What is lead nurturing and what is its place in marketing?
Lead nurturing is the process of building a bond with people or entities that have expressed interest in your company’s offer in some way. The main goal of lead nurturing is usually to guide a person from the moment they become a lead to finalizing a purchase. However, that’s not all – nurturing activities can also include maintaining good contact with the customer (including after purchases).
Nurturing therefore intertwines with other marketing techniques, such as e-mail marketing (since sending e-mails is still one of the most effective methods of direct contact with a potential customer). In these messages, you can inform leads about special offers, share specialist knowledge – in short: show potential customers that your company is trustworthy and the products you offer are of high quality.
Regular contact with subscribers is also a way to be present in their minds for a longer time – so that when they make a purchasing decision, they have the name of your company or your product in their head.
What are the benefits of lead nurturing?
Nurturing leads is a technique that, when done properly, ends in a sale, and therefore in acquiring a customer. The second significant advantage of nurturing is that it provides a lot of important information about the sales process in your company. Based on the conclusions they draw from it, companies can significantly improve the path prepared for customers, and thus improve sales results in the future.
Stages of lead nurturing
To be effective, lead nurturing must be implemented at every stage of the customer journey. We will now discuss each stage in turn, with a suggestion for how to apply nurturing at each stage.
Lead acquisition
If a person who visits your store’s website, social media profile or simply clicks on an advert placed on the internet leaves their contact details, it certainly means that they are interested in your offer to some extent. You can start the nurturing process at this point – for example, by sending new subscribers a message thanking them for taking action. It is good if this message is as personalised as possible and refers to the specific call to action that the lead responded to.
Lead segmentation
One of the most important steps in lead nurturing is segmenting leads based on their potential. This is especially important if you are acquiring leads through free samples or downloadable materials. You need to be aware that many users will leave their email just to receive the free benefit you offer as part of your lead magnet and do not plan to make a purchase from your company. Your job is to separate promising leads (warm and hot) from cold ones.
Lead nurturing, or establishing and deepening relationships with leads
The next step on the path to acquiring a customer is to initiate contact and try to establish and then deepen a relationship. The way you approach this is not written in stone. The idea is to address leads with a specific message or encourage them to take action. At this stage, you can offer a discount on their next purchase (if the discount was not a lead magnet in the lead acquisition step) or ask them to complete a survey. Finally, if you know the lead’s preferences, you can suggest a specific product. And if you don’t know the potential customer’s preferences, ask about them.
Deepening relationships with leads is a process that cannot be summed up in a single email. Think of it as a multi-stage journey that can last for months rather than a sprint whose results you will see in a few moments. Remember, it’s not about pressuring them to sell as quickly as possible! The intention of this stage is to actually create a bond between your brand and your future customers.
The incentive to buy can come right away or a little later – for example, in the second or third message. In this respect, a lot depends on what you are selling. Generally, you can start selling products of little value sooner, while expensive subscriptions for access to specialist software are products that require building a deeper bond with future customers, and often an individual approach and direct contact (at least by phone).
Converting a lead into a customer
When do you know that the person you are communicating with is ready to move on to the purchasing stage? When they respond willingly to the call to action, when they contact your company about a purchase, or when they start the purchasing process (for example, directly on the store’s website). This is your chance to show the full potential of your company. Be a companion to the customer at every stage of the purchasing process, respond quickly to emerging doubts and react to reported problems.
Lead nurturing campaign – how to plan it?
Like any marketing activity planned with the long-term in mind, lead nurturing should also have a strategy developed before you start implementing it. Especially if you want to leave as little to chance as possible and instead build a strong relationship with your customers. To achieve this goal, you need to know the answers to three questions.
- Who is your company’s ideal customer?
- What is your brand voice?
- What customer problems do your products or services solve?
In search of the perfect client
We have already written about creating a customer persona, for example in the article about Facebook Ads. However, the idea of building an image of the perfect user of your products must be based on data. A persona cannot be a collection of guesses, but the result of conclusions drawn on the basis of specific information.
Analyze your customers. Not only their behavior during and after the purchase is important, but also the products they buy. Don’t forget about demographic factors – check their age, where they live, in what industry they work. Find out what their needs are and how your products meet them. Each such piece of information is an important element of building many strategies – not only nurturing ones.
With data on your customers in hand, you can create a persona, or the image of the ideal customer. However, if you run a broad business and your target group is diverse, you may need to create more than one persona. The goal is to create a model that will be used at the stage of assessment, segmentation and lead acquisition.
Personas can be useful to your company not only in the context of typical sales, but also for recruitment processes or planning special offers and accompanying events.
Get to know your brand’s voice and let it resonate
If your company has a specific set of values and a style that it usually uses, you are already one step ahead. People who are interested in your products or services need to hear a consistent message from you. As part of your nurturing strategy, you will have many opportunities to send messages to leads – make sure that they fulfill their purpose, i.e. motivate them to buy, but also build the authenticity of your brand.
Again, it is worth referring here to the concept of the customer journey and its individual stages. So start by introducing your company or offer and in a non-intrusive way suggest that they learn more. In the next stages, show the benefits that buying the product brings and talk about the problems it solves. You will know what to refer to if you took the time to gather the right information at the stage of preparing the ideal customer profile.
If after this set of messages some leads still haven’t decided to finalize the purchase, it’s time for a specific incentive – it can be a discount, a discount code or offering a set of products at a lower price than if they were purchased individually. Of course, you can also introduce all of these incentives at earlier stages.
Focus on (future) customers
When creating a nurturing strategy, it is worth getting to know the acronym CRM – Customer Relationship Management. Customer relationship management is a key point of nurturing. Once a bond has been built, it cannot be left to itself, just as a customer profile cannot remain the only point of reference.
At the end of the brand’s communication chain, there is always a customer – a person who needs to buy a product or service for a specific reason. In the initial stages of communication, it is worth using a marketing persona. As the relationship with the potential customer progresses, however, the pattern should be discarded and the focus should be on a specific person. Consequently, greater personalization of messages will be needed. You can do this by first segmenting leads into smaller groups. Over time, however, the system should be replaced with a direct response to the recipient.
Don’t stop at selling
Sellers sometimes mistakenly think of finalizing a transaction as the last stage. Nothing could be further from the truth! The post-purchase stage is an extremely important element of nurturing. A stage that affects your future cooperation. After a successful sale, you can ask the customer for their opinion, contact them to get their comments and suggestions, and encourage them to make another purchase.
Remember, however, not to wait too long to contact them again when it comes to opinions. Often, opinions are asked almost at the same time as the purchase, but there is no simple rule explaining when the best moment is. Many products and services require time to be able to say anything sensible about them. So don’t expect the customer to share their opinion about a complicated product right away.
Just like when building relationships with people in private life, you also need to be tactful and gentle towards the customer. If someone has just spent a few hundred or a few thousand zlotys in your store, don’t immediately bombard them with offers to buy more expensive products. Lack of sensitivity in this matter can result in the breakup of the relationship. Well-planned after-sales activities are an opportunity to gain a loyal, returning customer.
Lead Nurturing Examples – Emails
It’s time for some specific examples of situations where nurturing is worth using. Remember, however, that every moment is a good time to build a relationship with a client.
Registration
The moment a person registers – for example, in an online store – is the perfect time to start a relationship well. A welcome email doesn’t have to be just an empty phrase saying “we’re glad you’re with us”. You can include some practical advice here, links to the most popular product categories, leave contact information or inform about the possibility of using a live chat with customer service. Let the new person know that they are really welcome here and that your company will do everything to make their experience on the website more pleasant.
Recruitment process
Recruitment itself is a process that requires a human, tactful approach. Nurturing in this case is all the easier because candidates themselves share a lot of information about themselves by sending CVs or cover letters. Building relationships with candidates makes perfect sense – even those who will have to be rejected now may turn out to be exactly the people your company needs in the future.
Occasional email
This is a great opportunity to show the human side of your business. A birthday, the anniversary of an employee joining the team, or perhaps a big anniversary of your company? Each of these occasions (and many others) can be a good introduction to nurturing. A simple thank you, a birthday coupon or a special competition to celebrate the 10th anniversary of your company – these are all activities that show that you care about building relationships with your customers.
Contact with an inactive customer
We often encounter situations where someone registers for a store and that’s the end of their activity. It also happens that after making a single purchase, the customer loses interest in the store’s offer. They still have an account there, but they simply don’t use it. Letting things run their course is tantamount to agreeing to lose the customer. A message to an inactive customer can not only remind them that your company exists, but also encourage them to come back.
Remember, however, that this message should not be a hastily cobbled together text about a great offer, but a well-thought-out message addressed exactly to the person it concerns. Use available data for this purpose – including purchase history.
Abandoned shopping cart
Every abandoned cart can be the result of inattention or distraction, but also a signal that the customer has found a better offer. What can you do? React as soon as possible – in this case, marketing automation activities can be helpful – and show the (would-be) customer that you have a specific offer for them. Sometimes a simple reminder about the products in the cart is enough, but if that’s not enough, you can remind them about the possibility of financing purchases in installments or deferred payment – if you have implemented such solutions in your store.
Lead Nurturing – Summary
These are not all the possible moments in which it is worth using nurturing. The truth is that leads – and then customers – should be taken care of at every step of the relationship with them. This is another in a series of continuous, long-term marketing processes that need to be constantly improved.
Similar to content optimization or customer service, lead nurturing is also a process that cannot be “completed” or reached at a point where you can stop trying. It is worth trying to attract customers as long as there is competition. Even a monopolist should not let down their guard – the market does not tolerate a vacuum, and sooner or later someone who will take advantage of the opportunity presented to them will notice dissatisfied customers.
