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Lead nurturing has become a vital part of a company's marketing strategy, transforming a prospect looking for a solution into a customer ready to sign. What are the key principles to apply in terms of content and customer relations, to ensure successful lead nurturing?
How does lead nurturing work?
Lead nurturing is an integral part of B2B inbound marketing. For a professional, it's a matter of letting the business customer come to you by proposing content that interests them as closely as possible, and then, once they're hooked, getting them to buy. The aim is to gradually bring this potential customer, known as a lead, to choose the proposed solution by nurturing their interest. Once the decision has been made, the lead is passed on from the marketing teams to the sales teams, who will close the deal. More targeted than the broad search for prospects, the lead nurturing strategy must obey a few rules if it is to bear fruit.
Relevant content for every stage
The aim of lead nurturing is to maintain contact and entice leads to make a purchase. However, it's important to remember that we don't send the same signals to leads who are ready to make a choice as we do to brand-new prospects. Whether by email or any other means, it's important to support your lead by taking into account their current needs. For example, a company interested in your services or products will be more interested in explanatory content if they're in the research phase. When their behavior shows that they're ready to make a choice, testimonials from satisfied customers will help them opt for you.
This permanent, personalized link guides your lead through a process known as the conversion tunnel, until the final order is placed. Emails, informative articles, videos, invitations, newsletters... The strategy is only effective if your content is truly new and responds to the lead's quest at a specific time. Marketing analysis tools are therefore essential for lead nurturing.
Which tools for lead nurturing?
Understanding the maturity of your leads is essential if you are to address them with appropriate content. To this end, lead scoring is an invaluable asset. This analysis tool is based on lead behavior. Emails or articles read, clicks made: everything is examined and results in the calculation of a score. A sufficiently high score indicates that the lead is ripe for entrustment to the sales teams.
Marketing automation is another essential tool for successful lead nurturing. Thanks to software based on customer data segmentation, customized content is sent automatically, freeing marketing departments from time-consuming individual follow-up. The greater the number of leads, the greater the gain in responsiveness.
To read Le role du storytelling dans l’email marketing B2B
Last but not least, performance indicators tell you about the effectiveness of your lead nurturing and the relevance of your content. These data include success and failure rates in terms of sales or marketing follow-up. Depending on the results, you may need to adjust your strategy and modify the content sent to your prospects.
Attract new prospects!
Turning a prospect into a firm customer is part of the conversion process, where the relevance of content at a key moment is of the utmost importance. But lead nurturing doesn't stop there. Once a sale has been made, marketing teams need to take charge of leads again to build loyalty and, above all, work on the relationship so that they become your most loyal ambassadors, ready to generate new leads... and new future customers!
