How to Nurture a Lead

​Lead nurturing is the process of enhancing your chances of converting a lead into a sale by paying special attention to a buyer at each stage of their journey. This is an active process, and it can be highly effective at increasing the profitability of your business. This is a skill that’s especially important as a freelancer or a small business as if you carefully nurture leads you can reduce your marketing costs by increasing the number of clients you obtain from your marketing efforts. Consider that 90% of inbound leads will not be ready to immediately purchase your product or service – this overwhelmingly high percentage of your potential clientele need a little help to see how great your service is! According to Forrester Research, marketers see 20% more sales from nurtured leads. Here are some of the best ways to start nurturing. 

​Target your Content in every way you can

You want to strategically change the buying experience for every user if possible. This is pretty difficult to actually achieve, but you can split your users into buyer personas and tailor the buying process to each one. This is also one of the hardest lead nurturing techniques. Forrester Research found that 33% of B2B marketers find that the hardest challenge in lead nurturing is the targeted delivery of content. This is also quite expensive, as you need to be able to generate a lot of content, but you can take small steps to make each stage as personal as possible. 

Keep a detailed record of all your communications with a lead, so you can show them how well you tailor your service to them. You can achieve this impression simply by mentioning their requests to prove you’ve been listening. You can also get creative with this type of targeting and let them know how important you view them to be with every document you send them (i.e. make sure their name is on it somewhere – stating it’s ‘prepared for _____’ is a great way of doing this subtly). The estimate is a great opportunity to do this, in the notes section of your estimate template you should put their specific requests, as it reassures them that they’re in good hands. If your estimate template doesn’t have a notes section you can get free online estimate templates easily.

Present your content in every way you ca

​Gone are the days of nurturing leads by sending a series of emails to a list of prospects regularly. Only 20% of these emails will ever be opened according to Oracle. If you combine this with the fact that 79% of all marketing leads never convert into sales, you can imagine that the percentage of potential clients that will A) be interested in your offering and B) be interested enough to make a sale. You need to use multi-channel lead nurturing, which means combining email marketing with social media, paid retargeting, dynamic website content and direct outreach like calling to make sure your lead knows exactly what you can offer them and that they do not forget about you. 

Interact as much as possible

So you have a lead – brilliant, but if they are an average lead, you will need to interact with them 9 more times before you win them as a customer. Almost half of all marketers include fewer than 5 interactions (according to the Lead Nurturing Benchmark Study) when they try to nurture leads – make sure you don’t follow in their footsteps and try to interact with them at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Give them a personal FAQ at each stage and let them know that if they have any questions they should not hesitate to contact you. You should also follow up on any communications in a timely manner, as this is one of the best ways to start a conversation with a lead. Once you relate to a lead on such a human level your opportunity to convert them into a customer is much higher.
 
You should also try to evoke the social norm of reciprocity, one of the marketer’s key tools. Reciprocity is the technique of giving a lead something valuable (this can even be your time, but a physical item such as a detailed and personalized brochure that has taken time to compile would be beneficial too). They will naturally feel like they have to return the favor and give you something in return. In the worst-case scenario, they will only give you their time, but in the best-case scenario, they will give you the opportunity to sell to them. Try to evoke this norm as often as feels comfortable and natural – even if your company isn’t right for them then they will leave with positive feelings which can add significant value to your brand.