Lead Nurturing: Fostering Lead Generation For Your Business

Understanding the necessity of lead nurturing

Lead generation is one of the most important and strategic components for successful sales and marketing strategies for any business. While lead generation is all about capturing new customers in the market, it is Lead Nurturing that is the precursor for the conversion of real sales figures.

Lead nurturing is the process of building and maintaining relationships with potential customers through their journey across the sales funnel. Research done by Ascend2 shows that 53% of brands find that their leads require long cycles of “nurturing” to turn into a successful sale. Keeping that in mind, a tactical fusion of both, lead generation and nurturing, is key to ensure positive sales.

Before making a final purchase decision, customers can today access multiple options for most products or services. So, even if a customer initially pays interest in your product, he/she remains reluctant given the choice of options. This is where lead nurturing plays a major role. Its main attempt is to minimize this deviation to its minimal point. 

Best practices of lead nurturing for business effectively

Lead nurturing is all about building a relationship with potential leads and thus following up on those leads before pushing a sale onto them. Here are some best practices that your business can follow to nourish leads to conversion:

Create clear knowledge about your product

By tracking a potential buyer’s journey through their discovery of your brand can give you a lot of insight into their intent to buy. This can help in pitching the relevant product information to potential buyers. Communication can be initiated through emails and even text messages with the customer at regular intervals. By effectively following up with potential leads, a brand should be able to create a need for the product or service in the customer’s mind.

Follow up with information as per individualized needs

A lead nurturing strategy should be grounded in the personalized interest of each customer. Using the insight from the customer journey will also allow for better knowledge about what the buyer is looking for. When a business caters to the particular needs of buyers, they are more likely to be responsive, and eventually, buy from a business that knows what they want.

Beat the clock

Your business should start building rapport with leads as soon as a customer shows interest in your products; be it over your website, or even a cold email campaign.  Again, for quick nurturing of business leads, both Sales and Marketing Teams should ideally work together. A mutual agreement of a defined stage at which a lead would be handed over from Marketing to the Sales team increases the chances of better relationship building.

Use multiple touchpoints

In order to build a winning lead nurturing strategy, companies must use multiple touchpoints for communicating with potential buyers. These touchpoints, once integrated will make interactions smoother with the customer. A report by Demand Gen based on the 2015 Lead Nurturing Benchmark Study indicates that only 49% of organizations include less than five touchpoints in their lead nurturing campaigns. So there is enough room for improvement here. An effective lead nurturing exercise as a business process is the fuel to a business in terms of revenue streams.

Lead Generation vs Lead Nurturing

Both lead generation and lead nurturing are important components of a successful marketing strategy, but they serve different purposes and are executed differently.

Lead generation

Lead generation is the process of capturing the interest of potential customers and converting them into leads. The focus of lead generation is on the top of the funnel, where the goal is to attract as many prospects as possible. This is typically done through tactics such as paid advertising, social media marketing, and content marketing.

Lead nurturing

Lead nurturing, on the other hand, is the process of building a relationship with those leads and guiding them towards a purchase. The focus of lead nurturing is on the middle of the funnel, where the goal is to educate and inform leads about the product or service and to establish trust with them. This is typically done through tactics such as email marketing, personalized content, and targeted offers.

One of the key differences between lead generation and lead nurturing is timing. Lead generation is focused on capturing leads as early in the buying process as possible, while lead nurturing is focused on building a relationship with leads over time.

Another difference between the two strategies is the level of the personalization involved. Lead generation is typically less personalized, as the focus is on attracting as many leads as possible. On the other hand, is highly personalized, as the goal is to build a relationship with each individual lead and provide them with information and offers that are tailored to their needs and interests.

While there are differences between lead generation and lead nurturing, they are both important and should be used together as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. Lead generation is necessary to attract new leads and expand the top of the funnel, while lead nurturing is necessary to build relationships and guide those leads towards a purchase.

Successful marketing campaigns often incorporate both strategies in a seamless way. For example, a company may use targeted ads and social media posts to generate leads, and then use email marketing and personalized content to nurture those leads and guide them toward a purchase.

Fostering and nurturing potential leads

Both lead generation and nurturing are very sensitive processes. And it takes intense effort to convert a query into a qualified lead and finally into a paying customer. However, lead nurturing carries more weight than lead generation. This is because it directly focuses on customers that have genuine potential rather than just beating around the bush. Despite this, when businesses take both parameters hand in hand with befitting strategies, a lead that enters into the top of the sales funnel can be easily converted into a successful sales figure.

According to the same study mentioned above, 50% of marketers consider that increasing lead-to-customer conversation is their biggest challenge and their top priority. Thus nurturing your valuable business leads definitely needs a professional approach. So outsourcing it to an experienced partner will be a great business idea. For best results, the outsourcing partner should be a provider of outbound call center services.

Maxicus has been a reliable name in this prospect for more than a decade. We are serving as a trustworthy strategic business partner for several globally renowned brands. The team at Maxicus has gained expertise in both inbound and outbound support services, across digital as well as legacy channels. Find more information about how you can power your business’ revenue growth here.