When a user lands on your website and hands over personal information, it means they are interested in your company. The steps you take next will determine if that person slips away or becomes a loyal customer.
Lead nurturing is the process of building a relationship with your prospects to help increase their awareness of your company and help to move them along the customer journey. It is rarely a sales process, but rather a pre-qualifying process to determine which prospects are ready for your pitch.
There are many ways to carry out lead nurturing, but the most common is through an email journey. You might offer a free download in exchange for contact details and permission to send the prospect emails. You can then begin an email journey that will help to educate the prospect but also tell you important information about what they are looking for.
In this guide, we’ll look at the process of lead nurturing and why you should introduce it in your business.
What is lead nurturing?
Not every prospect in your CRM is ready to convert. This is the first thing that you need to establish to be able to appreciate the importance of lead nurturing.
Some of them may need more information to make a decision.
Some of them may need to seek approval from others before they can move forward.
Some will just need a little more time to mull things over before they make a choice.
And some were never going to make a purchase anyway, but they are interested in keeping in touch with your company.
Assuming that every person who gets in touch with your company is ready to convert is a surefire way to lose customers. If your first email is a sales pitch, you can expect it to be relegated to the murky depths of their Promotions folder.
In many ways, lead nurturing is all about gaining the customer’s trust and earning the right to land in their primary inbox.
How does lead nurturing work?
The most common type of lead nurturing is through email marketing. An onboarding email journey will help to dissect your customer’s pain points and position your company as the only possible solution to their problem. And if you cannot solve their problems (and that’s okay too) it will save you from wasting manpower on trying to sell your services to them.
An email journey might break down your services and explain how you can help. It might highlight your testimonials and case studies, to help the customer see how your services could be applied to their own situation. Or it might offer a taster of your services in the form of free content that will help them to understand the value of your offering.
Why do you need lead nurturing?
Proper lead nurturing can refine your sales process and allow you to pay attention to the prospects that are most likely to convert. It can also help to improve the health of your email mailing list by allowing you to segment users by intent.
Imagine you run a construction company specialising in home extensions. The first email you send offers your prospects a choice. They can choose between a pricing calculator, a guide to loft conversions, a guide to basement conversions and a guide to extensions. If a prospect opens and clicks on one of these links, you can update their profile and adjust their journey. This creates a personalised experience that is more likely to keep these prospects warm.
It also helps you to understand where they are in the customer journey. Are they looking for quotes, or are they just looking for a ballpark figure? Lead nurturing can help you to approach them at the right stage with the perfect message.
If you’re new to lead nurturing and want support fitting this into your sales process, get in touch with Auburn today. We can help you to define your customer journey and create a lead nurturing process that converts.