Getting new leads is exciting. It means someone has shown interest in your product or service. However, not every lead will become a customer. Which is why nurturing leads is so important. 

Lead nurturing guides a person or business to the sale, trial or demo. Taking the time to guide your prospective buyers with content that answers their questions increases the likelihood that they will buy what you are selling. 

Differentiating Lead Email Communication with Workflow

One of the misconceptions within lead nurturing is that nurturing leads is nothing more than email communication. While communicating through email is one of the avenues for nurturing leads, effective nurturing is a workflow, or advancement through a series of communications, that moves the lead to take a desired action, bringing them closer to your end objective. 

The desired action could be as simple as clicking a button to learn more about a product they are interested in. What transforms this into true ‘lead nurturing,’ however, is ensuring their journey doesn’t end with that click. Instead, each piece of content should strategically guide them closer to making a purchase.

Transitioning leads from the research phase to the buying decision requires a well-planned approach. To help you achieve this, we’ve outlined five proven lead nurturing tactics that will effectively guide your leads all the way to the checkout.

5 Effective Lead Nurturing Tactics

To guide your leads to your end goal, you need buyer understanding, aligned workflows, leveraged targeted content, balanced personalization with automation and success rate tracking. Let’s dive in.

1. Understand and Pinpoint Your Buyer 

To determine your target audience, determine who has already purchased your product or service. You can glean this information from Google Analytics, competitor analysis, engaging on social media or distributing customer surveys. After determining your audience, find what motivates them to purchase with customer personas. One example of identifying and aligning content with top personas was when Avista worked with Commvault, a campaign that doubled their inbound lead traffic and increased closed deals by 15%. 

2. Align Your Workflows With High-priority Leads

You will likely have several different lead types. It will pay dividends if you categorize the types of leads you usually get and determine where they are in the buying cycle. You can then use this information to determine the content they need to progress, how frequently you should reach out to them and the best contact method. 

3. Leverage Targeted Content with Multiple Touch Points 

You may already have the answers to all your customer questions on your website in the form of well-designed PDFs, infographics, webinars or mind-blowing blogs and videos. However, if this content isn’t shared on other platforms, leads are less likely to know it exists. 

Leveraging your content with multiple touchpoints from various channels enhances lead nurturing. RAIN Group found it took an average of 8 touchpoints before a lead decided to have an initial meeting or conversation. However, an initial meeting is just the beginning. It then took anywhere from one to 11 or more interactions before the lead became a qualified opportunity that the sales rep could close. Determining the magic number of touchpoints your leads need is best found by looking at your current customers and determining the average number of touches they received, then aiming for that number in your lead nurturing efforts. However, eight is a good place to start if you don’t have a baseline.

While the number of touches influences the buying decision, the variety of channels and selected content is arguably more important. Combining touchpoints across social media, YouTube, search engines and email lists with links to website content that directly addresses your leads’ concerns and positions your product as the ideal solution is far more effective—and far less spammy—than sending eight automated emails.

One example of the power of utilizing multiple touchpoints is the IGEL market pivot. In this campaign, Avista helped IGEL, a German-based managed OS for digital workspaces, transition into the U.S. Market and shift from hardware to software. Avista aligned its social media, press coverage and content creation, which led to IGEL becoming a leading voice in the end-user computing software industry. 

The key to leveraging your content is aligning your touchpoints with your leads’ habits, needs and responses, creating a tailored journey that resonates and keeps leads engaged throughout the decision-making process. 

4. Balancing Personalized Email Marketing With Automated Communication

Leads appreciate personalized emails that meet their needs. Studies have shown that personalized emails increase email open rates by 26% and boost sales by up to 20%. 

The challenge is that marketers don’t have the time to research and write personalized messages for everyone. Sending blast emails is far easier, though not as effective. To balance personalization with automation, you can look at your customer personas and craft specific emails that address each persona’s possible hold-ups and interests. You can then automate these precrafted messages to go to leads that fit the persona. Or send pre-crafted emails to individuals when they pose a question that fits your bank of potential email topics. 

5. Track and Reevaluate Lead Nurturing Regularly 

Unfortunately, lead nurturing is not a set-it-and-forget-it procedure. To succeed with your lead nurturing efforts, you need to regularly look at how leads respond to the content and formats they are shared through. It pays to test out different subject lines, copy, content and communication channels. 

Craft and Manage Your Lead Nurturing Campaign With Avista 

Nurturing leads allows you to help individuals and companies learn about your offerings, increasing the likelihood that they will purchase. This process is nuanced, making it challenging to apply. If you would like help creating and implementing a lead nurturing campaign, Avista is here to help. One of the areas we specialize in is demand generation, which means we know how to generate leads and turn them into customers.

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