So you've taken our previous posts like Increase Your Leads Online Starting Today With These 5 Tips,
8 Ideas to Generate More Leads Online Today and 10 Tips to Increasing Your Leads Online seriously and you've started generating leads online, but...now what?
You're not in business to generate leads online, you're in business to generate SALES! So, how do you go about turning those leads that you've generated online into actual paying customers? Let's take a look at four Do's and four Don'ts of lead nurturing to help you start closing more deals!
Do: Segment Your Leads
You remember your mom telling you how special you are, don't you? Of course you do. And you are special. At least that's what we all want to believe. We're all unique and all want to be treated like we're the only one like us. Leads are no different. Our BS meters have gotten pretty good and we can all tell when a business shoots out an email that they sent to 10,000 other people. This is exactly why segmenting your lists is important.
Now, you can't realistically create a custom email to each of your contacts, but you can segment your lists and only provide your leads with information that they find relevant and interesting based on their past history with you. The more segmented you get with your lists, the more you'll make your leads feel special and the higher the likelihood that they become a customer.
EXPERT TIP: Utilizing personalization tokens is a must to make your leads feel special. Addressing someone by their name in an email has been shown to improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by an average of 10%.
Don't: Treat All Leads the Same
One of the major pitfalls of traditional or outbound marketing is that leads all end up being treated the same. They get the same content at the same time in the same frequency. Treating your leads like a number is a great way to get them to purchase from your competitor.
Do: Enroll Leads into a Workflow
Like I mentioned before, it would likely be a logistical nightmare if you were trying to follow up with every single contact that you have individually, especially if you're a larger business or a business that does a lot of transactions. So how would you continue to touch your contacts over the next month, six months or year? You wouldn't be able to keep up with it so either your leads would fall through the cracks and never get followed up with or you wouldn't have time for anything else!
Here's where a well thought out and personalized workflow comes in. A workflow should follow a logical pattern from your original form fill to the next goal which could be a new form fill or even directly to the sale. Your workflow can have as many or as few steps as needed, but be sure to follow the tips below when building out your workflows.
Don't: Bombard Them with Emails
Do you have an email address dedicated to junk email? We all do. The reason for that are those businesses that want to bombard you with emails as soon as you fill out a form or make a purchase. Don't be that business. Nobody likes that business.
As a rule of thumb, if you're emailing more than twice or three times in a single week you're probably emailing too much. Of course there are certain circumstances where that is acceptable or even expected, but it's important to be helpful, not obnoxious. If you think it's too much, your customer REALLY thinks it's too much.
Do: Provide Related Helpful Content
The way consumers buy now has completely changed. We want to be given helpful and educational content. We're doing our own research online already and the businesses that will win our trust and our business moving forward will be the ones that enrich our experience and our lives with helpful content related to our interests, not those that push sales with every contact.
Don't: Push Sales Down Their Throat
SALE! BUY NOW! DEALS! SPECIAL! BUY AGAIN! HEY YOU BUY FROM ME! Sound like any businesses you know? Or most of them?
It's very common, but we all know (and hate) those businesses that try to shove sales down our throat every single time they contact us. Instead of expecting someone to buy from you every time you contact them, take the time to be helpful. You'll encourage a much better relationship and even promote brand loyalty.
Do: Monitor Engagement
Just registering someone for a lead nurturing workflow doesn't mean that your job is done. It's important to monitor and measure engagement throughout the process. If you start to see that engagement is falling off at a particular point or that sales are growing at a certain time you should be making adjustments accordingly.
Nothing in this world is perfect. You can always improve on what you're doing including your lead nurturing.
Don't: Continue to Chase
As difficult as it is for some of us to swallow, not everyone is a good fit for our business. Learning to let a lead or contact die is a skill that will actually increase conversions in the long run. Learning to focus your time on the leads that engage and are of higher quality will help you close more leads into customers (or past customers into repeat customers) because you won't be wasting time with dead end leads.
So now that you're starting to generate leads, have a database of contacts, and a bunch of past customers you can start to put the information that you have to work for your business to help your business grow! It's all about how you approach your lead (and customer) nurturing.
Nurturing the leads you're generating online or working to convert your customers into repeat customers or even brand promoters is a huge emphasis for any business because it's the fastest way to grow! Ready to learn more about how your digital marketing can help you grow? GEt a HubSpot Portal Audit!
