Since the invention of moveꦉable type, sellers ♔have bombarded buyers with ads—and as the volume of ads increases, so does our ability to avoid them. 

Spam blockers reject about every day, we can fast-forward through commercials, and over 240 million people are listed on the ever-growing . On top of this, any c✱ustomer you acquire likely needs to see your ad an average of . 

How are businesses supposed to reach their ideal customers and motivate them to buy in the digital age?

Conventional lead generation methods no longer work; buyers do not want to be bothered or sold to—they want to be helped. There are 𝔉better ways your business 𝔍can generate quality leads and effectively guide them toward making a purchase. 

👩‍🎓 Related IMPACT+ Course:

And this is where lead 𓆉nurturing comes into play.𝔉 

The definition of lead nurturing

At its most basic level, lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with your customers and ushering them through 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:the buyer’s journey toward making a purchase.  

Think of your lead nurturing campaigns as a guide dropping educational breadcrumbs so prospects can follow along. A🌸s they pick up each crumb, the pros🥃pects learn more about how you solve their problems on the way toward an eventual purchase that helps them accomplish their goals. 

You want to use a lead nurturing strategy to reach out to your leads and answer their questions at precisely the right time (as author and inbound marketing advocate Marcus Sheridan reveals in his book, 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:They Ask, You Answer). This ensures the information you share with them i꧋s actually helpful and what they need at that point in the buying process in order to move on to the next stage.

Benefits of lead nurturing

Before you go down the rabbit hole looking for advice that has you trying on different lead nurturing campaigns for size, it’s helpful to know why your business should be utilizin💃g lead nurturing iꦰn the first place. 

Lead nurturing can seem complex, as it can span several channels that all need to sync up and work together, such as perfectly timed calls-to-𒅌action, pop-up forms, and emails. Businesses that succeed cite lead 🀅nurturing as one of the most effective pieces of the inbound marketing puzzle and have seen: 

• 50% more sales-ready leads. []
• 4–10 times the email response rate. []
• 45% greater ROI. []
• 47% larger purchases from nurtured leads. []

Without nurturing, will never convert to sales. So, you can see that taking the time to nurture your leads can drive incredible re💮sults. 

Your prospects may find you because of all your awesome content marketing an🍃d search optimization work, then convert — but never actually buy from you. When leads don’t know where, how, or what to do next, chances are they’ll walk away.  This is why nurturing leads pays off.

Here, we’🅰ll take you through wha🧔t to keep in mind as you plan a lead-nurturing strategy of your own to make sure they don’t. 

In order to be successful at lead nurtu𒉰ring, you need to first ensure all the in a way that helps your customer see how you’ll solve their problems and understand which steps to take next. 🅠;

Lead nurturing channels 

Many who know about lead nurturing tend tꦕo think it only applies to email campaigns, but you can help your prospects along the buyer’s journey with any combination of avenues.💛 

Effective lead nurturing channels might include:

• Social media: Engage your prospects on social media with surveys, and entertaining and educational content that can be helpful for reaching prospects who aren’t aware of your products and services or don’t respond well to email.
• Retargeting: This is when someone comes to your site and leaves, but is subsequently shown your advertisement on another site, such as Facebook or other sites.
• Website content: This can be blog articles, landing pages, calls-to-action (CTAs), and personalization. 
• Email marketing: Emails should be automated and can include follow-ups, news, blog articles, or informational content that is more in-depth.
• Events and webinars: These are for more serious prospects looking to really dive in.

As you consider which channels work the best for your own prospective 𒐪customers (where are you most likely to reach them?), use that knowledge to flesh out your overall lead nurturing strategy. Again, the most important thing is that you’re reaching out to them where they are and when they need you. 

👩‍🎓 Related IMPACT+ Course:

6 tips for your lead nurturing strategy  

Now that you know the benefits of lead nurturℱing and channels you can use, here are six things to note when forming your strategy: 

1. Utilize the buyer’s journey

One of the most is that it meets your pro🐟spects where they are in the buyer’s journey:

• Awareness (top of the sales funnel): This is where the buyer becomes aware they have a problem. Here, focus on driving better organic traffic results with informational content that diagnoses their problems, such as blog articles and social media posts.
• Consideration (middle of the sales funnel): Here, prospects have identified their problem and are looking for ways to solve it. Helpful content in this phase includes comparison blog articles, ebooks, white papers, and webinars. 
• Decision (bottom of the sales funnel): If your prospects arrive here, they’re ready to purchase (or not). Content aimed at buyers in this phase should help them make that decision. Think customer testimonials, product reviews, and even free trials; whatever your ideal buyers need in order to take the plunge or, at the very least, give your company a try. 

By creating content to align with these phases, you’re once again meeting the buyer where they currenꦰtly are mentally. You’re aligning with their needs and questions to help🌞 them move forward to the next stage naturally and comfortably.  

Here’s an example of a perfectly timed lead nurturing campaign along 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:the buyer's journey: 

Say you sell handmade, high-end gardeni💮ng tools, and there’s a novice gardener searching online for the quickest, easiest way to prepare a new garden bed. 

The gardener finds your blog article, “Best ways to prepare a new garden bed,” where they learn that extra-sharp tools make the clearing process faster and easier. Now they’re aware they 🦄hav🔯e a problem; they don’t own any sharp tools that will do the job!

A related link on the page leads them further along to read an article examining what those tools might be, including yours. They know what their options are, and now in the consideration phase, they’re reading on to learn even more about these tools, comparing options, figuring out which is best 🌺for the job. 

They’re aware they have a problem, know you solve their problem🅺 with your products, and are intrigued but not ready to buy—just yet. Your website was so helpful, however, they sign up for your newsletter via a popup form, then exit your sitওe. 

After a few days, you send them an email with even more information abou൲t gardening tools to keep them engaged with your content and remind them about your offerings, when they come back to learn other tricks of tꦯhe trade. 

In the meantime, they’ve searched for other solutions, and entered the decision-making phase. They have a few solutions they are considering, but none of your competitors have provided all this helpful information, so th🌱ey read your business’ reviews and decide to purchase your tools.

This is how—if your content is properly aligned with the buyer’s journey phases—you can make it easier for your prospects to buy.ꦫ Each outreach should serve as a gentle reminder that you and your p💖roducts and services can help. 

You will likely have several avenues pointing toward different products on your site, depending on your buyers’ needs 💯and what they’re looking for. The trick is knowing who needs what and when. And while this makes lead nurturing a bit complex, this is also why it can be so effective.

🔍 Related: 5 Key Elements of a Winninꦐg Inbound ܫMarketing Strategy 

2. Personalize your outreach

About reveal they’re more likely to shop w꧋ith businesses thatꦫ provide offers and products personalized to their own preferences and needs. 

This doesn’t mean adding their name to your email (although it can help) but making content custom-tailored to their interests and needs at that time. It ma🀅kes your prospects feel seen and understood.  

Personalization can also make your content feel less generic. You want your leads to see that email and think, “That is exactly what I needed right now. It feels like it was written for me.” This could be a pricing list for someone in the decision phas🅺e of purchasing a car, or a buyer’s checklist for someone looking to purchase a home.

The key to personalizi𝄹ng your lead nurturing outreach effectively is knowing what you can about your customers' needs and segmenting them accordingly (which is where buyer personas come in handy).  

3. Know your buyer personas  

澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your buyers—their dem𝄹ographics, challenges, communication preferences, lifestyle habits, and more. Knowing these ideal buyer characterizations helps you segment the people coming to your site and understand what content they’ll want to see at each stage of the funnel. 

Ideally, your buyer personas should be based on your real customers. Sen🍸d customers an email asking them to take a brief questionnaire. Explain that you’re trying to make their experience better; most people are happy to help. Also, ask a few questions when people visit your website and fill out a form on a popup or landin🍌g page. 

Try noꦓt to bombard themꦑ with questions just for the sake of lead scoring, however. You can ask a few here and there, but be sure to make it worth their while by offering them something in return, like entering them in a giveaway or offering a discount. 

Here is a helpful article that goes over everything you need to know about 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:building buyer personas, including how to reach out to your customers and prospects, and what questions to ask them.&nbs🌳p;

4. Engage prospects immediately

It’s important to fol🙈low up with your prospects as soonꦰ as possible. Wait too long and people will forget about you or will have moved on to purchasing elsewhere. 

The best time to reach out is when they are in the middle of their search. Th🃏ere is a fine line here, howeveღr, as you don’t want to be bothersome. 

Send an email or make a phone call the moment a lead fills out a form. Don’t just call to push them into buying, but call to offer more information and to help them in their sea🐷rch. Ask🐻 a few questions about how you can help.

Include follow-up content that is educational and answers all of the most commonly asked questions beforehand, so when your sales team reaches out, they already have answers to some of their questions. This method, called “澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:assignment selling,” can help your sales team land more sales and ev🃏en shorten the cycle by zeroing in be🌸tter on good-fit leads. 

Be sure to also send them to the most helpful landing pages for their needs, whichꦆ might coincidentally be the one converting most leads to customers.&nbs🌜p;

👩‍🎓 Related IMPACT+ Course:

5. Lean on automation

The perfect way to reach out to a prospect in a timely way is to set up an automated lead nurturing sequence or workflow. 

These are triggered interacti𒅌ons (often emails) that initiate once a buyer takes action, such as when they download an ebook or sign up for a subscription to your blog.

The moment they fill out their information, th🌸is triggers a response to thank them and offer them more information or𒆙 helpful tips. 

For example, if someone hands over their email address in exchange for a downloadable checklist on your website, you can set up a way for an email to hit their inbox right away, thanking th♐em for being interested in your offer🌱 and sharing ways they can learn more with links to other blog articles, courses, webinars, or free offers. 

You can set t🐻hese workflows up to wait a few days after the initial email and send another offer. Workflows are awesome ways to keep your prosp⛄ects engaged while sending them content based on their interests. 

Another example is the “choose your own adventure” approach to lead nurturing. 

This example is 𓆉from one of our clients, . In one of their lead nurturing emails, they ask simp♏ly: What is your biggest challenge, and what do you want to learn about?

Leads can then choose which issue d🥂escribes their pa💜in points best. 

By asking prospects what they’re looking for, Sheffield🐻 Metals directs them along a better, more s﷽pecific path. Based on their answers, they can send them content more aligned with their needs.

6. Apply lead scoring

澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:Lead scoring is also a great way to automate your lead nurturing strategy. This method segments your prospects based on their engagement, location, or company size, helping sales prior🉐itize who they should follow up with first. 

For example, say your ideal customer is a U.S.-based🧸 engineer who works for a large company in 𝕴the power industry. 

If a prospect signs up for your blog with an email address from a Fortune 500 construction company with over 100 employees, you can🌄 set up your lead scoring system to assign the prospect a large number of points. 

If they are in a different industry altogether and located in Italy, however, you might🍸 take away more points than they’re given to ensure you know the person isn’t a right fit. This negative lead scoring quickly se𝐆parates the wheat from the chaff.

[Source: ]

Then, when you want to reach out to ideal customers, you can focus on the ones with a large number of points—who you know are the best fit. You just need to make sure you understand how the lead scoring system can help select your ideal buyer, as you’re the one setting the rul♕es. 

It also can also help segment your customers more efficiently—again, so you know who your strongest prospects are. Each point awarded or taken 𝕴away with lead scoring helps narrow the scope of your target.   

Implementing an optimized lead nurturing campaign 

It’s clear that, in the digital age, as your leads turn away from an onslaught of ads, they’re more responsive to businesses that help them find what the🌜y want and need, then move toward a purchase. 

These lead nurturing tips are some of the mosওt effective ways to get them engaging with your content and buying from you down the line. Meet your audience where they are in their journey. Break through all that generic marketing jargon and provide your ideal buyers with information about the products and services they need—when they need them. 

For more information about how to better engage your leads and boost sales, ch𓆏e❀ck out some of our sales courses and articles on IMPACT+:

• Virtual selling: 6 esseꦬntial video sales call tool💝s and tech you need
• How to use LinkedIn to close more deals in 2021  

And be sure to 澳洲幸运5开奖官网在线查询开奖结果:contact us if you have questions. We’re always adding classes and information about how yܫou can imp𝔍rove your digital sales and marketing strategies.