Originally posted on https://blog.thinkfuel.ca/what-does-an-effective-lead-nurturing-campaign-look-like

 

Lead nurturing. It sounds so sweet, but it’s actually a bear of a thing to manage. It takes time and focus to have an effective lead nurturing campaign. You’ve got to be the best wooer but also know how to refine your wooing skills to meet the needs of many different perfectly qualified leads.

A strong lead nurturing campaign has multiple touchpoints with an ongoing strategy to transform leads into sales-ready buyers. Here’s what an effective lead nurturing campaign looks like.

Qualify Those Leads

Lead scoring helps you define the quality of your leads. You can rank prospects based on where they sit in the sales funnel. You can track a lead’s behaviour to determine which leads are ripe for the picking and which need some nurturing while they hang on the vine a little longer. They are either:

• Marketing leads who need nurturing, OR
• Sales leads who are closer to or ready to make a purchase

Marketing leads need nurturing, while sales leads are ready to go.

Personalize Everything

Despite all the fuss about privacy, today’s customer expects you to know them well. That means you better make sure your lead nurturing campaign is getting as personal as possible. It all ties in with lead scoring, as this helps ascertain where a lead sits in the pipeline. Knowing this allows you to send them info that will be of most interest to them at any given time.

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Personalized communication will resonate with prospects. A personalized drip campaign sends a continuous flow of information that can include:

• Data relevant to certain behaviours, such as past purchases, information they’ve spent time reviewing on your website, or other content pages or social
• Their name
• Their company name and location
• Links to pages they might have deserted, including completing a form for a request, demo pages they might have left, or content pages they might keep viewing or have shared

The most important aspect is targeted content. This hits their pain points and reminds them why they are interested in you. You’ll need to create unique buyer personas so that you can design targeted content based on things such as their interests and perceived marketing triggers.

Educate to Lead Them Along

A part of the process is helping people find their way through their individual buyer’s journey. For lead nurturing emails, each stage would include:

• Awareness phase: This person wants to learn. Provide blog articles to educate them on your product, make them see why you can help, but also provide relevant industry news, trends, and stats to keep them interested.
• Consideration phase: They are a bit more serious now, so get them to agree to a demo, or provide them with the opportunity to join a webinar or listen to a podcast.
• Decision phase: Here, they are ready to decide, so show them success stories like case studies or links to your outstanding product reviews.

Clues that will help you identify relevant info to share:

• • Pages they are always accessing
  • Conversations they might have chimed in on social threads
  • Content they choose to download on your site

Strong CTAs & Landing Pages

Lead nurturing best practices should depend on landing pages. Your landing pages have to make relevant connections for your leads. They act as the glue between you and your CTA. With strong landing pages, you can point them in the right direction of the sales funnel and get them to complete their journey.

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If you find some people just seem stuck on the fence, offers always work as an incentive. Whether they are wishy-washy and can’t decide, have budget constraints, or are looking at your competition, an offer might be the thing that helps them finally decide in your favour.

Multi-Channel Lead Nurturing

Effective multi-channel lead nurturing combines different tactics designed to educate leads and encourage conversions. Lead nurturing campaign examples would include a mix of:

• Marketing Automation: You can streamline your lead nurturing and marketing efforts using marketing automation systems. You plug in the channels, contact information, and content, and the system can help make sure your messages are sent out following a logical schedule with the most relevant messages.
• Email Marketing: Your drip marketing email is the direct route to your leads. If you have their info, and they have opted into receiving info from you, they will read your email. You just have to make sure you offer them the chance to opt-in as this will prevent them from looking at your email drip campaign as spam. Then, you can send relevant campaigns to help them along their journey using conversational tones that encourage interaction and content.
• Social Media: Your social content should focus on:
  • Lighthearted but relevant content with solid offers
  • Clear CTAs
  • Value
  • Open conversations
  • Community sharing
• Paid Retargeting: Following people on their journey through retargeting keeps you with them as they search online. Targeted messages encourage them to come back to relevant landing pages to help them on their journey.
• Dynamic Website Content: Using dynamic content allows you to show leads what they need to see based on where they are on their buyer’s journey.
• Direct Sales Outreach: If your budget allows, consider using old-school tactics with direct mail campaigns that are highly personalized. A piece of mail is a novelty today, and when done well, it can be very provocative. You can tie it in with your content and landing pages to make it easier for them to convert.

Timely Follow-Up

If you can, set up an automated email thanking leads for their interest. You can:

• Provide an ETA letting them know when someone can reach out
• Send some links to content to download
• Provide a link to a landing page with next steps

The key is to keep people interested in what you offer. If you aren’t quick enough, they’ll forget why they even approached you in the first place. People are fickle that way.

Lead Nurturing Campaign Examples

Lead nurturing campaign examples would include:

• A Welcome Campaign, Top-of-Mind Campaign, or Reengagement Campaign to engage a new or lost lead.
• Product-Focused Campaign if you wish to educate.
• Onboarding Campaign, Upsell Drip Campaign, or Renewal Campaign to help retain clients.
• Industry Expertise Drips or Promotional Drips if you are at the stage where you want someone to close.

Lead nurturing is a process. There’s no just firing off an email or leaving a voicemail and then writing a leadoff. With consistent contact, you can bring on that sale.