Lead nurturing is the set of techniques and practices aimed at building a relationship with contacts who may be interested in a product, with the goal of turning them into customers.
What is lead nurturing?
According to marketing expert Andrea Bottoni, the exact definition of lead nurturing is
“Supporting the growth of, and building relationships with, the people who get in touch with us” [Andrea Bottoni, instructor at Marketers]
It means building a direct relationship with a lead, that is, a user who may be interested in the product or service you offer. This makes them more likely to become a paying customer, and ideally a repeat one.
The goals of lead nurturing
The strategies you apply will help you reach specific goals. Starting from lead generation and working toward the ultimate aim of winning new customers, they are:
- Awareness. A deep understanding of your brand, the core values it stands on and the problems it can solve for your customer.
- Consideration. This is the stage where the interested user starts thinking about buying your products or services. At this point, analyzing engagement data is essential: it gives you a clear picture of what works and what does not.
- Conversion. Once prospects know and like the brand, the purpose of lead nurturing is to get them to take the next step: buying. This happens through conversion, meaning a positive response to your call to action.
- Post-purchase. This is a crucial stage of lead nurturing. Once you have won a customer, they should never feel abandoned or forgotten.
Strategies to apply
The word nurturing itself evokes the idea of feeding and, by extension, of care and attention. Once customers have been reached through a marketing strategy built on newsletters, social channels or other touchpoints, they become part of the brand’s community.
How do you make them feel consistently looked after by your company? Lead scoring is one of the most important tools for making lead nurturing relevant. It is a score that marketing automation platforms assign to each user based on demographic, personal and interest data.
With all the data on a prospective customer, a company can offer targeted, valuable content that helps build a relationship of trust.
Sending personalized newsletters that address consumers by their first name, creating social media marketing strategies targeted by region or age group, and sharing relevant content based on the consumer’s interests and needs are all winning lead nurturing ideas.
Analyzing the results
Once your lead nurturing strategy is part of your day-to-day relationship with customers, you need to analyze the results to make sure your efforts are paying off.
The most common method in marketing is the A/B test. By creating two different versions of a piece of content and comparing their performance in terms of lead nurturing and conversions, you can find out what works best in your copy, design and so on.