How can you turn prospects into customers with lead nurturing?
In the inbound marketing family, we ask for lead nurturing!
Lead nurturing is a concept designed to convert prospects into customers by subtly nurturing them, with their consent, with informative content, messages and other little touches.
It's an endurance race in the longest buying cycles, those that require reflection and where competition is fierce. Without rushing your contact (the famous lead), you set yourself apart and gently lead them to close the sale!
In this article co-written with growth and acquisition expert Jérémy Lacoste, find out how to set up an effective lead nurturing strategy and which tools to adopt.
The definition of lead nurturing
Lead nurturing is defined as the deployment of marketing actions designed to nurture immature prospects into customers.
Lead nurturing is therefore an inbound marketing technique that consists in developing and maintaining a privileged relationship with your prospects, by delivering customized content, until they take the step of buying.
☝️ Nurture, nurture, nurture, nurture... nurturing is a strategy that focuses on the consumer, their expectations, their needs, their habits, in order to raise their awareness and lead them to your product or service.
Why use lead nurturing? The main benefits
As we've seen, lead nurturing is an essential component of inbound marketing, which companies are increasingly embracing because it's both cost-effective and better perceived by consumers.
Let's take a closer look at the benefits of lead nurturing, integrated with an inbound marketing technique 👉.
Enhancing your reputation and brand image
No more advertising hype! Make way for retargeting and lead nurturing.
Retargeting is similar to retargeting, and aims to reach prospects who have visited your website, through a display advertising campaign on other sites.
Lead nurturing, on the other hand, seeks to communicate intelligently with them in order to :
- establish your legitimacy: your carefully selected content demonstrates your expertise ;
- encourage them to interact with you: you actively engage them in a relationship that becomes concrete, and benefit from their opinions;
- stay in touch: you maintain a relationship with your potential customers and stay in their minds;
- inspire confidence: your references and customer testimonials are concrete and reassuring.
By nurturing your e-reputation with quality, non-intrusive content, you're no longer "desperately" chasing your prospects: they're the ones who come to you when they're ready. It's a new form of lead generation, beneficial from every point of view!
Sales growth
If lead nurturing is in vogue, it's because its benefits are so impressive.
Companies that master lead nurturing generate 50% more sales, at 33% lower acquisition costs!
As for closings, you're 20% more likely to close when the lead has been brought to maturity (source: Forrester Research).
Finally, "nurtured" contacts lead to a 23% shorter buying journey (source: Market2Lead).
What are the challenges for lead nurturing in 2024?
As with other aspects of sales and marketing, the challenges facing lead nurturing in 2024 will become even more complex, as buying behavior evolves and technologies take off.
Here, then, are the main challenges companies need to prepare for 👉.
Personalization on a grand scale
The era of standardized content is coming to an end!
In 2024, consumers expect personalized communications tailored to their specific needs. The challenge is therefore to finely segment leads and create hyper-personalized nurturing scenarios, while managing a high volume of prospects.
💡 To meet this expectation, we recommend investing in marketing automation tools capable of processing large quantities of behavioral data in real time.
Advanced use of artificial intelligence
AI is becoming an essential tool for analyzing lead behavior and predicting future actions.
This is why companies need to integrate it to gain in efficiency, through:
- intelligent campaign automation;
- optimized lead scoring;
- dynamic adjustment of content according to prospect engagement.
☝️ Beware, the challenge is not to limit ourselves to campaigns based on fixed rules, but to exploit machine learning to anticipate needs, and thus improve the customer experience.
Marketing-sales alignment (smarketing)
The perfect coordination of marketing and sales teams remains a central issue.
In 2024, this alignment needs to be more collaborative to underpin the effectiveness of lead nurturing. This means :
- a more fluid data-sharing process ;
- real-time feedback;
- continuous optimization of lead qualification operations.
In short, it means avoiding organizational silos that compromise the fluidity of the customer journey.
How to achieve a successful lead nurturing strategy? The different stages
The trickiest part isn't necessarily finding the right prospect, but getting your offer to them at the right time. Unless you're lucky, it's rare to be right on time.
However, a prospect who is not interested today may be interested tomorrow! Here are the steps and a few tips to get him "up to temperature" without losing sight of him, all the while gently 👉.
#1 Segment your contacts to better target your campaigns
Lead management is your starting point.
You've collected contacts in several ways:
- by purchasing access to multi-criteria BtoB or BtoC databases ;
- via your sales teams and their prospecting activities;
- by encouraging them to give you their contact details and preferences via call-to-action (CTA) buttons in your e-mailings, for example, linking to a landing page, in this case the contact form on your website.
The most important thing remains to be done:
- segment them by type (for example, according to the products purchased, the pages of your site most frequently consulted, areas of interest, functions, CSP, etc.);
- determine your core target, with the aim of focusing your marketing communications efforts on it.
💡 The method: we recommend using lead scoring, i.e. rating contacts according to their degree of interest in your product or service, to segment them into cold, lukewarm or hot prospects, then tailor the message in your acquisition campaigns accordingly.
#2 Get to know your visitors' profiles
Experience has shown that it's only after you've spoken to a consumer at least ten times, directly or indirectly, that their decision to buy will come to fruition.
An average which is even more true in BtoB (Business to Business)!
Consequently, it's thanks to customer knowledge that you'll be able to stand out from the crowd and address them in a personalized way. In B2B, sector of activity, geographical location, number of employees and development challenges are all aspects you can use as criteria.
🛠️ The tool: the datadrive lead solution enables you to identify the different visitor profiles on your site (intentional visitors, newcomers, occasional visitors, loyal customers, abandoners) in order to define and segment your marketing personas.
#3 Contact your prospects at the right time
The chances of converting a prospect into a qualified lead, particularly in B2B, are much higher if you get in touch with them quickly, as soon as you obtain their contact details (via an information request form, for example).
So you need to be reactive, because late calls or cold emails are less likely to lead to a sales opportunity. And for good reason: the longer you wait, the more time the prospect has to change their mind, or even forget about you!
This is where a marketing automation tool or CRM comes in handy, as it allows you to set up alerts.
🛠️ The tool: monday.com CRM offers an intuitive pipeline view so you can easily track the progress of your prospects. You can also set up personalized notifications to make sure you don't miss any lead qualification and sales opportunities.
#4 Analyze the customer journey
Analyzing a prospect's or customer's behavior during the different phases they go through (reflection, research, product discovery, then purchase) helps you understand their habits and personality, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of your sales path.
To know when and on which channel to address them, study the customer journey and its mapping. In this way, you'll :
- know the different points of contact (physical store, e-commerce site, forum, etc.) ;
- propose the right content (informative, promotional, expert);
- send it at the right moment (customer awareness, offer evaluation or decision-making).
For example, if you often find that a customer is blocked during the search phase for information on your product, develop more informative content to help your target understand your differentiating advantages in the marketplace.
🛠️ The tool: Salesforce Marketing Cloud is one of the market's benchmarks, with its ability to create intelligent customer journeys and personalized experiences across all channels. Combined with the CRM module, it's a complete tool to support you throughout the sales funnel, right up to lead retention.
#5 Opt for multi-channel digital communication
Thanks to customer knowledge and behavioral targeting, you can now define the right digital communication strategy.
However, today's marketing experts all agree that email campaigns are no longer enough. You need to adopt a multi-channel strategy, deploying your content via :
- other channels:
- websites ;
- blogs ;
- social networks ;
- mobile applications, etc,
- and other techniques:
- advertising ;
- natural search engine optimization ;
- paid search, etc.
In this way, you're helping to nurture your target audience by reaching them through multiple points of contact.
#6 Propose relevant, high value-added content
The golden rule of lead nurturing is to offer your contacts relevant content (content marketing). Your underlying challenge is to demonstrate your legitimacy in the sector, your experience, your expertise.
This content can take various forms:
- newsletters or loyalty e-mails ;
- white papers (ebooks): thematic dossiers for download from your website;
- case studies: by talking about a concrete problem, you identify readers who are asking the same questions;
- success stories: testimonials from satisfied customers;
- webinars: videos or webconferences with educational value, focusing on a specific area of expertise.
🛠️ The tool: in this area, Plezi marketing automation software lets you leverage your content to develop your business. For example, you can offer your target audience a blog article or white paper in PDF format, depending on their success.
A word from the Expert
Let's listen to data and customers to build the most appropriate nurturing path!
Today, most marketing automation tools include AI modules to personalize the discussion channel or the frequency of sending, but nothing beats proactive action by a prospect.
The solution: allow them to interact in each email/SMS or content received, so that they can indicate whether their situation has changed. The aim is to collect weak signals and then re-prioritize the treatment of this lead.
#7 Use Sales Intelligence
Sales intelligence is a technology for integrating, analyzing and presenting information to guide your sales force.
For example, predictive lead scoring is based on the use of an algorithm to predict which contacts in your database are likely to qualify, by compiling information gathered from forms, social networks, demographics and various publications.
🛠️ The tool: one example is Predict by Sparklane, which automatically determines the profile of your ideal customer based on your sales history, searches a database of several million companies for similar profiles and ranks them in order of relevance.
#8 Maintain contact, after asking permission!
At the origin of inbound marketing, Seth Godin, former head of direct marketing at Yahoo, spoke of permission marketing.
Now you have no choice: it's imperative to obtain your prospects' permission to communicate with them, in compliance with the European RGPD regulation. Only maintain contact with those who have given you their consent.
This is the whole principle of lead qualification: discard those who are uninteresting for your business, to focus your efforts on those with potential.
🛠️ The tool : Webmecanik is a French RGPD compliant solution for generating qualified leads, thanks to behavioral targeting, and setting up automated, conditional marketing campaigns thanks to the definition of scenarios, based on lead scoring.
Examples of lead nurturing campaigns
Example of BtoB lead nurturing
You're an accountancy consultant and you've got a new subscriber thanks to the distribution of a white paper on the latest reforms affecting your profession?
In a welcome email, briefly introduce them to who you are and ask for their job title and preferences for future newsletters, so as not to disengage them too quickly. You'll then begin to qualify this lead by sending him relevant content.
You can also suggest that they attend a webinar you're organizing, showcasing your expertise and legitimacy, so that the prospect continues to mature their thinking around your service.
💡 Tip: using the drip marketing technique, send them a sneak preview of the event, then a reminder a little later, and why not a replay if they weren't able to attend.
Example of BtoC lead nurturing
A visitor has requested a quote on your site for an ecological veranda, leaving his contact details, but has not made a purchase since.
Start by scheduling a follow-up to ask him if he encountered any problems in processing his request, and if he has any comments on your offer. This will make them feel valued.
Some time later, send them an article from your blog on how to save on heating costs by harnessing solar energy. The content, both informative and expert, will make subtle references to the added value of your product.
You can also send this article to the segment of your database concerned by environmental issues or who have recently purchased a property.
What about marketing automation and marketing automation software?
As already mentioned, lead nurturing and marketing automation are closely linked, as they enable you to optimize the management of prospects throughout their buying journey.
Indeed, while lead nurturing involves maintaining an ongoing relationship with prospects, the process becomes difficult to manage manually when the volume of contacts is high.
This is why the use of marketing automation software is rapidly becoming essential. These tools enable you to automate a number of the key tasks mentioned above:
- sending personalized emails
- contact segmentation ;
- lead scoring;
- multi-channel campaign management.
Thanks to these features, you can create sophisticated automation scenarios and adapt content according to prospect behavior. What's more, these tools encourage alignment between marketing and sales teams, as information is shared in real time.
What does lead nurturing have in common?
Lead nurturing has become central to both BtoC and BtoB marketing. By tailoring your communication initiatives and coordinating your sales and marketing teams around an optimal acquisition funnel, you can mobilize all your resources to support your prospects towards successful conversion.
As you can see, implementing an inbound marketing strategy is essential to improving your conversion rate and building lasting customer relationships.
In this article, you'll find some key ideas to help you - and your prospects 🌿!
Article translated from French