Lead Nurturing: 3 Steps to more leads
Marketing can be very tedious. Companies create concepts and strategies, set goals hoping to gain as many leads as possible every day. However, the quantity of leads is of no use to you if the quality is not right. We’ll show you what you should consider as a marketer when nurturing leads.
Lead your clients throught the customer journey
Lead Nurturing basically means consistent and meaningful communication with potential customers. But it is essential to research the contact – who are you dealing with? Are you talking to the marketing specialist, managing director or a working student. Once you have found this out in your lead process, you can approach the contact in a targeted manner.
It’s not a matter of sending a “follow-up e-mail” every few months to find out whether a prospective customer is “ready to buy”. Successful cultivation of contacts and leads requires a sometimes long and cumbersome process on which you can build trusting relationships with the right people in the long term.
But what is the best way to set up such a process successfully? Talk to your sales team first. They know exactly what the customers out there want to know, what content they might be happy about – so involve your sales colleagues in the creation of your marketing materials and the customer journey.
And it’s not just you who benefits from it. The sales team can also use your marketing materials in their sales process and customer approach. Always put yourself in the customer’s shoes – and think like them
Step 1: Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
Imagine you were the customer or the potential buyer. What do they do? What challenges do they face in their job? Where do reside or spend their free time? Observe their behaviour. And use this background knowledge to create a first customer journey, your customer’s path from the first contact, through the engagement process and conclusion, to a long-term relationship.
Always ask yourself the following questions:
- What campaigns is my target group interested in? (participation in surveys, downloading demos, whitepapers, registering for webinars and events, etc.)
- What concerns your target group regarding these matters? (Is it easy to sign up for it?)
- How will the target group feel when they encounter your campaign? Stressed? Curious? Excited?
- Does your target group already have experience with digital campaigns from your company?
In addition to these questions, you should also identify those questions that customers have at each stage of the customer journey:
- How can this product or service help your business?
- Is it worth trying to get your team on board to solve this problem?
- Will this solution work? Can you prove it?
- Is there another company that might offer something better?
- Is the company credible?
- Can you afford it?
Help potential customers find answers to exactly these questions, and you will remind them of the benefits of working with you. If you can answer all these questions as part of your Customer Journey, you have created an ideal basis.
What are the motivations of your target group? Which questions would you ask in a first conversation? Try to understand what customers want and what concerns they have when they talk to their colleagues.
Step 2: Plan your lead-nurturing path with a focus on progress
Invest as much time in creating content for lead development as you do for lead capture. Many companies spend the majority of their budget on generating as many leads as possible. But what good are 100 leads if you can’t process them?
Concentrate on advancing with potential customers. This is not about the frequency of a contact, but about the progress of the relationship.
Step 3: Lead your customer
The Customer Journey can be long and challenging. Because not every interested user changes their interest in the campaign to an intention to buy. Your only task is to ensure that you approach your customers on the way and guide them with a compass to the correct and best decision for their needs.
Imagine your marketing team to be a guide that has to point out all the important factors that are necessary for decision-making.
Complex sales require that your prospect
- is familiar with you and your company and knows what you and your company are doing.
- perceives you and your company as an expert in this field.
- can identify and solve its specific problems with you and your company.
- perceives you and your company to be professional and trustworthy, so that they want to work with you.
Remember that you cannot automate trust. Build trust step by step and win the customer over.
Build trust with your future customers
By providing potential customers with valuable information right from the start, you become a trusted advisor. You will then be perceived as an expert. You don’t sell; you don’t make pitches. Instead, you offer insights and solutions that relate to your expertise, making you the first company customers turn to when needed.
Make your marketing plan focus on building trust, and your business will become more profitable and less dependent on price competition. You will see conversations become more open and honest, you gain more business from a single source and new business recommendations.
This post is based on input from B2B Lead Blog.
Source title image: iStock / PeopleImages
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