When you’re introduced to a new colleague, neighbor, or friend, how do you get to know them better? Send them an email, text, or message over social telling them all about your interests, all the great things you do, along with a laundry list of qualities that make you wonderful?
That would be awkward, right?
So it might be time to think through your nurture strategy, and how you’re attempting to drive engagement and increase sales.
You have the power to be more intentional with your content – offering up information that conveys that you know them and you know what they need for success. You can convey that in numerous ways – targeting and tailoring messages to their location or region, directly addressing their pain points, sharing innovative solutions that are directly in line with their business. And you know they want solutions that are the best fit, best price, best outcomes.
Putting these sentiments at the forefront of your nurture program can help you establish and maintain that solid relationship to folks in your funnel – you might even become their best friend!
Here are a few intentional nurturing strategies from our superheroes you should consider:
Personalization & Segmentation: Personalize your communication with leads by addressing them by name, tailoring your messaging to their specific interests and needs, and divide your leads based on demographics, behavior, and interest, and then tailor your messaging even further.
And, don’t be afraid to study their past actions for clues as to how you can best reach them now. Are they actively engaged? Do they tend to respond to events more than webinars? Use those nuggets of information to your advantage and don’t be afraid to experiment. Try a different type of email, or perhaps have reps follow up instead.
Bonus tip: Create a hypothesis, define an experiment, and be sure to allow yourself time to conduct the experiment before measuring results. Just know and accept that some experiments will fail, but even a failed experiment yields important insight.
Drip Campaigns & Content Marketing: Use automated drip campaigns to send a series of targeted and timed messages to leads over a period of time, being careful to provide value! Choose to send only content that is truly Informative and engaging. Focus on how they can benefit from a product or service in earnest.
Lead Scoring & Lead Magnets: Assign scores to leads based on their engagement and activity, and prioritize follow-up with the highest-scoring leads. Lead magnets such as ebooks, webinars, or free trials are still a great way to offer engaging information in exchange for content information, but be sure that they are truly a fit for the lead, and not just a catch-all.
Retargeting & Referral Marketing: Use retargeting ads to reach leads who have visited your website but haven’t converted yet – the caveat here: Make sure that you serve up ads according to the specific pages your leads visit! That way they’re not only timely, but relevant to the interest taken.
The last thing you want to do when they are looking at “Widget X” is retarget them with an ad about your wonderful “Widget Y.”
As for referral marketing – if you don’t ask, often you won’t get. References to family and friends are great word of mouth, but sometimes the mouth tends to issue out more cautionary tales when things go wrong than exuberant reviews on products and services. So speak up and encourage them to share the love when they are happy with you.
Use Social Media & Your Meaningful Metrics: Converse! Connect! Keep up with customers. Leads will see how the love continues after conversion. Answer questions and engage and track the progress of your nurturing strategies not only in terms of your social media presence, but your other tactics.
Don’t forget this is an ongoing process and what works today may need some tweaks down the road. Meanwhile, if you feel leads are “ghosting” you and you need a hero to help you determine why stronger, more powerful results aren’t being had, contact us! We can examine the current campaigns you have on deck to see what’s working and what isn’t. Even getting a third party point of view is intentional!
