B2B commercial prospecting: to find customers effectively Article summary What is commercial prospecting? (sales, prospects, etc.) Commercial prospecting is a
What is lead nurturing
in marketing strategy?
If you own a website or any web platform, you are certainly no stranger to the different concepts of web marketing strategy, especially if you do dropshipping.
And this, mainly in order to promote your online business to your visitors. Lead nurturing is a concept that is particularly relevant in your quest for potential prospects. It's a whole conversion system that establishes stable trust and certain loyalty between you and the Internet user.
Find out in detail what it is in concrete terms, why and how to set it up to get the maximum number of qualified leads.
Article Summary
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Lead nurturing: an inbound marketing method
Since the advent of web marketing, several tactics have been tested by companies in order to establish reliable contact with Internet users. Staying in the classic way of things, the main idea would be to reach out to potential customers yourself through the traditional distribution channels (television, radio, press, etc.). Unfortunately, the message very quickly becomes impertinent towards the audience.
This is how inbound marketing comes into play, a method that implements a completely different principle: bringing the customer to you. This will involve providing visitors with messages containing the information necessary to gradually become qualified leads. By opting in particular for the distribution of relevant and quality content. And this through new communication and analysis tools such as social networks, email newsletters, webinars, SEO technologies… It is in this whole mashup of inbound strategy that lead nurturing comes into play.
When does lead nurturing come into play?
Without a doubt, lead nurturing takes an important position within your inbound marketing training. After attracting the Internet user to your platform, they very quickly become a regular visitor thanks to the originality of your content. Conquered, certainly finding a solution to a need, subscribes and is converted into a lead. This is when the lead nurturing machine takes off. The lead finds himself at the limit of the purchasing decision. For well-calibrated lead nurturing, it will be necessary to initiate the nurturing process using marketing automation: sending the right messages at the right time. You will thus have removed purchasing barriers without any intrusive maneuver. This is through the few advantages that inbound marketing brings.
What advantages does inbound marketing offer you?
As previously stated, inbound marketing allows you as a company a wide range of maneuvers when it comes to converting prospects and retaining your customers. Notably
- Being able to exchange messages in real time with the lead or customer in order to better understand their needs and interests. You will then be able to analyze at any time during a discussion, the impact of your actions and the relevance of your broadcast content;
- Obtain better visibility on the web: putting original content online allows you a greater presence on the web. The different natural referencing optimization techniques also allow you better placement within search engines;
- Gain many more contacts: this marketing action favors supporting the lead in the various phases of the purchasing journey. You thus obtain their interest and access to their contact details (with their consent) as soon as they come to you and go through the contact forms, calls-to-actions, etc.;
- Build customer loyalty as best as possible: after their conversion, inbound marketing naturally encourages you to take charge of loyalty tools such as social networks. All they need to do is subscribe to your accounts to directly receive your content in their news feed. More convenient and without forced intrusion into the customer's privacy.
- Save marketing costs: the resources required to set up inbound marketing training are much less than usual. Although they might require some background and technical skills, most marketing tools are simply free.
By opting for inbound marketing, you benefit from a complete nurturing strategy, support for each lead to become a qualified lead.
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Lead nurturing as marketing automation
Lead nurturing is therefore the process which makes it possible to establish a stable company-customer relationship throughout the purchasing phase. It is training that addresses the problem according to which most prospects (50% on average) have not yet decided to go through the purchasing phase. When we go higher in the conversion funnel, we realize after analysis that almost 98% of the leads recorded do not begin the sales cycle. Therefore, the nurturing solution would be to encourage these potential customers to make a purchase.
Imagine sophisticated marketing that automates communication with the lead in order to guarantee you a relationship of constant engagement: this is marketing automation. This type of marketing is a technology that makes lead nurturing modern, customizable and above all adaptive. So beyond simple automatic communication, modern lead nurturing allows you to be more attentive and respond intelligently to leads based on their behavior and in real time across multiple media, not just email.
Why do you need lead nurturing?
As you will certainly have noticed, companies are now subject to a profoundly digitalized world. The market is becoming more and more connected, the very existence of online commerce such as dropshipping is proof of this. Potential customers then expect an extremely personalized and scalable marketing solution. They want to have the attention of companies, not the other way around. And companies do everything they can to create real relationships with prospects, to be able to establish trust and loyalty. How to achieve this effectively?
Lead nurturing allows the prospect to become familiar with the company. Through this action, you benefit from the time and resources necessary to establish a relationship of trust with the lead. Therefore, instead of being intrusive, your communication would be welcomed.
Chatting with your clients or potential clients could seem awkward, or even full of doubt and hesitation. Lead nurturing with marketing automation then helps you effectively manage your leads and, above all, ideally shorten the sales cycle.
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How to implement your lead nurturing strategy?
To better support your prospects as they mature, your lead nurturing training must be duly implemented. Since your inbound marketing strategy takes into account the entire conversion funnel, your lead nurturing in addition to marketing automation must be effective. It will essentially be necessary to take into account the customer's purchasing process as well as the prospect's needs to ultimately become a qualified lead. To do this, take the time to define your objectives, choose the lead nurturing technology that suits you and implement your nurturing strategy to the rest of your marketing.
Define your goals
Certainly your objective as a company would be, for example, to make as many sales as possible and to have a sure hand on the market, far from your competitors. This is especially why you develop a whole commercial mechanism, where lead nurturing takes place. However, it is up to you to dismantle this main objective, to formulate clear and precise objectives so that they can be achieved very quickly. Especially since nurturing thanks to marketing automation allows you to measure your results at each stage.
It is necessary that your lead nurturing campaign includes qualitative objectives in order to concretely appreciate your marketing methods. Ask yourself what results you hope to obtain from your inbound marketing strategy. For examples:
- Encourage the lead to gradually become a qualified lead
- Generously push the lead to make the purchasing decision as quickly as possible
- Engage in conversations with prospects
- Learn more about the needs of new leads
- Refine and build trust with existing customers…
The idea is to define quality objectives with the aim of being able to establish a decision guideline. Your marketing teams and essentially your nurturing trainer, must be able to be on your calendar at a stable and regular rate.
In addition to defining qualitative objectives with your trainer and others, you will need to link them to quantitative objectives, those capable of being measured. Even if you don't yet have a clear vision of what your statistics should be, making estimates will be more than enough for the start of a marketing campaign. Thanks to quantitative and business metrics, you will be able to see the results of your lead nurturing training. Without this, your nurturing marketing could suffer relatively and it will be difficult for you to monitor progress towards achieving your goals even with the help of a trainer. You may want to consider:
- Improve the conversion rate of potential customers into qualified leads;
- Optimize the conversion rate of raw leads into customers;
- Increase the monthly number of leads ready for purchase;
- Minimize the number of prospects lost during the sales cycle;
- Obtain better success rates…
When setting your goals for nurturing, it is imperative that you take it step by step. A progressive commitment will allow you to launch your lead nurturing training in a much more systematic way, to reduce as much as possible the risks linked to your actions and thus see in real time what is working or not.
Select the marketing automation solution that's right for you
In addition to the advantage of saving time and efficiency when implementing marketing automation, this also allows you to develop essential business processes. Whether in terms of lead nurturing, lead scoring, sales cycle management or even the analysis and personalization of your nurturing marketing strategy. It's up to you to choose the best solution for your business. There are several, including Hubspot to meet all your needs, essentially your business goals. Here is an example of a process to help you select the right marketing automation solution for your business:
- Step 1 – Set a Timeline: Are you changing tools or just starting to think about it? Is it related to the launch of a product? Or in relation to a completely different factor?
- Step 2 – Illustrate your requirements: how many leads do you plan to generate? Will you need to contact third-party suppliers or strong nurturing capacity? What are your concrete objectives?
- Step 3 – Define your users, your team and why not a trainer: are you mobilizing a competent team for all the work? Will other agencies need access to your system? What rights will each type of user have?
- Step 4 – Consistently adjust your suppliers according to your criteria: which product does one have to the detriment of the others? What is the price in relation to the quality of the product sold? And so on…
- Step 5 – Inspect references and do a few other checks: If possible, contact other local companies. Reorganize your team regarding all this and from then on, make your choice.
However, make sure once again that this marketing automation technology you choose responds well to your lead nurturing campaign. Especially since this is the key. If we take the example of Hubspot nurturing software, you will notice, among other things, these few important points:
- Hubspot allows activation based on lead or customer behavior, communication triggers;
- Hubspot offers you a dynamic experience, based on the preferences of each of your leads or customers;
- Hubspot also gives you the possibility to continue your nurturing campaign on most channels, both online and offline;
- Limiting interactions with the customer according to certain criteria or before too many contacts are made;
- Quite advanced marketing automation technology such as hubspot to control communication around interactions, criteria, timing, etc.
- Being able to initiate communication at the right time, that is to say at the perfect stage of the sales cycle;
- Quite easy to use as with hubspot;
- Ideally, simpler management of the content to be distributed…
Now that you have decided on your marketing automation solution, you will need to think about how to implement it in your entire web marketing strategy.
Integrate your solution globally into your prospect nurturing strategy
When developing your lead nurturing, you should definitely avoid thinking about lead nurturing training in isolation from the rest of your strategy. You need to consider your entire chronological list of marketing processes. There must be real harmony between your nurturing campaign and the other types of communications (email newsletters, product updates, etc.) that the prospect intercepts.
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Who should you direct your lead nurturing towards?
To build real nurturing training, you will have to start with the basics. We've been talking about it ever since, but it's time to really ask the question. You set up an entire lead nurturing system, but where should you direct it? Potential customers you might say. However, any Internet user could be considered as such. However, there is still a problem, how do you know if it meets your qualified lead profile? The ideal would be to first think about it with your marketers.
Establish your lead profile (Personae)
A bit like the notion of “personae”, each company certainly has its own definition of a qualified lead. In the context of nurturing, we call this a prospect who begins to behave like a customer, that is to say, ready to purchase. To define the perfect lead for your commercial activity, you absolutely must take into account the opinion of your company's sales (sales) and marketing teams. Here is an example for you of the steps to follow:
- Take the trouble to invite your sales and marketing team in order to determine the target, know how to design your database, recognize existing leads likely to make a purchase and the characteristics of those to come;
- Decide how to assess the value of each of your leads, whether one or the other represents a weak source or, on the contrary, a strong attribute;
- Develop agreements that revolve around the transfer of leads between sales and marketing departments;
- Make a regular reminder of the two services in order to exchange information and based on this, review or refine the previous points.
Establish lead scoring
Lead scoring is literally defined as “lead scoring”. It’s a fairly general sales and marketing method for classifying prospects. You will obviously need to rate potential customers based on their interest in your business, their current place in the sales cycle and their suitability. You will come to mature them better.
Noting a lead's interest in you amounts to what in nurturing marketing is called implicit rating. If you are wondering how, it is carried out taking into account the lead's behavior towards your company. You will then be able to know whether or not your business seems attractive to this or that prospect.
When it comes to lead suitability, this is based on information relating to demographics, firmography and BANT (meaning budget, authority, need and time). You most often obtain this information via online forms. If your prospect presents himself as a natural person, you will only be able to have demographic parameters such as his title, his vocation or his location. In the case of a legal entity (company), you will be entitled to a whole lot of information regarding its constitution: the name of the company, its size, its location, its turnover, etc.
With all this information to note and classify, you will be able to set up a nurturing campaign worthy of each type of lead to help your salespeople.
Create mailing lists
To succeed in your prospect nurturing campaign, you will need to increase your list of subscribers and thus collect even more information for your information bank. According to a study by Moon Marketing, companies lose nearly 25% of their subscribers and in other cases, leads that have never gone through the purchasing process. To avoid this, you need to feed the top of your funnel through the email list building method. How to proceed ?
If you have good marketers on your team, they will probably think about creating mailing lists on the following channels for example:
- Website (registration page, white paper, etc.)
- Social networks
- Webinar
- Blog
- Events
Organize your database
Having a healthy and well-maintained information bank is also essential to the success of your inbound marketing strategy. Several marketing automation experts attest to this, including Robert Pease, the CMO at Heinz Marketing.
The following measures are all the more recommended if you obviously want to benefit from a well-conditioned database:
- Frequently inspect each lead in its entirety
- Identify and eliminate duplicates as they arise
- Continually check the uniformity of your information bank
- Consider eradicating your unwanted contacts database
But be careful, it is possible that competitors will subscribe and integrate your information bank in order to learn about your prospect nurturing training. Discuss this with your marketing team.
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Another component of lead nurturing: content
As you will certainly have understood, your content strategy is also a variable that should not be neglected. When planned well, it propels the effectiveness of your lead nurturing by providing incentive content to everyone at the right time. SEO technologies like SEO help you especially with regard to the optimization of your content to be distributed. Thanks to the automation solution integrated into your marketing action, you will need to be able to determine for each lead, the type of content that they find relevant according to their needs.
Create targeted content for each phase of the sales cycle
As for nurturing each lead, it's worth thinking about a specific content format for each stage of the sales cycle. You will then be able to easily establish a certain confidence in the prospect towards your company. From then on, encouraging them to make the purchasing decision should no longer be a problem.
Identify the types of nurturing content
You should know that the content most likely to help you develop each lead should be a mix between what they want to do and what you want them to do. A reason to learn more about the different types of content you can post.
- Original content: this is content that you create yourself, either by in-house editors or by successful freelancers who excel in marketing professions. For example a white paper, a blog article…
- Curative content: content that you did not necessarily write yourself. Above all, these are highly relevant content adapted to the theme of your business goal. They are preferred for emails and social networks. Especially since the goal is to stay in contact with the lead, as long as you offer them interesting content, they will stick to it.
Define a basic structure for email
Email is one of the essential elements for nurturing your leads, you will use it very often. It must therefore contain the right elements. Apart from the fact that they send the prospect information at the right time, this information must fit with the type of email you want to send at the moment. You must therefore set up a default structure to immediately convey the message to the recipient. For example, a promotional email is supposed to encourage commercial action while an alert email is most often informative, triggered by a particular event.
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