Lead generation is essential for many businesses to attract new potential buyers and grow the customer base. But, generating leads isn’t enough itself to drive sales, and the stats prove it. As Gleanster Research findings show, 50% of leads you generate are not ready to buy yet. Moreover, according to MarketingSherpa, 79% of leads never convert to sales!
So, your job shouldn’t stop at lead generation. After a visitor converts into a lead, you need to nurture them on their way toward a buying decision. By doing so, you are moving prospects from the top to the bottom of your marketing funnel.
Read this article to discover the working lead nurturing strategies to follow in 2022.
What is lead nurturing?
First, let’s define what exactly lead nurturing is.
Lead nurturing assumes building meaningful relationships with inbound leads throughout their customer journey. To nurture their leads, businesses are engaging them with the right content at the right time.
Related: A Crash Course on Lead Nurturing… And Why it Matters
Why go for lead nurturing?
Now, let’s identify the key benefits of lead nurturing.
More sales-ready leads
According to Marketo, businesses implementing lead nurturing strategies generate 50% more sales-ready leads. Why is that? Relevant information about the products or services helps convert prospects into higher-quality leads.
Higher average order value
With lead nurturing strategies in action, businesses can leverage cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Informing customers about other products and services contributes to increasing average order value. As The Annuitas Group reports, nurtured leads make 47% bigger purchases compared to non-nurtured leads.
Lower acquisition costs
Lead nurturing strategies often involve cost-effective methods of attracting potential customers. Spending less on customer acquisition contributes to getting higher ROI. According to Forrester, lead nurturing can help businesses cut acquisition costs by 33%.
Building reputation
Finally, lead nurturing helps businesses build a reputation of a thought industry leader. As companies distribute thoughtful educational content, they earn credibility with the audience.
5 proven lead nurturing strategies to follow
Now, let’s get into our selection of successful lead nurturing strategies to watch out for in 2022.
#1 Consider your buyer personas to create targeted content
To make an impact on your audience, ensure that your message resonates with their interests and needs at the moment. Understanding your unique buyer personas can help with relevant content creation. To craft targeted content, consider your persona’s interests, pain points, and marketing triggers.
#2 Align your content with your leads’ customer journey stages
As mentioned above, lead nurturing aims at serving your audience with the right content at the right time. The goals of potential customers differ throughout the stages of their customer journey. So, be sure to match your content with your audience’s needs at each stage.
Let’s see what kind of content you can use to nurture your leads throughout their journey.
Awareness
At the awareness stage, people recognize an issue they have and are looking for solutions. Industry reports, white papers, and e-books can help your prospects better navigate their needs or problems.
Consideration
During the consideration stage, the prospects are conducting their pre-purchase research. They are already aware of the available alternatives, and they need to make the right choice. To drive your leads toward choosing your product, nurture them with webinars with one of these platforms, explainer videos, case studies, and FAQs.
Purchase
As leads reach the purchase stage, they already know the options and are ready to order. At this stage, client reviews, case studies, and success stories can have a great impact on a purchasing decision.
#3 Personalize your outreach
According to Epsilon, 80% of customers prefer buying from companies offering personalized experience.
Today, personalization opportunities have gone way beyond putting a prospect’s name into an email body. To deliver personalized content, you can apply user behavior data. Collect this data by tracking such events as a guide downloaded or a shopping cart abandoned. Based on this data, you can set up behavior-triggered emails with either more valuable content or a call to move to the next step.
#4 Follow multi-channel approach
Gone are the days when lead nurturing assumed email marketing only. Today, savvy marketers are following a multi-channel approach to nurturing leads. Let’s figure out the best channels for lead nurturing.
Email marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective channels. To engage your audience and drive them to the next stages of their customer journey, it is worth sending them various types of emails:
- Onboarding emails;
- In-depth educational content;
- Blog articles;
- Follow-ups;
- Regular newsletters.
Don’t forget to segment your mailing list based on certain criteria – interests, industry, or age. This way, you can provide relevant content to each group and thus get the most out of your lead nurturing activities.
What’s great about email campaigns is automation opportunities. Now, you can set up email sequences in a matter of clicks.
Related: What goes into creating a successful Email Marketing Campaign
Social media
Another effective channel to reach your leads with nurturing communication is social media. You can distribute your educational content on Facebook and LinkedIn. Or, you can harness the power of TikTok influencer marketing.
When choosing the right social media platform, take into account your audience demographics. If you are targeting the 46-55 age group, LinkedIn might be a good fit for you. If you are targeting younger users, consider TikTok opportunities to distribute your content.
Retargeting
Next, you can retarget those who’ve been to your website with paid advertising. Providing them extra info or giving a discount coupon can encourage them forward to make an order.
#5 Apply lead scoring
To make the lead nurturing process more effective, consider using lead scoring systems. These systems assume ranking your prospects based on their potential value for your business. As a result, each lead gets a numerical score. The higher the score, the more likely a lead will buy from you.
When scoring your leads, consider the following factors:
- User behavior (the number of visits and their duration);
- Demographics (age, occupation, or income);
- Readiness to covert.
Once prospects reach a score of a sales qualified lead, it’s time to send them to your sales team.
Wrapping up
As you can see, active lead generation is not enough to ensure the desired sales volume. You need to nurture your leads by providing them with content relevant to their needs at each stage of their customer journey.
Want a larger percentage of your website visitors to convert into buyers? Start implementing the lead nurturing strategies we have covered in this article today!
