The guide to lead nurturing

Lead nurturing, what a wonderful term! Don’t you see what we are talking about 😁? How to do it or even what it’s for? It’s your lucky day, we’re going to explain in this article what it is, how to set it up to ensure success in your approach. Come on, let’s go! Even if it’s an English term, don’t worry, you will quickly understand this concept made for marketers (or simply for the curious).

Lead nurturing: definition

In marketing, the principle of lead nurturing is to maintain a relationship 💗 with a prospect. If we were to literally translate what lead nurturing would mean, we would translate it as ” lead nurturing”. This means that you will accompany your lead from the moment he starts to get to know you to the moment he buys with you and becomes a brand advocate. You are going to “nurture” him all along your conversion funnel.

In short, lead nurturing is a marketing strategy that aims to develop lasting, personalized relationships with prospects throughout their buying journey. This approach involves providing relevant and useful information and educational content to these prospects in order to help them solve their problems or meet their needs.

This is particularly telling when doing BtoB sales where you tend to find longer sales cycles 💰 than with BtoC sales.

Indeed, in a B2B sales process, you will certainly see that the person who will be interested in your product will not necessarily be the one making the various decisions. This term goes hand in hand with an inbound marketing strategy. Through lead nurturing, you will create a relationship with your potential customer, then maintain this relationship once he has made a purchase and finally you will have to retain this relationship in order for him to stay with you.

Nurturing: translation

In our case, we will go a little further so that you can understand what it means. As we said above, nurturing means: “to feed”. So maybe it doesn’t mean much to you, but in fact, it makes sense because throughout its life, you’ll have to feed it with… Content ✒️. At the right time, in the right place.

When they’re at the beginning of the funnel, you’ll tailor your sales pitch to get them interested in your different products or services. And when he’s at the end of the funnel, you’re going to change your content to fit his journey. Of course, you’re also going to send him other messages 📩 at different points in his lifetime. What you need to remember is that you are continually adapting and providing different content to your prospects with the goal of nurturing them to take an action (usually conversion) with you.

What role does lead nurturing play in Inbound Marketing?

Lead nurturing is a key element of the Inbound Marketing strategy. Inbound is an approach to marketing that consists of attracting prospects with relevant and useful content rather than soliciting them with intrusive ads or commercial messages.

Lead nurturing fits perfectly into this approach because it allows you to provide relevant content at the right time to your prospects or customers. By responding to their needs, you reinforce the trust and credibility of your company.

It is important to understand that lead nurturing is not only used to retain existing leads. Indeed, thanks to this action, you will be able to attract new visitors to your site.

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10 examples of lead nurturing

In order for you to understand in detail how to do lead nurturing, we will give you different examples to inspire you for your potential and existing customers.

Shopping cart relaunch

For this first example, we start strong because when there is a cart relaunch 🧺, it is because your target is already interested in you. Of course, this applies especially if you have an e-commerce site. The target 🎯 started shopping on your site, put products in their cart and … Nothing happened… No conversion. This is because your potential customer may not have had time to finalize the purchase, may have just wanted to see the shipping costs, or may have been unsure of their purchase etc… As you can see, there is a small step missing for the finalization.

Well, that’s where you come in. You are going to remind him that he has some small items in his cart and that he forgot it through an email. You have several ways to do this:

• Follow up your customer with a promotional code. This is particularly effective if the price of the purchase was the obstacle. Of course, to get him to take action as soon as possible, add an expiration date to your promo code.
• Create a sense of urgency ⚡. You don’t have to do this every time, but you can use this technique from time to time to get your customer to take action. You can say that inventory is low and they will lose their item if they don’t buy it soon.
• Offer other items to add to the cart. This is the time to offer your customers or potential customers products that may potentially interest them. This is commonly known as cross-selling. You take full advantage of having the attention of the future buyer to offer him other products or services that may please him.

The newsletter

If you are creating a website, you will probably set up a form so that your lead can subscribe to the newsletter. When a potential customer is interested in what you do, he can subscribe to it without any strong commitment to you. When your lead goes through the newsletter, he is a cold lead since he is at the very top of your conversion tunnel and he is not yet ready to buy your products or services. On the other hand, you have to make them want to come with what you are going to put in this newsletter. So what are we going to put in this one?

• A nice and punchy title (to arouse your prospect’s interest), so don’t hesitate to work on the subject line of your message.
• Content that serves your lead.
• Air out 🌬️ your text to let your reader breathe.
• Sign your newsletter.

Sales periods

What we will talk about here is the seasonality of sales. You probably know that during events such as Black Friday, summer sales, winter sales or Christmas, you will generate (technically) more sales.

We also take into account your own sales period. If you notice a higher activity during a certain period, this is exactly what we are talking about. You will take advantage of this to establish a relationship with your existing customers but also with those who have shown an interest in your products.

We know that this is a stressful period during which you have very little time to do lead nurturing campaigns, so you have to think intelligently to reach your targets. Are you thinking about the same thing we are? Yes, a marketing automation software.

But we’ll come back to that later in this article, we promise. Once again, when it comes to lead nurturing for the Christmas period or sales, take care of your wording and think about exactly what you would like to receive as information.

Lead nurturing following a download or registration

The most likely scenario is that a visitor has visited your website and downloaded an e-book. They may have filled out a form and that’s it for you. You are going to use this door to be able to offer him new content that could already complement what you have offered.

Be careful not to go too fast and offer them a call to action, it’s not the time yet. It’s all in the timing. As marketers, we have to know how to recognize the right timing, it’s crucial.

Reward your customers’ loyalty

We often tend to focus oncustomer acquisition rather than retention. But you know what? It’s just as important if not more important than acquisition. When you have a loyal customer base, make sure they keep buying your solutions. So you can reward their loyalty by offering them:

• Sponsorship (they’ll get a percentage off their next purchase for example or a discount on a subscription).
• Promotional codes.
• Thanking your target. Sometimes you may not have anything to offer, and that’s perfectly ok. You can still send a thank you email ✒️ to say that your loyal customers matter to you and that they are part of a community that would be nothing without them.

Social networks

And yes, we mustn’t forget those incredibly great little tools that are social networks. Thanks to them, you can also do lead nurturing.

To do this, it’s very very simple: they have shown interest in your products on a social network like Facebook or Instagram (but this is not closed, you can use others). The goal is to give them content on these same social networks by sharing educational content about your products or service that they might like. By the way, did you know that you can do lead nurturing on LinkedIn? Stay with us a little longer, we’ll talk about it in this article too 👇.

Implementing a new service or product

When you’re developing a new product line or service, you’ll definitely want your prospects to know that they can buy it. This is an opportunity tonurture the relationship with your prospect through the new product line you are going to release.

Above all, take the time to explain your approach and don’t force your customer too much. Take care of your copywriting to convince your prospect that this new product or service is made for him and explain clearly what this new product could bring him by reassuring him.

Give your new customers a warm welcome

With this in mind, you have successfully acquired your new customers. They have discovered you, they have become interested in your brand and they have made a conversion with you. Congratulations!

Now you can send them a little message welcoming them. It’s always nice to receive a welcome message when you become a customer. In fact, it marks the beginning of your trusting relationship. When you welcome a new person, it is called onboarding, a way to show that you care about your customers.

Soliciting dormant prospects

When you go prospecting, you will collect data. So far, everything seems logical. So you’re going to have a pretty full database of prospects. But all these prospects may not buy from you, or may not have received your messages because they did not read them, or because it was not the right time, etc. To remedy this, you can solicit them again in the hope that they will enter your sales tunnel. If you don’t act, the people you have been prospecting will be lost.

How do you do that? We’re glad you asked. You can send them an email saying you miss them and would love to see them on your site for example. When soliciting past prospects, you need to make them a great offer. Think of a big discount or a content with a lot of added value.

Reconnect with unsatisfied customers

During your life as a Sales person, you may come across unhappy customers who are not fully satisfied with what you have offered them. Don’t worry, the war is not lost.

How do you make a dissatisfied customer happy? Personalization and empathy. Make it clear to your customer that you understand them and that you will do everything possible to solve their problem. Above all, do it from the heart ❤️ it may sound cliché, but it is imperative that your customer feels that you are genuine with them and that you really feel the need to address their problem as best as possible.

Of course, even with everything you’re going to do, there’s no guarantee that your client will respond to you, but you have a small chance that some of them will come back to you and agree to give you a second chance. Don’t disappoint them.

How to do lead nurturing

As we said before, lead nurturing goes hand in hand with inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is about attracting customers to you through content that will engage your potential leads. When you’re in the digital marketing business, you’re going to provide answers through relevant content that will meet the needs of your targets 🎯.

Each piece of content is going to break down based on where your customer is located. Because yes, you’re not going to remind your prospect to check out if they’ve never set foot on your site, right? So we adapt our content. You can set up :

• Guides.
• White papers.
• Webinars.
• Videos.
• Optimized landing pages.
• Email nurturing campaigns.
• Lead magnets.

All these elements will allow you to either :

• Build relationships with your potential customers.
• Maintain relationships with your existing customers.
• Rewarding loyal customers.
• Fixing things when something goes wrong.

Tips on how to do lead nurturing

As you may have understood, lead nurturing is a mandatory step in your marketing strategy. And to have a great digital strategy, you will need to :

• Create your persona (the portrait of your ideal customer).
• Segment your different lists of prospects (this will allow you to adapt your content according to the profiles you will find within your target).
• Do cross-channel. Don’t just use one touch point, the more you reach your targets on different channels, the more likely you are 🍀 to get known and therefore you are also more likely to sell.
• Track your KPIs (how many people came to your website? How many people made a purchase? Among all your customers, which ones come back to buy from you?) Making sure your KPIs are tracked properly will help you measure your lead nurturing campaigns and if they are effective.

Segment your lists for lead nurturing

As we explained to you earlier 👆 lead nurturing isn’t just about keeping your customers. Of course, you cultivate relationships with qualified prospects but before you get to that point, it’s important to segment your customers and leads.

In order to effectively segment your lead nurturing strategy, you can use several criteria such as :

• Industry.
• Size of the company.
• Interest level.
• Online behavior.
• Stage of the buying cycle.

Based on these criteria, you can tailor your different messages to your targets. The big bonus? You keep prospects engaged throughout the sales process.

Lead nurturing emails

When you start thinking about your customers, you will most likely contact them by email most of the time. So you will set up automated email campaigns (because it would get very time consuming if you had to do everything by hand).

When you do automated campaigns, you enter the wonderful world of marketing automation. Instead of sending a message by hand to each person taking into consideration their position in your funnel, you use a little software that saves you time and sets up automated scenarios that will apply your guidelines based on the parameters you set.

The different emails you will send are sent with a specific purpose: to feed your prospects with content that interests them, to educate them about your different products or services and to make them take action. To give you a better idea of how to set up these emails, we decided to show you how we do it at Waalaxy.

Example of a lead nurturing email sequence

#1 Lead magnet and thank you

The goal here is to leave a mark on our target’s mind with humor. The message is simple, clear and punctuated with a touch of well-dosed humor that serves to attract the curiosity of our audience.

#2 Countering a customer’s objection

Sometimes all it takes is a message to show a customer that they can trust a product. That’s what we do here. We accompany him and reassure him that creating an account on Waalaxy is totally free. We also add that he will receive a small gift in the next few days, and your prospect will stay on the lookout for what you have to offer.

#3 Checking in

We maintain the relationship with the client by asking for news and offering to find resources on our blog (the one you are on right now hihi). Because let’s face it, we feed this blog regularly to help you better understand our tool and how good prospecting works.

#4 Storytelling + social proof and bringing value

To avoid being too spammy, we waited one day to send an email to our target. Here, we don’t talk about the product anymore to avoid being too spammy about Waalaxy. Instead, we’re going to offer educational content and we’re going to quote someone pretty well-known who gives advice on LinkedIn. A way to show your prospect that you’ve educated yourself on what they might like.

#5 Putting Waalaxy in front of you: account creation goal if you haven’t done so

This is an important moment since it’s been 7 days since we sent our first email (well they received the ebook). We begin to be well present in the mind of our prospect.

#6 and 7 Continuation and end

You already have the first 5 emails that we send to our prospects when we do mail nurturing. We still have two important steps:

• Let’s give them some sample prospecting messages. The goal? Teach them how to use the tool well and set up impactful campaigns to get initial results.
• The final: the promo code to help them take a subscription. We send this one at D+9 when the premium trial version is over. We offer a discount to allow them to continue to send the same quota of messages that they enjoyed during the trial period.

And this sequence ends here. We grant you, it is already more than enough. Of course, we keep in touch with our target during various events such as Black Friday.

The role of lead nurturing in marketing

We’re going to talk about lead nurturing in particular in inbound marketing, the process that allows you to attract customers to you rather than go looking for them. But rather than give you a complete definition, we’ll just focus on our little leads.

When you do inbound marketing, you will produce content for your leads. Throughout their lifetime, you’re going to have to give them the answers to their needs, problems and frustrations. The fact that you do lead nurturing will allow you to facilitate your conversions (which is what you want in the first place, that people buy from you).

Through lead nurturing sequences as we have shown before in this article, you will generate leads and go through all the steps of the sales process. In inbound marketing, everything is focused on the fact that you have to transform a simple visitor into a loyal customer. This is the lead nurturing that is the foundation of your marketing strategy. Of course, this is not only done by email, you can also use social networks like LinkedIn. Moreover, this is a great opportunity since this is exactly what we are going to talk about now 🥳.

Using automation

As said before, to help you do lead nurturing, you can use automation software. We want to introduce you to our favorite: Waalaxy. Découvrir Waalaxy 🪐 Thanks to Waalaxy, you’ll be able to prepare 💥 your lead nurturing scenarios. Shall we show you? Here are the steps:

• On the home page, click on “start a campaign”.
• Choose “Invitation + 2 messages” (this will be a good start).
• Choose how you want to import your leads and how many leads you want to have.
• Decide if you want to put an invitation note.
• Choose the time frame after which you want to send your first message.
• Customize your first message.
• Choose the second deadline and once again personalize your message.
• All that’s left to do is launch your campaign.

Of course, you can have other uses for Waalaxy, you can also do Crm synchronization, benefit from chat with real humans, enjoy targeted message templates…

Conclusion of the article

Here we are almost at the end of this article and we could discover several things about lead nurturing like :

• Its definition (the fact of nurturing prospects in order for them to convert).
• Examples of lead nurturing and how to do lead nurturing.
• The email nurturing sequence we use at Waalaxy.
• The fact that you can do lead nurturing on LinkedIn since the platform lends itself to it.
• Using Waalaxy to help you generate leads and do lead nurturing on LinkedIn.

FAQ of the article

Ok, you will have understood, lead nurturing is an important step in an inbound marketing strategy. Your main task is to be able to convince your prospect that your product or service is the best that can exist.

What is lead nurturing?

In order to understand what is behind these terms, let’s quickly go over what lead nurturing is. It’s a term we’ll find in marketing and its purpose is to mature 🥛 your prospects with the aim of them converting to you. You will therefore produce content to attract, convert, close and retain. Your target will go through different stages, this is what we call your sales funnel.

Lead Gen

We shortened the title a bit, but it’s lead generation. And as the name suggests, it’s the means put in place to generate leads. You will try to arouse the interest of potential customers in order to increase your conversions. We have a full article on this subject, right here.

Inbound Marketing

If you don’t know what inbound marketing is, stay with us a little longer, we’ll explain what it’s all about. The goal of inbound is to attract 🧲 customers directly to you rather than going out and getting them. This is especially done in the digital marketing community. You can do this through:

• Advertising (Google Ads, YouTube Ads…).
• SEO.
• White papers.
• Videos.
• Webinars.

How to nurture btob leads ?

You’ve done your btob targeting and segmentation, great.

Now how do you do lead nurturing on a target like this? In general, the buying cycle on this target can be a bit longer than with a B2B target since they will inquire, negotiate prices and take time to take action. Therefore, with a longer cycle, you also have potentially more chances to lose your prospects along the way.

That’s why it’s important to keep in touch with them. You will therefore produce content aimed at convincing your target that your product or service is the best at the right time and without pushing too hard. Keep track of what’s going on with your prospects by measuring your KPIs and choose the channels that will speak the most to your target.

And that’s it, we’ve finally reached the end of this article, we hope it can help you better set up your lead nurturing and get your sales off the ground 🚀 !

Mélisande 31/05/2024