A lot of B2B marketers and sales representatives bang their heads against a wall but are still not able to find the key secret to improving their lead conversion rate. They often fix their lead generation strategies, programs, lead quality, and whatnot. But, all goes in vain due to just one BIG mistake; lack of lead nurturing. Lead nurturing is basically the process of building and nurturing relationships with your potential customers to slowly help them progress through your sales process.
It’s important to note that if you want to drive more sales opportunities from your business website, effective lead nurturing is deemed crucial. After all, the B2B sales cycle is typically pretty long and without any significant work, you often end up losing a lead due to a lack of nurturing process. So, regardless of the B2B marketing channel you use, it’s always essential to ensure that you have a rock-solid nurturing strategy integrated into the process to help you avoid any unprecedented incidents.
In this article, we will discover those best practices stated by experts that you can use for your future lead nurturing. So that you never lose a paying customer due to negligence. Let’s keep on exploring,
Why Is B2B Lead Nurturing Important?
Well, before delving deeper into those strategies or best practices, we will first explore the importance of B2B lead nurturing because a lot of marketers are still unaware of it. However, it plays the most important role in your overall B2B sales process because the B2B sales cycle is pretty complex as compared to B2C, making lead nurturing more essential to increase the conversion rate.
Basically, lead nurturing is important because it helps you to support your customers to progress through your sales process. Businesses can increase their chances of getting more conversions by following an effective lead-nurturing process. Now there are five key stages of B2B lead nurturing which you have to understand first. So, let’s continue reading the blog till the end,
B2B Lead Nurturing Stages
- Lead Capture: Lead capture is the first stage of B2B lead nurturing which is basically the process of collecting more information about your potential customers to understand their preferences, needs, and interests. Typically, marketers collect this information from events, webinars, or any other marketing initiatives.
- Lead Qualification: Lead qualification is crucial to evaluate a lead to understand whether they are a good fit for the products or services you’re offering. The process involves going through the lead’s job titles, demographics, and other crucial information to see whether they match the ideal customer profile.
- Lead Scoring: Lead scoring helps you prioritize your sales effort by evaluating which leads are ready to convert. The score is assigned based on the engagement level and interest of each lead with your business.
- Lead Segmentation: To get more personalized with your lead nurturing process and to target specific segments of customers with your tailored messages, lead segmentation is important. The segmentation is conducted based on the lead’s interest, buying stage, and needs.
- Lead Communication: Lead communication is the last but most crucial stage of the lead nurturing process. This is when you reach out to your leads with personalized and automated messages through webinars, emails, or any other form of content.
5 Best Practices to Effectively Close a Deal Through Lead Nurturing
Now that you are well aware of every stage of lead nurturing as well as its significance, it’s time to explore the best practices of lead nurturing. So, let’s delve deeper,
- Use Automated Emails
In the overall B2B lead generation process, automated email marketing could be a savior. With automated emails, not only is it easier to stay in touch with your target audience but also it saves a lot of time for marketers. You can automate emails like this so that when a lead takes some specific action, an email will be triggered. For example, if someone signs up for free trials, you can start a series of automated emails explaining more about the free trials so that people can explore more.
- Re-engage With Cold Leads
If a lead isn’t engaging doesn’t mean they are dead until you try all the ways to re-engage with them. You never know which approach may intrigue them and they start to engage with your business. So, there are a bunch of ways you can re-engage with a cold lead like using different channels, personalized outreach campaign organizing, providing valuable content, leveraging referrals, and much more.
- Remove Those Who’re NOT Interested
If you have tried all the ways of re-engaging with a cold lead but someone is still showing no interest, then it’s time to remove them. By de-cluttering your lead lists not only is it easier to stay organized but the process also becomes more effective. In fact, by removing dead leads you can improve the quality of the sales pipeline so that marketers can stay focused on high-quality leads.
- Use Multi-Channel Approach
It’s important in lead nurturing that you don’t stick to only one channel. Because your customers may have different communication preferences. So, presenting your brand everywhere is crucial. With a multichannel approach, you can keep all the leads engaged by providing relevant information that is also personalized. Also, you can gather data from different channels to evaluate your approaches better.
- Focus On Lead Capturing Opportunities
Networking is always a great way to generate more leads. So, beyond inbound and outbound marketing campaigns, it’s important to experiment with various other tactics like running a QandA session, Facebook contests, and much more. The more leads you can capture, the better it will be for your brand.
Contact SocialBloom For Professional Help
The overall B2B lead generation process is critical. It requires time, experience, knowledge, and the right lead generation tools to improve your B2B lead generation efforts. So, if you’re still struggling to see the noticeable results of lead generation, don’t hesitate to contact a professional like SocialBloom as we are one of the trusted B2B lead generation service providers in the United States. To know more, contact us now!