Lead nurturing is an important component in small business marketing, particularly for B2B companies. Since most of your potential customers will not be ready to buy when you first meet them, or they first find you on the internet, it is important to achieve and maintain top of mind status so that when they are ready to buy the will remember you.
Before you start creating a lead nurturing campaign, consider these factors first to set yourself up for success.
Define Your Ideal Customer
We always begin discussions about marketing by emphasizing the importance of understanding your ideal customer. This understanding needs to go beyond high-level demographic information like industry, revenue (or income), and location. You also need to understand your customers’ buying process—the stages they go through when making a purchasing decision, along with the information they typically need to move from one stage to the next.
Understand Their Motivation
More than likely, your ideal customer didn’t wake up this morning and think “I’ve never bought an estate plan before, I think I’ll try that today.”. No one wants to buy software or insurance. People do want to move away from pain, towards pleasure, and they want to achieve their goals. Where do your products and services fit into that picture?
Map Out Your Marketing Hourglass
The marketing hourglass is a great tool to map out the process of moving your customers through the stages of know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer. Use the hourglass to identify any gaps you have in your marketing system and use it as a map for defining your lead (and customer) nurturing programs.
Automate Your Communications
I’ve always believed that technology should free us from repetitive work so we can do more value-added work. See if you can apply this idea to your lead nurturing program. Once you have automated the “routine” communications, think about the extra things you can do that really add value.
Nurturing isn’t just for prospects. Nurture your customers as well. An automated “welcome campaign” is a great place to get started. Consider sending elements from your new customer kit via an automated campaign rather than dumping everything on a new customer at once.
Keep in mind that automation may be automatically sending a message, but it may also mean automatically reminding you that it is time to get in touch (i.e. pick up the phone) as well.
Lead nurturing is an essential component of a fully functioning small business marketing system. Use the tips above to lay the groundwork for your nurturing program and grow your business.
Got a favorite lead nurturing tip? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear it.
