4 Tips to Make Lead Nurturing Easier
You know how important lead nurturing is. So why isn't your business doing a better job of it? Failing to nurture your leads can cost you sales. In fact, more than 73 percent of marketing leads are not yet ready to buy, Kissmetrics reports. Despite this statistic, a whopping 65 percent of companies don't have programs in place for nurturing business leads.
Why do so many companies' lead nurturing efforts fall short? Frankly, nurturing business leads can be a huge headache. You've got to keep track of where the leads came from, what actions each lead took on your website, how the lead wants to be contacted and what stage they’re at in the buying process — just to name a few things. Keeping all of this straight can be a taxing task for you and your team.
Best practices for nurturing business leads
To improve your lead nurturing approach, follow these best practices.
- Get help creating content to nurture business leads. According to a study by DemandGen Report, email is the most widely used channel for lead nurturing efforts. However, more than seven in 10 respondents in the study report that they struggle to develop targeted content for their lead nurturing efforts. Few busy small business owners have the time to devote to content development. Using a lead management solution that provides email campaign templates and other professionally created content makes it easy to send the right email to each prospect based on their stage of engagement and level of interest. (Get more tips on how to use content marketing.)
- Automate your lead nurture campaigns. In addition to using pre-developed templates to create your lead nurture emails, you can simplify things even more by automating the delivery of those emails. Choose a lead management tool that can automatically send your leads targeted emails based on their previous actions, such as filling out a form, downloading content or viewing a webinar.
- Keep track. Use a lead management solution that tracks your business leads throughout the lead nurture process. Particularly if your product or service has a long sales cycle, it can be easy to lose track of your communications with a prospect over time. Unfortunately, this can cost you the sale. A good lead management solution will not only notify you when new leads come in, but also automatically track your team’s follow-up interactions with the prospect, such as phone calls and emails. That way, you don't make rookie mistakes like sending a prospect the same email twice or sending an email that's not relevant to their needs. (Here are some more tips on tracking leads.)
- Monitor your lead nurturing metrics. To see how well your efforts are working, be sure to review your key metrics. This includes data such as how many recipients engage with your emails, respond to your calls-to-action, and redeem your offers. Look for a lead management tool that records this information for you and shows you at a glance what types of results your email lead nurture campaign is getting.
Get better results from your business leads
Choosing the right lead management solution and using it consistently can make all the difference in turning those leads into sales. By following the best practices above (and avoiding common lead management mistakes), your business will see positive results.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
