The 1,2,3 of lead nurturing that will treble your new biz generation

Posted on: September 11, 2020

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Category: B2B sales

The 1,2,3 of lead nurturing that will treble your new biz generation

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Leads were not made to swill around in your sales funnel – they were made to be nurtured.

And then converted into a new business opportunity.

So, let’s get nurturing.

To make things easy for you we have outlined three steps to maximise your tactics and treble your sales opportunities. 

  • For those very short on time, we’ll start with bullet-pointed nuggets on the three steps, immediately below.
  • And for those with the luxury of three minutes to spare, you can find the buckles and braces for each a little further below.

Lead nurturing in a nutshell


Step 1: Create strategic, multi-channel content

  • Create innovative, intriguing and entertaining content. Or, at a minimum, create content that directly addresses each stage of your (carefully researched) customer journey.
  • Make sure you are reaching your audience on their terms. Meet them where they are — rather than where’s best for you – by not just relying on email but going multi-channel prospecting.
  • This helps you to boost your touchpoints. Increase your interactions and engagement with prospects through a mix of content types and channels.

Step 2: Show them you care

  • Make sure you maintain contact with your prospects regularly to keep them engaged and ensure your brand remains front of mind.
  • Use personalisation to tailor the content you provide to match each prospect’s interests. 

Step 3: Set yourself up for success

  • Align your sales and marketing teams to gain from shared insight and seamless tactics.
  • As part of this implement a lead scoring strategy to prioritise your nurturing activities, seamlessly handle handovers and optimise sales conversions. 

Three steps to lead nurturing success – in just three minutes

While some forms of prospecting are more effective than others in producing sales-ready leads, it is usually the case that around 90% of your inbound leads will need further qualification and nurturing before they are ready for the sales team.

And there are just three nurturing steps to new biz heaven.

Step 1: Create strategic, multi-channel content

Cookie cutters certainly do not take the biscuit when it comes to content for lead nurturing. 

You need to develop content strategically that addresses each of your buyer personas and further addresses these across a range of possible interests.

The starting point here is to make sure you have mapped the interests, needs and goals of each buyer persona to a buying journey. 

Thinking about where they may be online or offline will help you create content that meets their preferences. A marketing automation platform makes segmenting your prospects simpler and targeting your personas easier than it has ever been before.

Effective multi-channel lead nurturing will use email marketing, social media, paid retargeting, organic search optimisation, dynamic website content and direct sales outreach. Which is to say it will require both marketing automation and sales and marketing alignment.

And we’ll return to this in Step 3.

Step 2: Show them you care

No two buying journeys are alike. But research consistently shows that most buying journeys take a minimum of ten marketing touches from awareness to conversions.

Making sure you are there with content that answers the right questions, at the right time and in the right place, is essential for lead nurturing. You want these touches to nudge a prospect toward touchdown rather than see them get knocked out of touch. 

Part of this links back to basic, business good practice. The virtues of immediate follow-ups to enquiries from prospects are generally paid more lip service than they are put into service.

This is where automation once again can really help as you scale your prospecting. For example, personalising emails according to the content viewed ensures you stay relevant. Your emails could relate to:

  • Actions such as downloads of gated content
  • Clicks on links contained in other emails
  • Visiting certain pages on your website
  • Analytics showing high levels of engagement

But, once again, automation works best when it is combined with alignment. A timely follow-up mail or a phone call – from a human – that follows on from previously identified website conversion points will radically increase your chances of converting a lead into a viable sales opportunity.

Pinpoint what matters and then make sure your teams are ready to jump on these touchpoints as soon as they are tripped.

Step 3: Set yourself up for success

Lead scoring and alignment between sales and marketing are the third step. And these – as we have already seen – help to gel and optimise the previous two steps.

Lead scoring ranks and prioritises leads according to how qualified they are as a sales opportunity. In most marketing automation platforms, a value is assigned to how a prospect interacts with your website, social media channels or other platforms where you are recording responses and interest. 

The end result of lead scoring is that a lead is passed to the sales team for a direct follow-up. And this is why alignment between the sales and marketing teams is essential. Both teams must be actively involved in identifying exactly when prospects are sales ready.

There you have it: three steps to trebling your new biz opportunities.

Delivered in 2:53 minutes.

Enjoy your 7-second bonus break!

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