Why lead nurturing?
According to a research done by Gleanster, nearly 50% of leads have a potential to be converted requiring around 10 insight driven touch points, on different marketing platforms. To initiate and built a lucrative relationship with potential customers, even when they are not ready to buy, is the art of lead nurturing. It mixes solid old school persistence, with latest in digital marketing innovation and out of the box strategy.
As a result, insight leads to increased conversions, user-base, revenue and visibility. Done smartly, lead nurturing takes you where you wish to be, by letting you target and nurture potential customers at different times in their purchase journey.
How to do lead nurturing?
Imagine your sales funnel to be a unique user journey. For different customer set, the journey differs slightly, but its essence remains the same, carry prospects to sale. The challenge is to not clutter the funnel with unnecessary information. The art is to project timely, relevant and useful information (in that order) to the prospects in tandem to where they are in the sales funnel.
Here in lies the genius of content marketing, to deliver what information at what time down the lead funnel. Where to target what consumer group and what to say to them.
Unless paid close attention to, prospects who receive random information, seize to show motivation and inclination towards what you have to sell.
So your journey of planning and executing a sale’s funnel starts with understanding the buying cycle and content mapping. And to keep the funnel coated with motivation for the prospects to take the next steps toward a sale.
What content mapping?
Content mapping helps you to create relevant information and deliver it to the correct set of prospects.
Though there are more segregations you might want to add to it (depending upon your business), here is the broad segregation template.
How to do content mapping?
Ask yourself these questions before content mapping:
1. What logical flow of information will lead prospects from awareness to purchase?
2. What content can help take leads to the next stage of the buying cycle?
3. What content assets are you missing?
4. What will be the messaging in those content areas that aligns with the audience you’re speaking to?
5. What platforms your prospects are on, and there taste and preferences.
Once you know what content you have and when you could provide it to your prospects, it is time to look into how and on what platforms you can provide the said info on.
E-mail marketing
Mail is still a reliable platforms to get in touch with genuine prospects. It lets you deliver a good amount of information and can be automated according to where the prospect is in the sales funnel.
Here is what to consider when doing it:
1. No Blanket emails– Refine your audience segment as best as you can. Targeting them with only relevant emails that actually benefits them. Doing so builds trust on your brand.
2. Initiate dialogue – It is easy to just drown them with information, but difficult to initiate a conversation. The communication has to be two-way.
3. CTA – Your call to action in e-mails should always be targeted to take the prospect on to a more enlightening information, or take them to the next stage of their purchase journey.
Website
Your website, is your home ground advantage, use it smartly. It is a digital real-estate accessible to all your prospects. It is the best face of your brand, and the best place for the information you want to provide. Once they are on the website, at worst they will either disengage, at best they will convert. The website’s job is to give them enough reasons to move up the funnel. Relevant information should always dominate the home-screen. The UX design should be logical as to predict what a prospect might seek and take them there hassle free.
Key elements:
• Strategic landing pages
• Blog
• Resource Centre
Social media
Social media platforms bring to you the awesome power of amplification and targeted marketing. With the good amount of population now having personas that can be tracked, segregated, analysed and interpreted easily and through automation, retargeting and delivering communication is a much more effective task. But the most important thing to remember is, use it wisely, not widely.
To conclude, you essentially have to master who to target and how? Ask why this consumer set needs this information and will it drive them further down the funnel.
It’s a lot of work and expertise, it’s probably a smart thing to call in the experts. So get in touch with us!
