Nurturing leads is one of the most crucial aspects to lead generation and sales. If you have qualified leads but do not nurture them, then they will disappear. And since generating new leads can be difficult or impossible for some businesses, boosting your current ones is imperative.
That's why it's essential to have sales and marketing strategies and know how best to nurture these potential customers to become loyal and turn into paying customers! In this blog post, we're going to go over seven proven lead-nurture strategies that will help increase your conversion rates and generate more revenue for your business!
What is a lead nurturing strategy?
A lead nurturing strategy is a series of sales and marketing efforts designed to engage and attract potential customers through the sales pipeline.
It's an ongoing process in which your business regularly sends personalized messages to leads, moving them down your sales funnel by delivering educational content that compels them to take action.
1. Identify a Lead's Needs and Interests
You can't approach lead nurturing tactics the same way for every person. Each has different needs and interests, so this first step should be to find out what they are!
It's best to have a discovery process of some sort that allows you to identify your leads' pain points and areas they need help with.
Suppose a lead is visiting your website for the first time. In this case, they're probably not sure how your product or service will benefit them. To build trust with your lead, you can send free resources that help educate them and provide value, which will allow them to build trust with your brand vs. a competitor of yours.
This is also why it's essential to have a CRM and effective lead marketing messages in place. That way, you can track your leads' behavior and optimize future messages based on their actions!
2. Keep Their Contact Information Current
This seems like a no-brainer, but it's an easy thing to forget. The contact information for your lead can change over time, and you’ll need to keep this updated to ensure they are receiving your messages.
You can use a lead nurturing and CRM tool like Pulse to keep this information updated. Keep in mind: The most common method of communication is email, so make sure it's available for them at all times. One way to do this is by using your email marketing platform to track engagement, and if it drops off, have a practice in place to update this information.
3. Setup Email Marketing and Text Message Marketing Automation (Drip Campaigns)
Once you've found out how to engage your leads best and keep in touch with them, the next step is setting up a lead nurturing campaign!
A drip campaign is an automated series of emails that provide your leads with information and resources right at their fingertips. This educates them on how to achieve the results they want to develop a better relationship with you!
You may also be interested in setting up text message marketing automation, which allows you to communicate via SMS. If people are busy, this might be more convenient for them since they don't check their inboxes as often.
In any case, both services use lead nurturing campaigns by sending personalized messages at specific times based on what a lead does (or doesn't do). That way, you aren't wasting time going back-and-forth with your leads and can focus on generating revenue!
4. Leverage Marketing Automation to Send Personal Handwritten Notes
You can customize your lead nurturing process to include more traditional marketing techniques, such as sending a handwritten notecard to the lead. With today's modern technology, this can be completely automated.
You can leverage companies like Handywrytten to send out personalized cards that use real ink pens to write the cards so the lead would think you spent the time to write and mail them a note.
Using this technology with marketing automation can be a unique strategy that your competition is not using. In addition, you can personalize the note with the person's first name and any other info you want to include.
When you use Pulse, we'll help you get everything set up for you!
Pulse is a powerful CRM and marketing automation software that brings consistency and real-time reporting to businesses, which helps companies grow smarter and faster.
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5. Make Sure Your Sales Pipeline is Easy to Manage
You should be paying extra attention to your most engaged and hot leads, so you need a sales pipeline that will make it easy for you to identify which leads need extra attention.
There are a couple of ways you can keep your sales pipeline organized and use lead nurturing best practices:
- Tag them in your CRM so they're easier to find.
- Create custom lists that only include the leads who need extra attention. This will help separate those from other potential customers, as well!
This way, everyone in your sales pipeline is easy for you to manage, and there's no confusion on which leads should be nurtured first or what types of messages they may like seeing more often!
You can also use Pulse’s project boards to set up customized sales pipelines. This will give you a helicopter overview of each lead’s stage and which ones require action.
Here's a quick video showing how you can use Pulse’s project boards to manage your leads:
6. Create an Email Newsletter to Share Updates and Events With Your Contacts
It would be best if you also thought about creating an email newsletter that you can use to share updates and events with your contacts. These emails are usually best sent from your company and have the emails in your drip campaigns come from an actual person.
This is an excellent way for you to keep in touch with leads and also build brand awareness!
In addition, you can use your newsletter as a way to advertise sales and events or tell everyone about an upcoming seminar you'll be hosting. This allows you to do lead nurturing with different personalized touchpoints.
7. Provide Ongoing Customer Service via Phone Calls or Emails
Another lead nurturing best practice is to provide ongoing customer service via email or phone calls. This can be especially helpful if you have a potential customer who needs extra help getting started with your business!
You must remain patient and answer any questions they might have when it comes to the product, services, etc., so they're able to take full advantage of what you offer them.
A vital part of this process is to have a sales pipeline that is easy to manage, as explained in step 5. Otherwise, you'll be wasting too much time trying to look up notes, etc., on your lead.
This way, not only are all leads being nurtured well, but potential customers will also feel taken care of through every step in their journey with your company which increases loyalty!
When you use Pulse, we remove all of the technical headaches of setting this up. Pulse makes it easy to add UTM tracking to your CRM, and our team can assist you with the process.
Of course, you'll also get access to all other great features, such as CRM, email marketing, and much more. Give Pulse a try for free today.
Conclusion
There are various ways you can nurture leads and keep them engaged with your business. Of course, all of these lead nurturing best practices won't work for every single person-but they should give you a good start!
If you need help getting started or want to talk about how we can set this process up for you, feel free to contact us at any time.
