Your leads are in your database for a reason – they trust you. They view you as a credible resource for helping them solve a specific problem they have.
Congratulations! You nailed your lead generation strategy if you’re filling your CRM with awesome people who might buy from you.
This is a great opportunity for you to continually educate and delight them, which is where lead nurturing comes in.
This is where you start building the relationship after the initial connection. Most leads are not typically ready to buy right from the start, but they could be your perfect customer.
via GIPHYThe only way to know that is through deepening your connection with them, which you can accomplish through lead nurturing campaigns.
These campaigns consist of the following elements.
These are content offers that speak to your audience’s pain points and entice them to visit your site and convert into a lead by providing their contact information. When you get their email, they receive a link to download your magnet.
You host lead magnets/content offers on landing pages. You want to include content that highlights the benefits of the offer to make it irresistible for them to download it, which they do through a form.
Thanks to marketing software, you can deliver personalized content. This touch of personalization is engaging, making your visitors feel seen and understood.
Your marketing software provides features to help you break your recipients up into segments, which you can build based on data like demographic information or certain behaviors.
Throughout your campaign, leverage premium content to move leads through each stage of the buyer’s journey. For example, whitepapers can further establish your credibility, and case studies can prove your expertise in helping customers who your leads can relate to.
You continually engage and educate your leads through email content. These are delivered through workflows, which you build using your marketing software.
A lead nurturing workflow is your process of delivering automated touches to build your relationship with your contacts. They’re characterized as being hyper-personalized, based on your segmentation strategy.
For example, you can enroll highly rated leads who took a specific action on your website, like visited your pricing page, in a workflow. Your content can be geared toward educating them about topics related to your services, moving them from the awareness stage to decision.
via GIPHY
Your marketing automation software is a major component of building your workflows. There are so many different platforms you can use, the most notable ones being:
No matter what software you use, you can create an effective lead nurturing workflow in a few simple steps.
In five easy steps, you can create a kickass campaign that moves interested leads to consideration and eventually the decision stage.
This is essential for any marketing initiative. You need a smart goal that aligns with your business’s big-picture objectives.
For example, you might want to encourage leads to download an offer that is in the middle or bottom of the funnel, like a whitepaper or comparison sheet. Other goals can center on getting demo requests, driving traffic to a specific webpage, or getting contracts signed.
Once you have your goal in mind, you can look at your contact database and determine who to focus on. You can use your buyer personas and your ideal customer profiles to inform this step.
Dive deeper into contact data in your CRM to determine if and how you want to segment and personalize this campaign. For example, you can segment high quality MQLs by the last offer they downloaded and tailor the content you send to be relevant to the topic of that offer they previously downloaded.
Relevance is a top priority for the content you create for lead nurturing, which is why you need to know exactly where your target audience is in the scope of the buyer’s journey.
Source: HubSpot
During the awareness stage, your leads are at least experiencing symptoms of a problem or are first becoming aware of their challenge. Leads in this stage only show you a little information about them. You have a basic understanding of what they interact with on your site.
The consideration stage takes place when your leads start actively searching for solutions. You’ve likely gained a bit more information on leads in this stage, which can help inform how you tailor content to them.
Finally, the decision stage is when leads are ready to buy. Your content in this stage is often positioning your company as the go-to resource for solutions.
Here are some content ideas you can create for each stage during this lead nurturing campaign.
Depending on your marketing software platform, you can build a workflow in a variety of ways. Some examples include the following:
Welcome new newsletter subscribers by delivering more value through a series of emails with CTAs that point them to relevant additional offers they would gain value from.
Determine what topics your leads are interested in. You can target based on journey stage, send related content, and measure responses to see what content they engage with the most.
When you know what content recipients are interested in, you can use these workflows to send additional content offers that align with all three stages of the buyer’s journey.
These are meant for decision stage leads specifically, so you want to deliver content that positions your brand as the best solution and keep yourself top of mind.
To reignite cold leads, you can use these workflows, where you send content to get back on their radar.
You can develop these to delight customers, gain their perspective on their experience, and even cross-sell and upsell.
At this stage, you created your email content based on audience research and set up your automation in your marketing platform. Once the campaign is launched, start monitoring results.
Your key performance indicators (KPIs) should be based around your smart goals, which you already established before launching the campaign. For example, if your goal is to get SQLs to close, you would be measuring metrics like time-to-customer conversion.
As you measure and review your analytics, make notes on what lessons you’ve learned. This data helps you optimize your efforts over time and informs your next lead nurturing campaigns.
Get started building your lead nurturing workflows right now. This five step guide includes an in-depth worksheet that walks you through each stage of your lead nurturing campaign.
Start sparking engagement with your leads today by launching a targeted workflow.