NEWS

5 reasons why you must nurture your leads NOW

By VARINDIA - 2017-01-10

Lead nurturing enables a pathway for every individual in the business of B2B marketing to build meaningful relationships with potential clients/customers.Every organisation has an effective process and mechanism through which qualified leads are generated, what must be noted that not all of those leads make it to the final bucket. What is noteworthy is that buyers don’t necessarily become customers immediately, however what lead nurturing essentially does is, cultivating potential customers. Lead nurturing has therefore become an integral component of a successful marketing strategy by enabling marketers to communicate with their buyers’ cross-channel and cross market.

In the B2B scenario especially, where buyers are not impulsive purchasers, lead nurturing becomes even more crucial for success. If you use nurturing to maintain your recall with the prospect, you can influence buying expectation and establish your organisation as the one most able to deliver the desired output.

• 73% of all B2B leads are not sales-ready. (Source: MarketingSherpa)

• 50% of leads are qualified but not ready to buy. (Source: Gleanster)

• Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Source: Gleanster) • 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. (Source: MarketingSherpa)

• It takes, on average, 10 marketing-driven “touches” to progress a lead from the top of the funnel to the top line (i.e. revenue). (Source: Aberdeen Group)

• Buyers can be 90 percent of the way through the buying process before they reach out to a salesperson. This change to the buyer’s journey has made nurturing even more important. (Source: VentureBeat)

• 80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th contact. (Source: Sellingly)

The box on the above throws more light on why lead nurturing is critical as per the various industry studies conducted.

Win trust, not just leads

Treat lead nurturing as a journey that you would want to gift to your customer/client. By getting back to them regularly and giving them the relevant information, not only do you win them from the business perspective, but you also facilitate trust. It essentially means, the next time they have a requirement, you/your organisation will be just a call away.

“Leads” to a brighter future

No marketer will ever have a ‘no qualified lead situation’ if effective lead nurturing strategies remain a part of the plan. As hard boiled sales individuals, we tend to evaluate each situation on the amount of ROI (Return on Investment) it throws back. Though scientifically this may appear like the best possible approach, what we are missing here is the larger picture. As per Gleanster, a market research firm, on an average, 15-20% of the ‘not yet ready to purchase’ opportunities only convert to sales post lead nurturing. Every single call that you make or lead that you touch could hold great potential in future if not now.Therefore, consistent efforts in nurturing have huge possibilities of creating future conversions.

Multiple opportunities unleashed

The world of B2B marketing works largely on instinct and good networking. It is a lot like those human resource driven referral policies we have in our organisations, where we refer a good candidate who we know is looking for a job. A single lead could help open multiple doors for you if you have been successful in nurturing it. The idea is to be the evangelist of your own brand.

Great messaging and consistent efforts

The basic of every lead generation funnel is to make sure each account stays active unless it is a completely dead lead. Strong and repetitive messaging will give your organisation a brand recall of its own and will enable your prospective customers to remember you and your offerings.

The Magic phrase : Cost effective

Think of a situation, where you don’t have to mobilise your budget to hire another team or buy different data to gather leads. Create an action plan, with decent gaps wherein you periodically touch base with each of the leads, chances are newer opportunities may open up without you looking for newer contacts. Make sure you follow up with each of your lead step by step and be sure to save time, resources and money!

The path to effective lead nurturing is not a day long activity; it takes persistent toil and consistent messaging to achieve greater results and to ensure that your qualified leads do not die a silent death.