There are so many components that need to work together in order to generate new business: marketing and advertising, lead generation, lead nurturing, follow-up, and then eventually the sale.
Generating leads takes a lot of time and money, yet so many organizations drop the ball when it comes to nurturing their leads. After working so hard to collect leads don’t let them fall through the cracks. Every prospect should be placed into a sales funnel that nurtures the lead until he or she is ready to purchase and convert into a sale.
It is very important that you have a well though out lead nurturing system in place for every prospect you capture. Begin by providing them with useful information and introducing them to your product or service and the benefits it provides. Then begin to address potential questions and progress into more specific details about what you are selling. Nurturing your leads is such an important process of your online marketing effort, so make sure you avoid the following five mistakes.
1. Ignoring Your Leads
It is amazing how many businesses spend so much time and money attracting leads and then just let them sit idle in their contact management system. If someone opts in to your lead funnel then give them the attention they deserve. They are obviously interested in whatever you are selling so give them the opportunity to purchase by providing education on your product or service. Continue to provide them with information and give them the opportunity to purchase from you. If you ignore them and let your leads sit idle they will seek out another option.
2. Sounding Like an Advertisement
Do not communicate to your leads in a way that makes them feel like they are being sold every time you reach out. Consumers get hammered to death with spam and advertisement emails, so make sure that your email communication with them stands out. Make them look forward to receiving emails from you. Provide them with informative and useful information and you will gain their trust. It is important to build trust as you nurture your leads, as this will make them comfortable to do business with you once they are ready.
3. Not Split Testing Your Lead Funnel
It is very important to split test your lead funnel with different email copy and offers. You could have the best leads but a horrible email nurturing system in place. Split testing allows you to quickly see what works and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to test different styles of email copy.
Split your leads into groups and send each one different versions of your emails at each stage. Keep track of the best performing ones and continue to adapt and test. When you have a clear winner then send out different versions of that copy and continue to test. You should always want to increase your conversion rate, and testing is the only way to make improvements.
4. Using Industry Terminology
Every business has special terms and language that someone new or outside of your industry is not aware of. Avoid using terminology that isn’t common knowledge. Too many businesses try to sound intelligent and thing that using fancy terms will make them sound more credible when in fact they are actually turning leads away because they aren’t fully connecting with the information. Your communication to your leads should be easy to understand for everyone.
5. Going Overboard With Automated Software
There are so many automated marketing programs and services and many businesses go overboard and sign up for everything under the sun. This ends up hammering the leads from every direction and it looks very spammy. All this will accomplish is getting a high unsubscribe rate from your lists and the leads finding another company. Every business has different lead nurturing needs, so take the time to create an effective nurturing funnel that educates your leads. If they feel like they are being bothered and your communications reeks of pushy sales then they will lose interest instantly.
Proper lead nurturing is responsible for converting prospects into sales, so make sure you create an effective lead funnel system. This takes a lot of data and testing to perfect and it is an ongoing process. As your business and technology change you need to constantly adapt to stay ahead of the curve.