Introduction to Lead Nurturing Programs
Lead nurturing is a discipline focused on leads who are not yet ready to buy. As such, the art of successful lead nurturing is in delivering content of sufficient value that the audience remains engaged. If done well, successful nurturing can build a strong brand and solution preference long before a prospect is actively engaged in a buying process.
Given that, the three main goals of a lead nurturing program are as follows:
1) Maintain permission to stay in contact with the prospect: This is by far the most important goal of lead nurturing, as without it, any other goals are impossible. If a prospect loses interest in your messaging, or does not see sufficient value, they will disengage, either through unsubscribing through normal means, marking your messages as spam, or “emotionally unsubscribing” – reflexively ignoring or deleting your messages.
2) Establish key ideas, thoughts, or comparison points through education: A potential buyer you are nurturing may not enter a buying process for a long time. During the nurturing period, however, if you can educate prospects and guide their thinking slightly to incorporate specific requirements and ways of thinking about the market, when they do become buyers, your company and solutions will be much better positioned in their minds
3) Watch for signs of progress through the buying cycle: As you nurture potential buyers, you can watch their digital body language to give you an understanding of where they are in their buying process. As they progress through their buying process, they will reach a point where they are ready to engage with sales, as identified through a lead scoring system.
Lead nurturing is a very powerful way to automatically stay engaged with future potential buyers. In doing so successfully, you can establish buyer preference for your solutions, while at the same time understanding buyer timing. However, this is only possible if your lead nurturing programs deliver content that is of sufficient value and interest to the prospects that you maintain their permission to stay in contact with them.
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The effort today is not so much at the top of the funnel, bringing in raw leads, but rather in nurturing and relationship management with current prospects," said Brian Kardon, CMO at demand generation and lead management company Eloqua. "A lot of marketers pride themselves on how many leads they generate each quarter, but they already have a ton of prospects in the pipeline. The focus now is on closing the business.
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Lead Nurturing: Marketing's Biggest Contribution to the Bottom Line
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Human Touch of Lead Nurturing/Marketing Automation
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