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Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is a process that focuses on building relationships with leads and guiding them through the buyer's journey to convert them into loyal customers eventually. The primary purpose of lead nurturing is to establish trust, provide value and stay on top of leads over time.

What is lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing is building relationships with potential leads and guiding them through the buyer's journey to convert them into loyal paying customers. It involves engaging leaders with proper and personalized content and interaction at various levels of the decision-making process.

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What are the practices of lead nurturing?

Some critical practices of lead nurturing are as follows:

  1. Segmentation
  2. Lead sourcing
  3. Customized communication
  4. Proactive and relevant content
  5. Multi-channel engagement
  6. Drip campaigns
  7. Lead-exclusive offers
  8. Lead follow-up

  1. Segmentation: Segmentation leads into various groups primarily based on criteria such as behaviors, demographics, or interests, allowing customization and target communication.
  2. Lead sourcing: Assign scores to leads based on engagement, actions and match with the ideal customer profile. It fosters prioritizing leads and focuses efforts on those with high potential for conversion.
  3. Customized communication: Deliver customized content and message to the leads based on their needs, interests, and requirements. Email, customized landing pages, or website content can achieve it.
  4. Proactive and relevant content: Provide leads with valuable and proper content at every journey stage. It involves educational resources, product demos, or case studies to address pain points and make informed decisions.
  5. Multi-channel engagement: Engage leads through various channels such as social media, webinars, events, or in-person interactions. Utilizing various channels to reach leads where they are most active and receptive.
  6. Drip campaigns: Indulge automated drip campaigns that deliver a series of pre-scheduled messages to nurture leads over time. The campaigns can be designed to slowly educate, build interest, and guide leads.
  7. Lead-exclusive offers: Provide exclusive offers, and discounts to leads as they progress through the process and motivate them to take desired actions and work closely.
  8. Lead follow-up: Promptly follow up with leads who have shown interest or taken any step, proactively respond to the inquiries, address questions and improve additional queries or information to engage them, and work forward.

What is a lead nurturing system?

A lead nurturing system, also referred to as a nurturing platform, is a software tool or technology that facilitates and automates the process of lead nurturing as it provides organizations with the ability to effectively manage, track and nurture leads. A lead nurturing system primarily offers a range of features that enable organizations to apply targeted and personalized lead nurturing strategies such as lead database management, segmentation and targeting, or any other strategies.

Why is lead nurturing important?

Lead nurturing is important for several reasons:

  1. Build strong relationships
  2. Shortens sales cycles
  3. Increase market ROI
  4. Enhance brand loyalty
  5. Increase lifetime value

  1. Build strong relationships: Lead nurturing helps to build and strengthen relationships with potential leads by consistently engaging with leads, providing values, and organizations establishing trust and credibility.
  2. Shortens sales cycles: Effective lead nurturing fosters shorten sales cycles. By nurturing leads with timely and relevant information, organizations can keep leads involved and move them through the buyer's journey more effectively.
  3. Increase marketing ROI: Lead nurturing maximizes the ROI from marketing efforts rather than focusing solely on acquiring new leads; nurturing existing leads allows organizations to capitalize on the investment made in acquiring existing leads.
  4. Enhanced brand loyalty: Consistent lead nurturing contributes to enhanced brand loyalty. Constantly offering valuable content and customized interactions, organizations can create a positive brand image and demonstrate their expertise and commitment to customers.
  5. Increased lifetime value: Effective lead nurturing can lead to higher customer lifetime value; by nurturing leads into customers, companies have the opportunity to upsell and generate repeat business.

What are lead nurturing websites?

Lead nurturing websites (marketing automation platforms or customer relationship management platforms) are online tools that facilitate the implementation and management of lead nurturing of lead nurturing strategies.

Some popular lead nurturing websites are as follows:

  1. HubSpot
  2. Makerto
  3. ActiveCampaign
  4. Infusionsoft by Keap
  5. Pardot

  1. HubSpot: HubSpot offers a comprehensive marketing automation platform that includes lead nurturing capabilities that also provide tools for email marketing, content creation and CRM integration.
  2. Marketo: Marketo offers lead nurturing functions such as creating customized email campaigns, lead scoring, and lead segmentation.
  3. ActiveCampaign: ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation and CRM platform that involves lead nurturing capabilities that offer email marketing, behavior tracking, and lead scoring.
  4. Infusionsoft by Keap: Infusionsoft by Keap is a CRM and marketing automation platform that enables lead nurturing that offers features like campaign management, email marketing, behavior tracking and lead scoring.
  5. Pardot: Pardot is a segment of Salesforce and is a marketing platform specially designed by B2B lead nurturing and provides features like lead scoring, drip campaigns, CRM integration and email marketing.

Is lead nurturing effective?

Yes, lead nurturing can be effective by implementing it properly. Numerous studies and industry reports have resulted in a positive impact of lead nurturing on conversion rates and sales outcomes.

Employee pulse surveys:

These are short surveys that can be sent frequently to check what your employees think about an issue quickly. The survey comprises fewer questions (not more than 10) to get the information quickly. These can be administered at regular intervals (monthly/weekly/quarterly).

One-on-one meetings:

Having periodic, hour-long meetings for an informal chat with every team member is an excellent way to get a true sense of what’s happening with them. Since it is a safe and private conversation, it helps you get better details about an issue.

eNPS:

eNPS (employee Net Promoter score) is one of the simplest yet effective ways to assess your employee's opinion of your company. It includes one intriguing question that gauges loyalty. An example of eNPS questions include: How likely are you to recommend our company to others? Employees respond to the eNPS survey on a scale of 1-10, where 10 denotes they are ‘highly likely’ to recommend the company and 1 signifies they are ‘highly unlikely’ to recommend it.

Based on the responses, employees can be placed in three different categories:

  • Promoters
    Employees who have responded positively or agreed.
  • Detractors
    Employees who have reacted negatively or disagreed.
  • Passives
    Employees who have stayed neutral with their responses.

What are examples of lead nurturing?

A few examples of lead nurturing are as follows:

  1. Drip email campaigns
  2. Webinar or event invitations

  1. Drip email campaigns: Drip email campaigns involve a series of automated, scheduled emails that are sent to leads over a specific period of time; that email delivers valuable information like resources, insights about the industry, or case studies.
  2. Webinar or event invitations: Inviting leads to webinars, workshops, or events is an effective way to provide valuable information and interact with them.

Difference between lead nurturing vs lead generation

Lead nurturing is a process of creating relationships with potential customers who have been interested in an organization’s product or service, it includes engaging and nurturing leads with relevant content, communication to guide the customer throughout the process. It primarily helps to cultivate relationships, educate leads, address their concerns and move close to make purchase decisions.

Whereas, lead generation is a process of identifying and capturing potential customers who have shown interest in product or services that involves generating awareness, attracting prospects and collecting information to follow-up. The primary purpose of lead generation is to expand the organization’s  customer base and fill the sales funnel with potential leads.

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