While some lead nurturing configurations — such as those in B2B contexts — are as complex and intricate as air traffic control tower flight paths, essentially lead nurturing is the process of identifying, qualifying and then ushering prospects forward on the buyer’s journey towards a purchase. There’s nothing mysterious or controversial about this, and the costly mistake that many businesses are making here isn’t about concepts. Rather, it’s about prospects.
Specifically, businesses are investing the bulk — or sometimes all — of their lead nurturing resources and attention on prospects who are already near the bottom of their funnel. Why are they focusing there? It’s simple: prospects near the end of the line are easier to reach, engage and convert. While it’s not necessarily a case of “preaching to the converted” (since they aren’t customers yet), it is indeed like playing in front of a warm and welcoming home town crowd.
The problem, of course, is that usually only about 10 percent of leads are in the bottom of the funnel at any given time. That means 90 percent — or 9 in 10 prospects — are either being:
- Completely ignored
- Superficially engaged
- Treated as if they are much further down on the sales funnel than they actually are
It doesn’t matter which mistake a business is making (or if it’s making all of them). The end result is that the vast majority of prospects exit the funnel and head to a competitor that may not necessarily have superior products or prices, but has a better lead nurturing process. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that fixing this common problem isn’t costly or risky. Generally, it requires a re-structuring that includes the following elements:
- Organizing customer types into buyer personas, so that suitable content can be created to target each target’s needs, objectives, pain points, aspirations, and so on.
- Using lead scoring to objectively determine whether leads are cold, warm or hot, so that sales reps can proceed accordingly.
- A multi-channel and multi-touchpoint approach that doesn’t just “push content for the sake of content,” but engages specific leads/prospects based on where they are in the funnel, and what actions or behaviors they’ve taken (e.g. downloaded an ebook, watched a demo, browsed a self-support knowledge base, etc.)
- Automation that ensures businesses are hyper-responsive to requests for assets (e.g. ebooks, white papers, etc.).
- Timely follow-up by email or phone (as appropriate). Yes, inbound marketing and lead nurturing is driven by automation, but technology should augment the human factor; not replace it. Great sales reps will always be needed to seal the deal.
- Alignment between sales and marketing, so that the former knows where to find updated hyper-relevant content (based on buyer persona, deal size, deal stage, etc.), and the latter knows where to allocate resources so that content is used and generates ROI.
The Bottom Line
When all of the above integrate into a comprehensive and structured lead nurturing system, businesses no longer risk ignoring, annoying or alienating 90 percent of the leads in their pipeline. No, this doesn’t mean that they’ll convert every lead — that would be ideal, but it’s not realistic. However, it certainly does mean that sales reps will have more meaningful conversations and deliver more effective presentations, which will no doubt lead to more sales. And isn’t this the point of lead nurturing in the first place?
To learn more about re-calibrating your lead nurturing process so that it enhances your sales results instead of undermines them, contact the Leap Clixx team today.
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Topics: Lead Generation
