Do you find that you’re bringing in a lot of leads, but failing to get them to convert? Do you wonder what went wrong and how you could have done something differently? It’s possible that lead nurturing is missing from your content marketing strategy. Knowing when and how to reach and connect with your audience at crucial moments in their buyer’s journey is key. Using lead nurturing, you will be able to guide and educate your prospects through the buyer’s journey, the end result being their decision to work with your company.
Lead nurturing is a content marketing technique that helps you build relationships with your prospects. The connections that you build with them are instrumental in earning their trust, and eventually, their business. The core idea is to provide relevant information to the prospect during their buyer’s journey. Providing relevant information will give your prospect insight into what your company can offer. You want to position yourself as an expert in your industry so prospects know they can trust you.
Being Timely
Letting prospects sit for too long without making contact is a problem that many companies face. Knowing the right time to make an initial connection with a prospect is key to starting the lead nurturing process.
Outlining your buyer persona and using marketing automation can be an effective tool to help you make all those connections. As someone with other aspects of a business to run, you likely don’t have time to sit down and nurture every individual lead or prospect by hand. Marketing automation allows you to leave some of the nurturing work for an automated workflow to manage. There are many marketing automation platforms out there. We personally prefer HubSpot here at Modern Driven Media, but it’s important to research which platform is right for your business.
Being timely not only refers to when you should make your connections but also what content you’re providing them depending on their stage in the buyer’s journey. If you give them the right message, but at the wrong time, your whole strategy could be thrown off. More than half of your customers are not ready to move further along in the buyer’s journey, so being prompt and timely in connecting with your customers is important for capturing and nurturing leads.
Efficiently Engaging
Are some connections you are creating with prospects falling short? During your first couple connections with a prospect, you’ll want to provide them with valuable and educational information. This is the time to build rapport with these prospects. In your emails, send them links to blogs or articles which would be relevant to their needs and interests. Create a pathway for them to find you over and over. The more prospects learn from you, the more they’ll trust you.
Many Inbound marketers are using Buyer’s Personas. Simply put, Buyer’s Personas are fictionalized versions of your ideal customer or client. They help you establish their wants and needs in order to create the messaging that will draw them in. To get started creating personalized lead nurturing content, create a buyer persona for your desired customer. This will help you know who your leads are personally, what they want, and what type of content will guide them further along in their buyer’s journey.
Syed Balkhi, the Founder of OptinMonster and WPBeginner, understands how customer engagement and lead nurturing is important. The Huffington Post had interviewed Syed on his unique engaging techniques. Syed said, “By reframing your mindset and understanding that your job isn’t to trick or manipulate the buyer into making a purchase decision, you’re freed up to focus on engaging customers, answering a question, and selling the value behind your products.” Syed doesn’t only sell the value behind his products but keeps his leads by continuously engaging with customers on a positive level.
Creating and Positioning Content
It can be difficult to create content when you have no idea who you’re talking to. The buyers’ persona mentioned in the engaging step should help create content that will connect with your target audience. Understanding every unique buyer’s persona allows you to create different content to attract each of your personas. Engaging with the correct buyer persona through the content you are creating will increase sales more than 20%.
For example, if my persona is a female in her late twenties who doesn’t like to read lengthy blogs, but prefers quick talking points, and Infographic highlighting key topics would better resonate with this persona. This Infographic could be put on social media platforms or sent as a downloadable offer in an email.
Keep an eye on their engagement. Do you see high open rates for emails? High click-through rates? If you see a dip in these metrics, it might be a sign you need to readjust your nurturing strategy. Don’t be afraid to switch it up if you see certain messaging, content, or timing isn’t quite working for you.
Lead nurturing is a process that many companies are prioritizing to keep their leads coming and staying with the company. It’s all about identifying and understanding your buyer personas and how to connect with them. By being timely you are able to make the first connection without your leads sitting too long or expiring. Secondly, you are engaging leads by creating buying personas to know how to connect with who they are and what they are looking for from you and your company. Lastly, creating and positioning content will help increase your sales because the specific content you have created will grab the attention of your desired audience and help them remember your company.
To learn more about lead nurturing or how Modern Driven Media can help you and your company with lead nurturing, call our team to schedule a consultation.