If you’ve spent time learning about B2B lead generation and how it can help your company, you’ve probably heard of lead nurturing. Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with prospects at each stage of the sales funnel and at each stage of the purchasing journey. Nurturing entails listening to prospects’ needs and concerns and consistently following up with them to stay top of mind.
Even if you understand the concept of lead nurturing, that doesn’t mean you’ve mastered it. While it may appear simple, nurturing a B2B lead necessitates a well-planned process as well as patience and persistence. It may take some time to perfect your strategy, but it will be well worth the effort. Because if you nurture leads properly, you will close more deals.
Here are some pointers on How to properly nurture a B2B lead to close more deals and grow your business and best practices to follow while nurturing b2b leads
What is Lead Nurturing?
You gather information from prospective customers, present them with your service or product, and close the sale. Sounds simple, but in practice, it is rarely so. Simply because a lead pauses, considers, inquires, and then probes again. As a result, they are unlikely to be persuaded by a single conversation or email. What you can do is get your prospect excited about your product. Lead nurturing is the process of informing potential customers, answering their questions, challenging them, offering solutions, and guiding them through the sales process.
Lead generation VS Lead nurturing
Lead generation and lead nurturing are two concepts that have the same goal: to generate new customers. However, there is a distinct difference. In lead generation, you cast your net as wide as possible to contact new prospects. Only then can the nurturing begin: feeding your customers, taking their hands in yours, and guiding them through the sales process.
Send Emails with Data Enrichment
Customers are surveyed in data enrichment emails and asked to provide more information about themselves. Like a “hey, we want to stop sending you irrelevant messages, can you give me some information? These emails help you keep your contact records up to date while also providing you with additional information about the people on your list. However, they also benefit the contacts.
With this information, you can send messaging and content that is relevant to where they are in the buying process, making your emails more useful.
Segment your contacts
You can increase your open rates by about 15% by segmenting your contacts because you’re focusing on people based on their behaviour, what they’ve expressed interest in, and so on. We’ve all received ambitious emails, and we all know they end up in the trash.
Effectively segmenting your contact lists allows you to send content that your contacts want to read. The risk of not segmenting your list or sending too many blasts to the same list is that you will exhaust your leads.
Sending repetitive, overly promotional, or unhelpful emails is a surefire way to increase your unsubscribe rate.
Refine Your Lead Nurturing Approach With Scoring
Users’ actions when providing you with contact information are rated using a lead scoring methodology.
Because not all contacts are created equal, choose which ones should be given a higher point value.
The score value indicates where you should focus your B2B lead nurturing efforts.
Regularly Audit Your List
A staggering 74 percent of companies don’t even understand the specific qualification of their leads, aside from processes (visitor, lead, MQL, SQL, or unqualified).
Audit and update the status of the leads you currently have using your MQL and SQL definitions, as well as any analytics and buyer personas.
While this shouldn’t be done too frequently, knowing that your contact database is free of bad leads and incorrect data is beneficial to the entire team.
Nurture Leads Consistently
Companies that actively nurture leads generate 50% more sales and spend a third less on lead acquisition than companies that don’t.
Your team can move more opportunities and MQLs down the funnel faster by adapting ongoing lead nurturing strategies for various segments, such as placing them in nurture tracks based on behaviour or interest
Increase the number of lead-capturing opportunities
Consider other ways to collect potential lead information besides landing pages and highly valuable content assets. Networking events are an excellent source of leads.
Experiment with different tactics, such as running Facebook contests or using Twitter cards, in addition to email and gated content.
Returning to your buyer personas and assessing where your leads congregate can help you determine where to run paid social lead capturing campaigns.
Send Genuine, Quick Follow-Ups
Follow up with a lead whenever they provide their contact information, whether it’s for a free trial or a content offer. Email is preferred. Do it quickly as well.
The messages should be straightforward, and any logical next steps associated with their action should be clearly stated. When a lead takes a step that necessitates a call from sales, the call must be made within five minutes or less. When leads are contacted within a few minutes of conversion, they are 21 times more likely to become qualified.
Make Use of Customized Content and Messaging
Don’t stick to the basics. Make sure the email you send to a lead is personalised. In emails, for example, use personalization tokens to call out specifics about the recipient, such as their name, industry, or company.
Nobody wants to be treated like a number in your system. This is a very simple way to make a lead feel as if you are familiar with them. Read How to get more leads on social media? 10 effective Strategies.
Please Don’t Gate Everything
Try not to gate everything when looking for new ways to capture leads. You may get fewer leads if you choose to gate highly valuable content, such as a detailed annual report. Those leads, on the other hand, maybe more ready to buy, a better fit, or at a later stage in the buyer’s journey.
Using semi-gated content, which allows the lead to preview the content before purchasing, is an excellent way to increase lead generation.
Conclusion
Creating new leads is an important part of any B2B marketing strategy, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Stop thinking that “more is better.”
It’s far more efficient to use personalised data and technology to nurture higher-quality leads and, eventually, convert them into paying customers.
