The time between lead generation and lead conversion can determine the success of a business. Having a tried-and-true lead generation strategy is great, but without conversions, your business won’t be profitable. And in today’s digital age, with so many possible touchpoints, there are a lot of opportunities to make (or break) a sale. Lead nurturing campaigns can boost conversion rates and help you develop and maintain long-term relationships with customers, especially for B2B companies with a longer, more involved sales cycle.
If you’re skeptical of the strategic value behind lead nurturing campaigns, that’s OK! We’re here to walk you through exactly what lead nurturing is and why it’s important, so you can better understand its value.
What Exactly Is Lead Nurturing?
The term lead nurturing refers to the process of developing relationships with leads. This strategy is often used for complex buying decisions or longer sales cycles, like those found in the B2B space. Why is it important to develop these relationships? They give you an opportunity to build a solid foundation of trust with leads before they’re ready to commit. Think of it like you’d think of any relationship. The ones built on trust are the most successful, aren’t they?
The lead nurturing phase allows you to demonstrate to leads that your company can deliver on what you say it will. You can use this time to drill down on your messaging, educate leads about all the various aspects of your solution, highlight your team, or compare your solutions to those offered by competitors. All of this new, valuable information can help leads conclude that your solution is the one for them. What’s more? You can count on even bigger sales from nurtured leads. In fact, they make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.
What Does a Lead Nurturing Campaign Look Like?
The core tenet of a lead nurturing campaign is to communicate with each lead individually. This means that a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. Instead, content for your lead nurturing campaign, whether it’s an email, a retargeting ad, or a direct mail piece, should be personalized for each lead. The goal is to provide leads with content that relates to their pain points and helps them understand how you can provide a solution. Customers no longer want to be sold to. They want to feel that their needs are heard and understood, and that there’s a solution out there that’s right for them. This is why nurturing your leads is so important!
At Sagefrog, our lead nurturing process involves using our marketing automation tool HubSpot to track leads through the different stages of the sales cycle. As we track our leads, we also nurture them by sending them relevant content based on their industry, the services they’ve expressed interest in, and other factors. This approach has proven to be successful with leads who have gone quiet and enables us to increase communication with leads throughout the entire sales cycle.
The Value of Lead Nurturing Campaigns
Within the scope of your long-term marketing strategy, lead nurturing can provide a lot of value. Lead nurturing campaigns can contribute to:
Improved Credibility
When you provide valuable information and content to your leads, it helps your company build credibility. Leads will start to see your company and team as a helpful resource as opposed to just another company trying to sell them something. This will in turn increase your credibility and encourage leads to stay connected with your business and remain interested in all you have to offer.
Engaged Prospects
Because the B2B sales cycle is longer and more complex than the typical B2C sales cycle, your leads likely won’t be ready to make a purchase at the beginning of the sales cycle. But just because they’re not immediately ready, that doesn’t mean they won’t become a customer in the future. By providing value over the course of the sales cycle, you can keep your business at the top of their mind so that when they are ready to seal the deal, they know exactly where to go.
Increased Sales
Obviously, the primary objective of lead nurturing is to increase sales. If you play your cards right, however, you can not only increase the number of sales, but also the amount of each sale. Nurtured leads make larger purchases, remember? And because lead nurturing builds a foundation of trust, maintaining long-term relationships and keeping customers interested is easier than ever, especially if you have a marketing automation and CRM tool in place.
Try a Lead Nurturing Campaign Today
We know, it can be hard to know exactly where to start with lead nurturing. But when you have an experienced partner on your side to guide you, reaping the benefits of a lead nurturing campaign has never been easier.
At Sagefrog, we work with trusted marketing automation tools like HubSpot to develop lead nurturing campaigns that improve conversion rates, increase sales, and result in lasting customer relationships. If you’re looking for an experienced partner that’s excited to help you grow your business, our team would love to help.
Ready to get started with your first lead nurturing campaign?
