If you want to get more leads and convert them quickly, focusing on lead nurturing would be the right thing to do. A longer but more sustainable route to lead conversion; lead nurturing can be a very fulfilling technique to build long term relationships with your customers and can even be used in retargeting.
MQL or Marketing Qualified Leads are an important part of every b2b organization. These leads show an inclination or intent towards making a buying decision. They are the warm leads that can be converted with a proper lead nurturing strategy. Getting these prospects to know you better so that they decide to buy from you is at the core of any lead nurturing process. Unlike SQLs, MQLs are not ready to buy from you yet but they can become SQLs soon enough if you nurture them properly. SQLs or Sales Qualified Leads are those leads that are ready to buy from you and are about to get converted.
So how do you optimize nurturing for your most potential lead generation components including MQLs and SQLs? Here are some ways that can accelerate your lead generation process with appropriate lead nurturing:
Be a problem-solver:
The prospects that are looking for solutions urgently can get quickly converted, but if not captured and nurtured they will be the first ones to go to your competitors. So nurturing them and being a problem-solver for their challenges should become your top most priority. You can start with offering them with content assets or offers that can make them stay and get converted:
- Offer free product demos or free trials if you offer product based solutions
- Offer content assets that showcase your problem solving abilities
- Use focused email marketing to offer them what they are looking for
- Give discounts, coupons or gift vouchers if that is a part of your marketing mix
- Include client testimonials that speak about your expertise and how it helped them
Targeting with emails:
Email marketing can be one of the most personalized approaches when it comes to contacting or keeping in touch with your prospects. It is a tool that can enhance your chances of converting those leads that are at any stage of your sales funnel.
Email Marketing can help you to narrow down your focus to those leads that need to be contacted and nurtured on a more regular basis.
You can nurture leads with email marketing in the following ways:
- Personalize the messaging and offers for effective response
- List out those leads that are looking out for insights and information
- Email valuable content assets to make your outreach more successful
- Be consistent and be unique
Webinars:
Those leads who register for webinars are definitely more interested in your services. Registering for your webinar is a sign that the lead maybe inclined toward buying from you. A webinar is an important nurturing tool that presents an opportunity to marketers to get to know the prospect even better and can directly contact them for further engagement.
Webinars need to have following elements to make it a successful nurturing technique:
- Choose a relevant topic to make the webinar interesting and information based for your prospect
- Webinar is about having one-on-one communication with your prospect so make the most out of it by making it very interactive
- Ask questions to get to know your prospect more
- Gather enough data to be able to keep them in the nurturing loop even after the webinar
Conclusion:
Lead nurturing can make lead generation more interesting and less challenging. There are many ways in which a lead can be nurtured and it all depends on several factors such company goals, prospect’s business goals, type of organization, products, services, target audience etc. However, most importantly if lead nurturing activities are aligned with business goals it can most likely bring positive results.