Why Is Lead Nurturing Important and How Does It Work?

The term lead nurturing is always floating about in the B2B world. But why is it so important? What does it actually come down to?

It’s worth starting at the beginning, and breaking down what it actually means.

“Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel, and through every step of the buyer’s journey.”

So in essence, lead nurturing comes down to influencing your potential buyers and persuading them that they need your product or service.

Why is it so important?

“Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost.”

But, it’s not all about sales.

Lead nurturing is vital to your overall business strategy. You can see where potential prospects are disengaged with your product and messaging, allowing you to constantly improve.

It’s therefore crucial for your business to be doing this well.

Where to begin

You need to map out your strategy.

Take a look at your buyer personas and create buyer journeys tailored to them.

Remember, when targeting a business, you always need to consider who it is within that organisation that you’re trying to reach.

Techniques and touchpoints

Use your buyer journeys and create exciting content that they can interact with.

Maximise your website and include lots of touchpoints. That way, you know who has been on your website and what they have engaged with. You should ensure that you are using as many call to actions as possible.

Send emails, create downloadable content and use social media to interact with your prospect at every stage of their journey.

Benefits

“The reason that nurtured leads buy more is because they know more.”

It’s exactly that.

You’re using a well-planned strategy to inform and engage with your potential prospects. At each stage of their journey they are taking in information about what it is that you can do to help them.

So, make it personal and make it relevant to them.

Always link back to your buyer personas and the journeys tailored to each of them.

Marketing automation software

How exactly do lead nurturing programmes and marketing automation software go hand in hand?

Well, marketing automation is this:

“Marketing automation refers to the software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions. Many marketing departments have to automate repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions.”

Marketing automation software is different to your CRM system.

Use marketing automation software alongside your lead nurturing programme for efficiency and accuracy.

It cuts out time wasted manually tracking leads, and instead monitors their online behaviour, responding accordingly and giving them a score. That way you’re contacting the people who are interested and nurturing them effectively through your sales funnel.

Getting started

If you’d like to know more about the power of lead nurturing, then we have the eBook just for you.

Download our new guide ‘How to convert and manage leads’ full of tips and tricks to maximise not only your lead generation but your lead efficiency.

Remember, lead nurturing is the effective way of increasing conversions and therefore revenue.

If you need more help and advice in understanding how you can maximise your lead nurturing and increasing your inbound sales pipeline then please get in contact here.