Top 10 Lead Nurturing Tactics and Tools

B2B Marketers understand that the online marketplace has become too competitive. Buyers have got many choices and just want the best for themselves. Lead generation strategies can get you many leads but what really matters is the conversion rate. For a higher conversion rate it is important to do lead nurturing.

Lead nurturing is the process of building and maintaining relationships with prospective customers by providing relevant and informative content. Lead nurturing tools and tactics aid you in connecting with the prospects at every stage of the buying journey. This indeed helps in pushing them at the end of the sales pipeline. Keep reading the blog to know about the Top 10 Lead Nurturing tools and tactics.

According to the reports, “Nurtured leads make 47% more purchases than the non nurtured leads.” There are many potential benefits of lead nurturing that we have mentioned below:

• Helps to generate high quality leads.
• Aids in increasing Average Order Value (AOV).
• Helps in reducing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).
• Makes more loyal customers.
• Aids in establishing authority in your industry.

Lead nurturing is important as many of the leads that have entered the sales funnel aren’t sure about their buying decision. Lead nurturing helps to build trust and increases credibility of the prospects. Thus, more customers and higher ROI.

A lead nurturing campaign is a series of marketing activities carried out targeting the potential customers. This includes delivering relevant, informative and value content through emails, newsletters, blog posts, sales calls and PPC Ads etc.

Lead nurturing campaigns are targeted towards the prospects that are already interested in your service. They might have shown interest by visiting your website, participating in an online event and downloading a coupon etc.

A robust lead nurturing strategy can help you to convert your interested prospects into paying customers. Now, let us have a look at the top 10 lead nurturing tools and tactics that you can implement in your strategy.

Prior to building your lead nurturing strategy you must research and understand your target customers. To build an effective lead nurturing campaign strategy you must know what your customers want and what are their pain points.

Identifying the Ideal Customer Profile and buyers persona can help you to strategize better. You can examine what they are looking for, their interests and concerns. This way you can make appropriate and relevant content for your target audience.

For an effective lead nurturing campaign strategy just knowing your target customer isn’t enough. You need to know and understand your customer’s buying pathway. You should make a customer journey map and make strategies according to each stage of it.

This Customer journey map will help you to know what the potential buyer is thinking,asking and  wanting at a particular stage. You can craft a targeted lead nurturing strategy and make content according to each stage of the customer’s buying path. This will lead to more effective interaction and meaningful conversations.

A powerful lead nurturing strategy can’t even do wonders for you if you are targeting the wrong audience. To get good results with a lead nurturing strategy you must target the right leads. For that you should set up a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. You can utilize CRM to collect prospects’ contact information and verify it. You can also use it to track their activities and actions on your website.

Using CRM you can make each prospect’s profile and collect data such as:

• When and how they joined your list
• When they visited your website
• What type of interaction they had with your brand
• How often they come to your webpage, etc.

Once a lead has entered your sales funnel it isn’t guaranteed that it will close a deal. As you know that the buying journey has different stages and at each stage the customer is thinking differently. So accordingly you need to curate different and targeted content for each phase of it.

The different content marketing stages for the sales funnel are as follows:

• Top-of-Funnel Content: This is the phase where your business has just been discovered by the leads. It is the initial and topmost phase of the sales funnel. In this stage, you need to create awareness, educational and informative content. To boost the traffic of your website you must use SEO and keyword research. The content for this stage includes: blogs, articles, videos, infographics, buying guide and social media content.
• Middle-of-Funnel Content: This is the evaluation and consideration phase. For this stage, you need to create content that makes your prospects know more about your products and services. Content for this stage includes: case studies, landing pages, white papers, data sheets and e-books etc.
• Bottom-of-Funnel Content: It is the last stage of the funnel in which the customer is at the verge of making a decision. At this phase, you must create content that compels the leads to take the final action. Content for this stage includes: Sign up pages, testimonials, live demos, coupons and FAQ pages etc.

These days customers are very active and they search for information on different sources and platforms. Thus, just having an email marketing strategy isn’t enough. You need to have a multichannel lead nurturing strategy.  It should include social media marketing, sales outreach, paid ads and dynamic website content etc.

Having multi channel lead nurturing tactics can help you to reach an expansive audience. Not only this it also helps to establish trust and credibility. But you must make sure that your multi channel lead nurturing strategy has a single common message. So, the prospect is able to associate it with your brand even if they switch from one channel to the other.

You might get dozens of leads but if you will target them all similarly it won’t give you the best results. You need to prioritize the leads according to the interest that they have shown in your business. This way you will be able to target the leads more effectively and with appropriate content. For doing this, you must implement a lead scoring tactic. The leads can be given scores based on the following criteria:

• Demographics and Attributes: Does the lead match your buyer’s persona and Ideal Customer Profile.
• Interest shown and Activity: How many times has the prospect taken action? What has been their activity on your website?
• Budget: Does the lead have the budget to take up your service?
• Buying stage: Where the prospect is on its buying journey?

Based on different aspects you can score the leads and prioritize them accordingly. This will also help you to know what leads to target first and with what type of content.

According to a study,“Personalized emails bring about 6x higher revenue than non-personalized emails.” By personalized emails we mean to say that you need to research and curate content based on the B2B leads interests and requirements. This way your content will intrigue the prospect’s interest fast and create an urge to take action.

Personalized emails are a powerful tool. By delivering the right marketing messages at the right time you can get better engagement. There are many email marketing automation tools available in the market such as Marketo, Hubspot, Drip and Act-on, etc.

Chatbots are a sizzling new sales tactic that you can use to engage with your prospective customers. Nowadays, people want quick solutions and answers to their questions. You can use chatbots on your website and interact with your customers faster and clear their doubts quickly.

Chatbots can help you to shorten your sales cycle and qualify B2B leads more efficiently. It has artificial intelligence and machine learning equipped in it. Also creating chatbots isn’t very expensive when compared to the benefits it brings along.

Aligning your sales and marketing teams for lead nurturing is very important. It is also essential for lead scoring. The sales and marketing teams should come together to agree on the demographics and behaviors for scoring B2B leads. They should decide the minimum lead score based on which the sales representatives will reach out to the prospects.

Coordination between sales and marketing teams is vital. So that the prospect is contacted and provided with the relevant content at the right time. This will help you to get a better sales conversion rate.

Lead nurturing can be a time consuming process with no definite time span for results. Once you have created content for each phase of the buying journey you can automate your lead nurturing campaign. Launching automated marketing campaigns will help you to reach the prospects with the right message at the right time.

Marketing automation tools aid you in delivering relevant content based on the lead score, activity and interest. By doing this you wouldn’t need to spend hours monitoring leads and sending them content.

Lead nurturing tools and tactics help you to stay on the top of the mind of your prospects. It is a method of building and maintaining relationships with prospective customers. By providing value and educative content you can push them ahead in the sales funnel. Not only this, lead nurturing helps to build credibility and trust of your potential customers on your brand. By building robust lead nurturing campaigns you can get better conversion rates and higher ROI.