lead nurturing or how to guide your prospects towards purchase?

According to Hubspot, 90% of your prospects identified viainbound marketing will need to be nurtured to maturity before becoming customers.

This statistic demonstrates the value of lead nurturing, a relatively unknown marketing strategy that we can't resist comparing to fishing...

Imagine a nice school of silver fish near your boat. Are you there yet? Now think what you could do to see them wriggling under your rod and finally taking a voracious bite on the hook.

In marketing terms, this means: generating leads is good, converting them into customers is better! This is the precise aim of lead nurturing practices, which enable you to develop your marketing relationship with your prospects by sending them content tailored to their progress through the conversion tunnel.

 

 

Here's why and how to implement an effective lead nurturing strategy.

What is lead nurturing?

lead nurturing is the practice of turning qualified leads into customers. The term could be translated as "nurturing the customer relationship" or "incubating prospects". Yes, yes, you're the chicken, they're the egg and we need a chick.

But let's get back to business. In theinbound marketing processes, you first need to attract Internet users to generate leads, then convert them into qualified contacts. Then it's a matter of nurturing them to the point of buying your product or service.

In practice, the concept of lead nurturing defines this relational stage during which the company feeds identified prospects with targeted informative content. Nurturing means pampering, with a single objective: to help prospects mature and move along the funnel-like buying tunnel, right up to the point of sale.

 

To take a prospect by the hand
To lead him towards tomorrow
To give him confidence in his choice
To take a prospect for a friend roi

 

Yves D., lead nurturing expert

Who is lead nurturing for?

The lead nurturing strategy is mainly associated with longer sales cycles. That's why it's mainly used in BtoB. Sales between professionals require total trust in the salesperson's reliability and competence. The decision-making process is divided between a number of successive players, who need to be skilfully nurtured, with the aim of getting them to choose your brand over another!

However, BtoC customers can just as easily improve their marketing and sales efficiency with lead nurturing, especially when the purchase involves a substantial budget or imposes a certain lead time.

In these cases, the prospect's process of maturation and decision-making is a priori slow and delicate. It requires rigorous, tailored follow-up to convince them at the end of the qualification cycle.

This essential phase prepares qualified contacts for a timely and promising transfer to the sales teams.

How to set up an effective lead nurturing plan in 3 steps?

For your lead nurturing campaign to bear fruit, it needs to deploy a rigorous action plan to establish lasting, solid contact with your prospects. To achieve this, you'll need to follow three successive stages.

1. Identify qualified prospects

Make sure you identify which of your leads are most likely to make a purchase. These are your qualified leads, in other words, the fish that scan your bait and approach it irresistibly, the cracked eggshells that hint at a shy beak...

You therefore need to gather as much data as possible about their visits to your website or social networks. From these interactions, you'll be able to deduce their persona type, their actual level of interest in your services and/or products, and how far along they are in the buying process.

Why should you do this? The more you know about your leads' profiles, issues and digital attitudes, the better you'll be able to personalize the content to be created and sent to them automatically once they've made contact (signed up for a newsletter or special offer, requested a quote, downloaded an e-book or white paper, etc.).

2. Regularly provide your potential customers with value-added content

Once you've identified your best recruits, you'll need to nurture them with appropriate, increasingly targeted content as they progress through the conversion tunnel.

During this phase, use CRM software, scoring and marketing automation tools.

Based on the results and the significant interactions, refine your content proposals by directing them towards prospects who behave like potential customers. You need to hook them, offer them the bait they need. Flies for trout, sardines or anchovies for tuna... In this way, don't hesitate to inform your prospects in detail about your skills and services. This way, they'll be more likely to choose you over a competitor.

The more your leads identify with your campaigns, the more confident they'll feel about buying and taking the bait!

When it comes to frequency, opt for the "not too much, not too little" technique, i.e. a weekly newsletter, starting with a personalized welcome or thank-you e-mail. There's nothing worse than repetitive e-mails, which are likely to turn your prospects off for good. Reassure them, yes; over-solicit them, no!

3. Continuously analyze your leads' behavior

lead nurturing is a long-term strategy that pays off through relevance and perseverance.

In fact, each of your actions, like the performance of your mailings, needs to be analyzed:

👉 What type of campaign works best?

👉 What is the prospect's nurturing journey?

👉 Which white paper was the most successful?

👉 Which blog post was read?

👉 What are the open, click and unsubscribe rates for your newsletters?

👉 Which post has been shared, saved or commented on?

By answering these precise questions, you'll know whether your lead nurturing strategy has worked. As you can see, if your fishbowl is full of fresh fish, you've won. You've sent the right content and passed the baton to your sales team at the right time.

Conversely, if your only catch is plastic, you'll have to look again at your prey's profile and the content produced and shared.

In the long run, you'll see that it's really worth it... Keep in mind that lead nurturing is really effective in improving your conversion rate. Just over a third of marketers have implemented it, yet according to iMedia Connection, 68% of customers say they feel more confident once they've been fed content by the company.

Need support, auditing and advice on your lead nurturing strategy? Click here to find out!

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