you able to fulfill the buyer’s requirements in terms of skill sets, your availability, feasibility, etc.? If you find out the lead is not under your criteria than certainly you cannot count it as a lead. Find out the details of the buyers with their Job title, Company size, Location, Years of experience, etc. This will help you find out if the buyer is a potential lead or not.

Interested or not

Maximum leads will pass through the first stage that is a “Good fit” but to know if they are really interested to your buyers or not is the crucial and important thing to know. Based on their interest you can decide that you will have to give them more importance to make them your buyer. You can identify if there are interested or not through many ways. They will stalk you on your website or other social media platform and through this you can get 50% confirmation that they may be interested. You may catch them doing following things:

-Attend Webinar:- 5% chances

-Visit your webpage/Blog:- 8% chances

-Visit career page:- -15% chances

-Visit pricing pages:- 20% chances

-Visit portfolio page:- 20% chances

-Liking/Visiting posts on Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin:- 20% chances

Behavior

Everyone in this industry tend to be professional and hence unprofessionalism is never encouraged by anyone. If you find that the buyer has just come to compare the price or estimation than it is a nature of unprofessionalism. Some of them will be there to grab the information or the process from you and make it done by someone else. This is faced by almost everyone many times as we cannot ignore any lead just by thinking this for everyone.

Responsive or not

This stage actually let you knows if the buyer is interested in you or not. As many times they are in conversation with many sellers and don’t response to your emails or messages which indirectly shows their not interested nature. But if they are kind to you and answering all your queries promptly regarding their requirement than it is likely that they may not have any option other than you.

Buying stage and time

If someone have passed through all the above stages and have reached at the end of the sales funnel than no other lead can be more important than the lead coming in this section. Though some of them may step back and not become your buyer after coming at last stage but the ratio is more under the positive chances of the leads getting convert. You must prioritize these leads very first.

>>Lead Nurturing with content marketing

Through Email

You can educate your buyers about your company through emails. Email campaigns have been very effective and the use of email campaign for lead nurturing also results with best great response. Campaigns with different motive, proper planning and correct target audience always results into something either a positive response or a lesson to be learnt by doing different email campaigns for lead nurturing.

On Website

Your web address is something that is spread every on internet or the content that you post every day. Some one or the other will some time land on your website and wants to learn about you and your services. Once you find someone visiting your website more often (that you can track with the tracking tools) you can directly pitch them and add them to your lead nurturing activities as they are the one who are interested in you of their own and may become your buyer after your small step towards them.

On Social Media

This is the most effective and easy way to reach your “buyers to be” for lead nurturing purpose. As you can connect with them on social sites and your posts will appear into their feed every day. The only thing that you have to do is keep posting good content or blog related to your business that will attract them towards you. Keep updating your followers and network about your new products/services launched and the achievements that you made.

>>Lead Nurturing with Marketing Automation

Now a days, marketing automation are playing a big role in sales and marketing efforts and have reduced the burden of handling each prospect personally. Due to the helpful features of these software you can easily automate the manual process that you were supposed to do earlier by automating them and customizing the reach as well. There are lot of software available that are taking care of the activities for lead nurturing. You can choose any of the best tool and reach your prospects in a customized way. This not only adds value to your efforts but also amazes the client with your way of reaching them personally again and again.