Whether you have a lead nurturing strategy in place or you are about to incorporate this strategy in to your lead generation activities, now is a good time to evaluate your nurturing approach.
A quick recap of the definition of lead nurturing: In a complex sales cycle, nurturing is a relationship-building approach utilizing multiple media to provide relevant information to prospects and engage in an ongoing dialog until qualified prospects are deemed “sales ready.” A smart nurturing strategy shortens the sales cycle and improves return on investment from lead-generation activities, so it is important to reconsider or re-evaluate your nurturing strategy frequently.
If you read about the effectiveness of well thought out lead nurturing efforts, you may have come across data that suggests some lead nurturing programs can yield anywhere from 15% to 200% in additional, new qualified leads. Close ratios are higher. Sales pipelines open up and are stronger. Average sales cycles are shorter. One company determined that its nurtured prospects bought from 100% to 250% more than those that were not nurtured. Lastly, many nurtured prospects cited greater overall positive impression of the company. Bottom line is that a properly planned lead nurture strategy can drive results.
Ardath Albee, a known B2B Marketing Strategist, recently outlined some basic evaluation criteria to evaluate your lead nurturing efforts. These are great thought starters and should be discussed among your team responsible for lead nurturing.
3 steps for evaluation that will help you create a baseline for building an effective nurturing program.
First – About your customers:
- Who buys from us?
- Why do they buy from us?
- What do they need to know to make a purchase decision?
- Who influences our buyers?
- What could stop them from choosing to buy?
- Is one kind of customer more ideal than another? Why?
- What’s your best foot-in-the-door sale?
Second – Evaluate your prospect database:
- Who’s in it?
- Did THEY opt in or did YOU opt them in?
- How do the prospects in your database match up with what you know about your customers?
- How are you getting more prospects to opt in?
- When’s the last time your database heard from you?
- What topics have they responded to?
- What’s your opt out rate?
Third – Audit Your Website:
See Ardath’s recent blog post about how to audit your web pages.
- How much information on your website matches the answers to the questions in the About Your Customers step above?
- What can be improved?
Hi Tom,
Thanks very much for the references to my blog post. I’m glad to have found your blog – good stuff here!
Ardath