In this article we offer a clear and quick guide that to understand what lead nurturing is, how it can increase your business success and the benefits it can generate.
What is lead nurturing and what is it for
Lead nurturing encompasses all web marketing activities that a company puts in place to build and maintain a strong and valuable link with potential customers.
With lead nurturing, you nurture relationships with users by creating a constant, healthy interest around the brand. The goal is to turn prospects, who have left a contact (lead), into actual customers. How? By continuing to keep leads interested by providing them with relevant and personalized information.
In other words, it is about communicating with potential customers, leaving out the business aspect as much as possible, to build trust and make it more likely that they will choose your service or product when they are ready to buy. That’s why lead nurturing follows users at all stages of the buyer’s journey, that is, throughout their entire buying journey.
It is definitely a long and challenging process, but a very satisfying one because it gives rise to a knowledgeable and loyal community.
The benefits of well-done lead nurturing
Users hardly make a purchase or order after just one interaction with the brand. Especially in the b2b arena. Cultivating contacts, then, allows you to turn a person interested in what you do into a buyer and keep them over time.
Consider that today about 96 percent of visitors who visit a website or e-commerce site are not ready to buy (Source: Adobe).
According to one study, however, those who apply lead nurturing strategies have better sales opportunities (about 20 percent more than those who do not follow this strategy).
Finally, there is also a benefit on costs. Businesses, which engage on this front, can increase sales by 10% or more over 6-9 months, saving 80% of the budget invested in other, more direct marketing practices.
So, with a customized lead nurturing strategy you can:
- Building a relationship with users, even those who have shown initial interest
- Maximize return on investment (ROI), because contacts cultivated over time tend to buy more and become loyal customers
- Optimize brand image, communicating authority and reliability in the target industry
Not just lead nurturing. Learn how to increase your quality leads with Google Ads, read on:
Lead Generation with Google Ads: how to get valuable contacts?
What strategies for lead nurturing? 4 effective ideas
Before implementing a lead nurturing strategy, one must consider that the sales process (especially in the b2b context) recognizes 3 main types of users:
- leads: in which you identify all users, who fall into your buyer personas, who have shown an initial interest in your offer
- prospect: all active potential customers, i.e., those who have demonstrated a stronger and more tangible interest and are already in the consideration stage for purchase
- customers: who have completed a purchase, but still need to be retained and retained in order to build a strong and lasting relationship
Understanding the sales journey of customers and understanding what stage they are in is essential to implementing the best strategy and maintaining relationships with them. Here’s what you can put into practice.
Create custom content
Based on your users’ interests and stage of the sales journey, you can devise informative, quality content “tailored” to their needs. The goal is to engage them and stimulate them to connect with your brand. For example, you can create:
- blog articles to answer their questions and concerns
- ebooks and whitepapers with special insights, perfect for remarking on your knowledge of the target market
- Webinars with expert talks, panel discussions and market analysis to actively engage your audience
- videos To generate people’s interest with training and educational clips (e.g., to teach how to use a product)
Having assessed the best content for the audience, the channels in which people can be best interacted with should be decided, such as social media, blogging, and newsletters.
Do you know how to get quality contacts from social networks? Find out in our article:
Lead generation on social media: 5 strategies for 2024
Do retargeting
If a user has interacted with your website, you can nurture the relationship through retargeting ads. You essentially use online sales campaigns to show them a product they have already seen on your site on social channels, while watching a YouTube video, or with banner ads. Ideally, you should design content that stimulates curiosity and interaction that is not too commercial.
Email marketing: between interesting email welcome messages
If a user subscribes to the newsletter, it means that it shows:
- interest with respect to what you do
- A willingness to keep abreast of your communications
- The intention to download an original product (such as an e-book).
To create engagement and cultivate relationships you can personalize your communications, perhaps by sending a welcome email in your newsletters. An opportunity to introduce your brand and illustrate, step by step, the path you have designed for your users. With a good strategy you can get a positive response, 4/10 times higher than with traditional emails.
Offer interactive discounts and promotions
Coupons and discounts are a great tool to entice a sale, but to avoid running the risk of producing promotional communications, the ideal is to focus on the experience. In this sense, the ideal is to create interactive quizzes by allowing the person to interact with the brand and get an incentive based on the number of right answers obtained.
Find out what lead nurturing is with a qualified agency!
We have seen what lead nurturing is, what benefits it could bring to your business and how it is done. If you want to test its effectiveness with tangible, measurable results, you can rely on experts in the field.
At Isola we specialize in lead generation and effective lead nurturing tactics. We can help you to:
- get active contacts
- Build a solid relationship with the people who have interacted with your business
- Finalize a customized strategy based on listening to your users
Want to add lead nurturing to your marketing strategy?
Find out what we can do for you!
