Nurture leads like an expert with these 15 best practices
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It’s becoming increasingly important to know lead nurturing best practices.
Why?
As companies begin to diversify their marketing strategies and generate more inbound leads, knowing how to take care of those to gain new business – especially in an ever-competitive market – becomes crucial.
That’s why Embryo’s experts have curated this list of the 15 best practices to nurture leads.
If you would like to learn more, reach out to our team today.
Key takeaways for nurturing leads
- Clarify your target audience
- Understand their customer journey
- Define clear goals
- Pick your communication channels
- Create content that’s valuable
- Set up lead-scoring
- Segment leads
- Monitor your leads
- Personalise
- Plan multiple touches
- Follow up promptly
- Share testimonials
- Optimise campaigns
- Retargeting
- Engage with social media
15 lead nurturing best practices to know
According to our Business Development Executive, Paige Delahunty, the best way to nurture leads:
“Is to always be at the forefront of the prospect’s mind. You might have shown them a great solution to their struggles, a cost-efficient approach, or a streamlined, solid strategy but if five other companies have done the same thing, there is a slim chance they will be choosing you.
‘Be different, think outside the box, send them something you know no one else will, and watch those chilly leads become piping hot prospects.”
1. Clarify your target audience: If you don’t know who your audience is, how will you know what type of audience to create or where to find them?
Once you understand who your audience is and what channels they use, you can start to refine and map your strategy.
2. Understand their customer journey: You might now know who your audience is, but it’s time to get to really know them.
Also known as the messy middle, by understanding the customer journey you will learn:
- Pain points
- The information a user needs before converting
- Solutions
Having this knowledge allows you to position yourselves as the answer the user has been searching for.
3. Define clear goals: If you don’t know your goals, how do you know if your strategy is working?
By defining clear goals you can easily understand if your lead nurturing strategy is effective. If not, you can quickly pivot your approach to get back on track.
4. Pick your communication channels:
Yep, you read that right.
Channels – plural.
Our Managing Director, Ross Green, explains why a multi-channel approach is essential.
5. Create content that’s valuable: Long gone are the days when you could use the same content across multiple channels.
Plus, with Google’s latest update, Helpful Content, you want to ensure any content you create is – shock – helpful for your user.
For example, when we create content, our team aims to include:
- An E-E-A-T element
- FAQs
- The answer to the user’s needs
6. Set up lead scoring: Lead scoring is a system where you assign numbers to leads ranking them on your interactions.
Why do this?
It makes it easier for you to prioritise leads with the highest likelihood of converting.
Some of the most common categories include ‘cold’, ‘warm’, and ‘hot’ – like Paige referred to earlier.
7. Segment leads: Once you begin to get leads, you can segment them by demographics, interests, and behaviour
This allows you to understand the granularity of the type of leads you are getting and nurture them accurately.
8. Monitor your leads: Monitoring is an essential part of nurturing leads.
How will you know how your work is performing if you don’t continually discover the number of openings, click-through rates (CTRs), and conversions
9. Personalise: We all know how quickly we ignore any emails that are hard-selling to us.
However, when it’s more personalised, like with a name, it feels less harsh and invasive.
According to Porch Group Media, personalised emails lead to a 2.5x increase in CTRs and a 5.7 growth in revenue.
So there’s no reason not to.
10. Plan multiple touches: It all comes back to the messy middle.
We’ve already explored just how complicated it is, but it only emphasises the importance of having multiple touchpoints throughout the buyer’s journey.
By consistently showing up as a solution for your user’s problems on various platforms, you remain in their minds.
11. Follow up promptly: We understand that everyone is busy and sometimes things slip through the net… like a lead.
Not following up promptly can make the lead question their worth and lose that ‘fire’.
Many businesses are now using AI and other automated systems to reach larger audiences, but you still can’t beat a phone call to add that personable aspect that makes a lead feel valued.
12. Share testimonials: Never underestimate the power of testimonials.
This could be in the form of:
- Case study
- Quote
- Social media reviews
By including user-generated content in your marketing strategy, you nurture your leads by showing how you could also help their business.
13. Optimise campaigns: Have you noticed that your lead campaigns aren’t performing as well as expected?
It may simply be that you need to optimise your approach to ensure the content is relevant.
14. Retargeting: Retargeting your campaign is a great way to get back into the forefront of your leads.
You can use data to analyse their journey and, again, personalise retargeting emails – for example – to enhance their experience.
15. Engage with social media: Interacting with your leads on their LinkedIn page or the company’s social media platforms builds a good relationship with them.
Again, it also helps keep you in their consciousness.
Need help with your lead nurturing strategies? You’ve come to the right place
Here at Embryo, we work with a wide range of businesses and industries. No matter the sector, we continually achieve incredible results for our clients whether that be for PPC, SEO, or paid social.
If you’re interested in finding out more, get in touch with our team on 0161 327 2635.
We promise a warm welcome!
