How to Build and Implement an Effective Lead Nurturing Campaign

August 27, 2020 by Christine

If you’re trying to grow your business without a lead nurturing campaign, it’s pretty much like trying to catch sand in a net. When all is said and done, you’ll probably end up with a couple grains of sand while the majority slipped through the holes.

On the other hand, having a salesperson pounce on leads in this day and age is the perfect recipe for turning people off. 

Think about it… People have all the information they could ever want at their fingertips. They prefer to do their own research and compare options before they even think about talking to a salesperson.

In a previous article called Lead Nurturing 101: How to Boost Your Conversion Rates (And Your Revenue), we provided a nice overview of the whole process. In this article, we’ll dive into some quick steps you can take to set up your lead nurturing campaign.

The Importance of Having a Solid Lead Nurturing Campaign

Content marketing is probably the most popular way to market your business today. 

But what makes your content marketing ten times more effective is having a way to capture the leads that come to your content and then nurturing them through a campaign that leads to conversions.

We could have written a whole article on the benefits of having a solid lead nurturing campaign, but we’re just going to give you 5 here…

A Lead Nurturing Campaign Builds Relationships

A solid lead nurturing campaign allows you to build an ongoing relationship with your leads in an efficient manner. It keeps them engaged and learning from you so that when the time is right for them, they’ll think of you first.

It Gives You a Competitive Advantage

Even to this day, many business owners fail to develop a lead nurturing campaign. That means you’ll gain a competitive advantage when you set one up.

It Gives You More Sales Opportunities

When you have a lead nurturing campaign working for you, you’ll have 20% more opportunities to sell to your leads. 

Honestly, though, if you do a stellar job with it, that number could probably be doubled. After all, lead nurturing campaigns can go on for years with the potential to sell to leads over and over and over again.

It Increases the Amount Your Leads Spend

A lead nurturing campaign not only gives you more opportunities to sell to your leads but also tends to produce a higher average order value.

It Allows You to Guide Your Leads 

A lead nurturing strategy provides guideposts, steering your leads toward the actions you want them to take. By not having one, you’re leaving the growth and success of your business to chance. 

7 Steps for Developing an Effective Lead Nurturing Campaign

It’s pretty clear why a lead nurturing campaign is an essential part of any successful business, but how do you go about it? 

It’s a 7-step process, and we’ve mapped it out for you here…

1. Define Your Audience

It’s impossible to create a lead nurturing campaign without first clarifying who your audience is. And your audience most likely consists of at least 2-3 customer types. 

You don’t have to just market to one customer type, especially when it comes to lead nurturing, because there is software available to help you.

For example, many email marketing platforms allow you to segment your different customer types into separate groups so that you can market to them in different ways.

If you don’t know where to begin with this step, focus on creating customer avatars.

2. Create Content That Qualifies Your Leads

Next, of course, you’ll need some high-quality content that attracts your ideal prospects to you.

And what we’re talking about here is premium content—not just an article. This could be something downloadable or content that they would need to sign up to receive, such as:

• E-books
• Whitepapers
• Webinars
• Info Kits

Depending on the email marketing software you use, you can take this step even further by assigning content scores to different actions so that the people who download more of your content receive higher scores. That way, you’ll know when you’ve got a really hot lead.

3. Set Up Your Opt-in Form & Autoresponder

Once you have your premium content, otherwise known as a lead magnet, you’ll need to create a way for your leads to sign up for it. This is typically done through your email marketing software by creating an opt-in form and an email that automatically delivers the content to them after opting in. 

Once you’ve created the opt-in form, you’ll add it to your website, either on your home page or on a landing page (or both).

4. Plan Out the Customer Journey

Then, you’ll need to go a step further and plan out the overall customer journey. Essentially, you want to answer the question, “What pieces of content would be relevant at different stages of the prospect’s journey?”

This is where you’ll get into educating them and building trust by providing way more value than they expected to receive from you! You must wow them here; otherwise, they’ll simply unsubscribe.

Your email marketing software should allow you to create the conditions that will cause your leads to engage with you at those stages. Right now, you’re just planning it out.

5. Create the Additional Content

Now that you’ve planned out what content you’ll need, it’s time to buckle down and create it. You might be looking at a mixture of emails, downloadable content, graphics, videos, or any number of types of content here. 

This is a tedious step, but it’s also incredibly worth it. (Tip: This is an ideal time to hire some outside help…)

6. Set Up Automated Email Campaigns with Targets & Triggers

Now, you’re at the point where you need to set up your automated email campaign so that the right people get the right emails at the right times. 

This is where the magic happens because it allows you to personalize your lead nurturing campaign to each person. It’s like a “create your own adventure” for your leads.

Essentially, this is like setting up a sales funnel, and when your leads take certain actions, your email marketing software will automatically move them to a different part of the funnel.

How would this work?

Here’s an example…

• You could set up a trigger so that when one of your leads clicks on a link to view a product but doesn’t purchase it, they will receive an email of a video testimonial about the product.
• Then, if they watch that video, it will send them a limited-time coupon to make the purchase.

Here’s another example…

• Once a lead has demonstrated certain behaviors that indicate they are warm, you can have an email automatically sent to them with a webinar that they can sign up for.
• The people who sign up for the webinar then become hot leads and you can set up additional triggers to move them along the customer journey. If they don’t sign up for the webinar, you can have them automatically moved into a nurture list where you nurture them over a longer period of time.

7. Fine-Tune Your Lead Nurturing Campaign

Once your lead nurturing campaign is up and running, it’s time to fine-tune it through testing and optimization. Try different offers, subject lines, and calls to action to see which ones work best. If your email marketing software has A/B testing capabilities, this part will be a breeze.

The Takeaway

Of course, your end goal is to generate sales through your lead nurturing campaign. However, as you go about doing that, you’ll be able develop a long-term relationship with your leads, improve brand awareness, strengthen your reputation, and improve your conversions. 

Because of this, lead nurturing campaigns tend to have an extremely high return on investment.  

If this all sounds overwhelming, we can help! Contact us today to discuss the possibilities!

Filed Under: Content Creation Tagged With: campaigns, implementation, lead nurturing, opportunities, sales