It is said that on average 80% of leads (hand raisers) are never fully followed-up with. To prevent this from happening, it is important to develop an effective lead nurturing strategy. The idea behind lead nurturing is that reviewing a lead’s interactions with your company allows you to target them with more engaging content on the same subject and guide them towards conversion to sale. With a carefully planned strategy, lead nurturing plays a critical role in positioning your firm as a thought leader and building your brand.
Whether it is through verbal or written communication, your lead nurturing efforts need to not lose their human touch. Be personable, friendly, and relate with prospects. Your prospects will be more receptive of what you’re saying if they feel like they’re having a conversation with a real person instead of having endless pitches thrown at them. This can be accomplished through a messaging matrix. Over the past 20 years Frantz Group has developed messaging matrixes for our clients that are used in lead generation. The matrix is our caller’s prospecting pain-track logic and language map. It provides the caller with everything from voice mail messages and email content to the best means of entering into dialog with a prospect regarding their business pains.
Marketing automation is also a key component of an effective lead nurturing program. Marketing automation software will not only capture data when a prospect completes a form on a landing page or website but it will also automatically send out emails that are relevant to each prospect based on a pre-determined nurture track. A well designed scoring system can also be employed within the system to measure demographics (title/industry), BANT criteria, and Interactions a visitor has had with your emails, website, and downloads. The higher the score the warmer the lead.
Use a combination of marketing automation and human touch. Is your business only using one method to nurture leads? If so, Stop. With the marketing tools available today, you should be taking advantage of all the varied channels available to you.