How to Create a Successful Lead Nurturing Campaign?
As per various studies on lead nurturing campaign, one thing is pretty evident that at least 57% customer decision process is made even before getting in touch with the sales. In other words because of their extensive research, prospects are now well aware of the product, services as they kind of shortlisted the product which they are almost ready to buy. They identify and evaluate the product by their own prior to getting in touch with the sales team.
This is a clear indication that if you dont have online presence, most probably the prospects wont be able to research or know about your offered products & services. Thats where your competitors thrive by capturing your lost traffic by building enough content to drive prospects in. Making an impression or reaching out to prospects explaining them about products, services either via online content or emails, are an essential part of sales cycle.
Creating lead nurturing campaigns which are to the point with clear call-to-action are equally as important as choosing the right marketing automation tool. Lead nurturing is all about understanding the needs and timing of the prospects.
As per studies 50% of qualified leads are prospects who are not immediately ready to buy.Pressing too hard poses threat of losing both the prospect and relationship since they are not ready to buy at that particular time-frame.
1. Setting up Lead Nurturing Campaign
Setting up your immediate and long term goals should be done even before you create your lead nurturing campaign. Marketing automation systems like Nurture can help you define how you want to achieve your targets, goals by providing right set of essential features to create a successful lead nurturing campaigns.
With the right marketing automation system in hand, understanding what your prospects are looking for should be next on your list. Insight on what customers are searching along with the format they follow (online content, email, RSS etc) would be a plus in defining a successful lead nurturing campaign. Following are some key points that can take you a step closer towards successful lead nurturing campaigns.
2. Identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) In order to identify key performance indicators and developing persona's for your target audience you have to look for insight. Modern marketing automation systems are great in capturing useful insight that your prospect share while browsing your website. Such information is handy to determine their intent, context and requirements. Also, plan how to provide content to prospects who love to evaluate product on their own.
3. Drafting a Solid Lead Generation Plan of Action
To differentiate away from an average lead nurturing campaign to a successful lead nurturing campaign, you have to hold both sales & marketing team accountable. There should be clear guidance on:
- Lead quality marketing team is supposed to come up with
- How your sales team will pitch and touch base
- Follow-up duration and intervals
Moreover, Marketing automation system should aggressively alert sales team about any or all renewed interests who were gone cold.
4. Horses for Courses Bringing the right team is very important for the entire life cycle of your sales & marketing efforts. Great content writers, curators, designers and marketing automation experts can put your lead nurturing process on fast lane. Their experience and commitment not only grasps key indicators but also define the strategy to beat the competition by staying one step ahead. If hiring and retaining such great team is too much for you, there are lots of agencies around which can do the needful for you.
Defining a great campaign is the key to its success, a poorly designed email campaign with no clear call to action or badly written content cannot be made successful by any marketing automation tool in the world.
5. KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid)
Simpler and clear cut message to the prospect performs much better than a complex system which requires prospect to spend some time to grasp. E.g a lot of marketing campaigns by share market trading agencies invite prospects to sign-up for their services. But, when customer lands on those complex landing pages with lots of charts, trends and no clear cut call to action, they leave the page immediately. The entire flow email design to landing page to signup needs to be simple, clear intriguing customer to take some action. Keep in mind that customer dont read they scan, click through rate is not a success indicator in majority of the cases.
6. Fault Tolerance
No matter how great the lead nurturing campaign is, no matter how well you are targeting your audience; still there are times when your efforts do not bear fruitful results (your campaign fails). Dont get disheartened instead try to gain useful insight from your failure. Questions like whether my marketing automation system didnt worked, prospects were not interested in white papers, free downloads or what was the real reason for it to fail. There are always some reasons which make or break your campaign success rate. Try to figure out what works best and avoid the ones which failed in past attempts.
7. Keep an Eagle Eye on Campaign Performance
Any lead nurturing campaign lives and breathes, shrinks & grows and requires occasional adjustments to cope up with the latest changes and best practices. This evolution is the key to success which should be constantly measured. Sometimes, take risks and be flexible towards your approach.
Read latest changes and developments that are happening in the campaign marketing arena to increase your campaigns success rate. Give all ears to your peers, friends and others who are in the same industry to capitalize on fresh ideas you get.
