So, you’ve gathered a batch of online leads. Nicely done! The hard part’s surely over, right? Those leads will definitely become paying customers now! Well, not so fast. Getting leads is important and exciting, but just because someone showed interest, doesn’t mean they’re ready to pull out their credit card. Converting leads into paying customers requires the secret sauce of lead nurturing, a process that turns curiosity into commitment through purposeful engagement.
At Beyond Blue Media, we’re digital marketing experts with years of experience guiding leads through sales funnels for dozens of different types of businesses. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the proven strategies for nurturing leads by crafting a journey that transforms those initial sparks of interest into long-term relationships.
Understanding the Lead Nurturing Journey
Lead nurturing, as well as the metaphorical apparatus it feeds—the “sales funnel”—are both common marketing buzzwords, but they do have meaning. Lead nurturing is an important strategic process designed to build relationships and guide prospects from curiosity (the top of the funnel) to conversion (bottom of funnel). To effectively nurture leads, it’s crucial to understand the different stages of their journey:
1. Awareness Stage: At this point, potential customers are only just discovering your brand and its offerings. Usually they have a problem, and they will be (actively or passively) looking for potential solutions to that problem. The goal of your company in this stage is to provide valuable content that educates and informs them, positioning your brand as a trusted resource and cultivating a sense that your brand lies at the heart of the solution.
2. Consideration Stage: Leads in this stage are evaluating their options and comparing different solutions. To capture users in the consideration phase, streamline your communications to address their specific needs and challenges, demonstrating how your solutions stand out from the competition. When your lead is thinking of a solution, your brand should immediately come to mind—you need to know why it should, and communicate that as directly as you can. While you want your leads to know that your solution is better than the competition, it might be a good idea to save a juicy morsel or two for the final push down the funnel.
3. Decision Stage: Leads at this stage are now ready to make a purchase decision. Their desire for a solution has peaked, and they are going to commit to their preferred solution. At this point, if you’ve nurtured your leads correctly, they will be familiar with your brand and even developed a fair amount of belief that your product or service is the unique solution to their problem. Sate this desire and reward this faith with compelling offers and additional purchase incentives, such as limited-time sales and value-laden deals or packages.
However, it is critical at this stage that your user interface provides a seamless customer journey, or you risk losing well-cultivated leads you’ve spent months luring in. Just as last-minute incentives will push these leads through the bottom of the funnel as customers, a poor user experience or technical issues with websites will send them flying back out the top in no time.
4. Post-Purchase Stage: The journey doesn’t end with a sale. Not only do you need that customer’s review (which is part of how you re-load your funnel again), but you’ll also want them to return again in the future. If they bought one part of a multi-part service or product, you can send an email thanking them for their purchase and offering an incentive to buy the remaining products or services. You can offer discounts on future purchases in exchange for leaving reviews; you can offer discounts to customers referred to you by previous ones—the options for post-purchase engagement (sometimes referred to as “retargeting”) are truly endless. In doing so, you can effectively build loyalty, encourage repeat business, and turn customers into advocates for your brand.
Analyzing and Adjusting Your Nurturing Strategy
To keep your lead nurturing strategy effective, regular analysis is crucial. Therefore, the first and one of the most important steps of lead nurturing is to have your site set up to collect important lead-related data. Use metrics such as email open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to evaluate how well your nurturing content is resonating with your audience. Track which types of content are driving engagement and which are falling flat. This data will help you understand what’s working and where adjustments are needed.
For example, if certain topics or formats generate more interest, you might want to produce more content in those areas. If you’re getting better engagement on social media than through email campaigns, you can allocate resources accordingly. Additionally, gather feedback from your leads and customers to refine your approach further. That’s the name of the game: Innovate. Iterate. Measure. Adjust. Repeat.
Crafting Personalized Content for Effective Lead Nurturing Techniques
No customer is really the same, so it follows that in digital marketing, one size doesn’t fit all. Personalization is an underrated key to successful lead nurturing. Here’s how you can tailor your lead nurturing approach at each stage of the customer’s funnel journey.
Content Marketing: Engaging Potential Customers from the Start
One of the most effective ways to nurture leads, and one of the first chances to make an impression on a potential lead, is through content marketing. This could be as simple as a user reading your website content for the first time; if it’s good enough, it is constantly meeting your audience where they are and immediately begins nurturing them as leads.
But content marketing could also be in the form of blog posts, videos, infographics, or case studies, all with the goal of educating your potential customers at every stage of their journey, answering their questions, and solving their problems. By continuously offering valuable information or expertise that no one else will offer, you position your brand as a trustworthy resource.
Email Retargeting: Staying Top of Mind
If your data tells you that someone’s peeked at your offering but hasn’t quite taken the plunge, follow-up emails can reel them back in. Many ecommerce businesses do this by sending emails to accounts associated with abandoned shopping carts. Think of it like sending a personalized invitation to remind them of what they’re missing, give them a special offer on a service or item they nearly purchased, or offer them something they might like better. Timing is key here, as you need to act quickly to ensure the lead hasn’t already solved their problem by making a purchase with a different business.
In addition to timing, the secret to success with email retargeting is to make the outreach feel like a genuine conversation, not a sales pitch. Try to identify and address possible reasons why they didn’t follow through on the purchase. These days, we all get hundreds of marketing emails, and we all know that, unless the message is extremely compelling, you really love the brand, or still have that unmet need, the message will probably never be seen. Use your own sense of the industry and the data at your disposal to craft a retargeting message that’s relevant and personal—because no one likes feeling like they're just another name on a list.
Social Media Ads: Engaging Leads Where They Spend Their Time
Social media is another great place to nurture leads, especially with targeted ads. You can use the most popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn to show ads based on the user’s previous actions. Think about this as the cousin to email retargeting, but within a different context. If a potential customer has visited your website or interacted with your brand before, social media ads are an excellent way to stay connected and guide them further down the funnel. Plus, social ads let you experiment with different messaging and visuals to see what resonates best. Unlike email marketing, where multiple messages will simply be filtered as spam, you can time your social media ads so that they consistently appear in front of the same target audience, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
Overall, lead nurturing is about continuing the conversation, and making it feel like a conversation. And not just any conversation—but a helpful one, one that leads to solutions to the person’s problem. No matter the strategy you choose, the key is to remain consistent, creative, and responsive to your audience’s online behavior as well as their needs.
How Beyond Blue Media Can Feed Your Lead Nurturing Strategy
At Beyond Blue Media, our team works closely with businesses of all sizes, day in and day out, to help them get and nurture high-quality leads to grow their business. We can do the same for you and your brand. From creating compelling written content to stunning videography and dynamic social media ad campaigns, we cultivate the necessary conditions to collect and nurture those lucrative leads you’re trying so hard to attract. Drop us a line today to discover how we can help you build stronger relationships and achieve your marketing goals.
