Relating your success stories during the buying cycle to keep the conversations going completes the third or last best practice. It applies to leads not quite ready to buy (50%), as well as those in the funnel (25%). With many B2B products or services, it often takes 6-12 impressions just to understand your offerings.
How to nurture leads throughout the buying cycle
Why nurture leads?
The path for qualified but not ready to buy leads requires a different structure than leads that go directly to sales. According to Hubspot:
- 25-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first.
- Lead nurturing e-mails get 4-10 times the response rate of standalone e-mail blasts.
In order to respond first, requires an automated system (marketing automation, drip marketing or auto-responders) if you process more than 50 leads per month. Also, to automate the sending of a series of e-mails, requires pre-written, compelling evidence to trigger emotions. Otherwise, these early stage leads will be difficult to-qualify before handing them over to your sales team.
- In earlier articles, we discussed lead nurturing and relationship building for sales:
Lead Nurturing (Steps 2-4 to Grow Your Business…) - Touch Points in the Buying Cycle to Enable Sales Reps
Since major purchases are planned; clients approach them this way. Your programs must comprise a complete and integrated strategy of delivering the right content at the proper stage of the buying cycle.
Drip marketing campaign content
At each stage of a drip marketing campaign, you need something different, interesting, and compelling to keep the reader engaged as they move from awareness to interest to comparison of solutions to seeking to purchase from you. For example:
- Hello from you as an individual sales rep (inside, customer service or field)
- How can we help with list of resources (web pages, white papers)
- Case study by industry
- Case study by application
- Invitation to next event (seminar, webinar or paid training)
- Your trial offer (one-on-one demo, consultation or sales call)
With many of today’s marketing automation tools, you can augment e-mails with phone calls or direct mail, as well as trigger the next step based on the previous response.
Drip marketing campaign timing
We suggest a minimum of a week between emails and a maximum of six weeks (for those longer sales cycles), with 6-12 emails per program (see above), which presents a balance between communicating too frequently and not frequently enough.
Drip marketing campaign training
Still need more information, consider our marketing communications workshops and consulting to reset your marketing compass to your customers’ buying process.
Summary of the Three High ROI Marketing Best Practices
- Focus on best customers to attract more like them (because what they say about you is your brand and will help attract more like them).
- Think how to involve them in marketing, especially where you have exceeded their expectations.
- Relate your success stories during the buying cycle to keep the conversation alive.
Tempest can help write your stories to resonate with customers and provoke buying thoughts and calls to action, as well as to setup your systems to market more effectively. Should you need help nurturing leads from your website or CRM system, contact us.
