Today’s Consumer and Lead Nurturing

It’s 2018 and a lot of things have changed and evolved. Flip phones are few and far between, AOL Instant Messenger has turned into Slack messages, and dial-up internet is no more - thank goodness. It should be no surprise then, that the way your business nurtures leads needs to evolve as well. Sixty-five percent of businesses say generating traffic and leads is their biggest marketing challenge. If your business is in that 65 percent, read on.

What Is Lead Nurturing?

Lead nurturing is a bit like courting a new love interest. Now that you’ve got their attention focused on you (your business), you are going to want to continue to keep them intrigued by tending to their wants and needs throughout the whole courtship (buyer’s journey). The reason this is important is that nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. You need to be focusing on the needs of your prospects and providing them with the information and answers they want.

Lead Nurturing Best Practices

Every single time you interact with a prospect throughout the buyer’s journey, you should be creating an experience that is tailored to them. Consumers are 4 times more likely to respond to an offer if it’s personalized vs. generic. To many, when we say the word personalized, including the prospect's first name in the subject line is about as personal as it gets. Look into different ways to get on a personal level with these people - try utilizing demographic, engagement, CRM, and user behavior events.

Since you are working with individuals who probably like different things, remember to experiment with the types of content you are pushing out. Present your data with eBooks and videos one week, and then switch it up with some blog posts, podcasts, webinars, or infographics. There are a lot of ways to stay creative and present data in a way that users from any background can appreciate, enjoy, and digest.

Maybe one of the most important things to remember is to listen to your contacts. Only continue lead nurturing if the prospect hasn’t explicitly asked you to stop. You can’t force someone to open your email, but you can try different tactics to persuade the lead into opening it. Continue to send quality, personalized content to your prospects, and don’t get frustrated by slow results. It is likely you won’t see a lot of traction at first, but the more you work at sending quality content you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.

What Should Your Business Start Implementing?

As the buyer’s journey becomes more complex, the way your business generates and nurtures leads will also change. Take content marketing, for example, which has gone from an industry buzzword to a staple in most brands' marketing strategies. Ninety-three percent of B2B companies say content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing strategies. Content marketing usually can be found in three places: your landing pages, your blog, and your social media efforts. Make sure in all three of these places you focus on the quality of the content, not so much the quantity.

Paid advertising can play a big role in distributing your quality content. Google Adwords continues to favor its ads versus organic listings. It allows you to focus on the people who are already searching for what your company has to offer and if you set up your campaigns correctly, you will begin to see highly targeted leads coming right to your website. In the B2B sector, advertisers saw average year-over-year growth in Q4 in ad spend (twenty-one percent), clicks (four percent), and CPC (sixteen percent).

Nowadays, there is a strong focus on the quality of leads among many B2B marketers. One way to bring in those leads is to focus on brand awareness initiatives and be intentional about it. Ask your current customers for feedback, and take the time to understand how your business is solving problems for your customers. This will, in turn, help you market your business to new prospects, communicate to them how you stand out from the competition, and answer the important question, “Why should they work with you?” Be clear when you explain your brand to the public, create a mission statement and objective, and broadcast it to your followers. And last, but not least, use simple terms that will help people relate to and understand your company.

After reading through this blog, I hope you have come to the conclusion that lead nurturing in 2018 is changing - and your brand should too. If you want to check out how video can also help increase lead conversion, click here.