Your lead nurturing process might feel painfully slow, but extraordinary patience can yield an extraordinary payoff. And that’s especially true if you’re actively working to improve how you communicate with your leads.
If you’re looking for ways to continuously optimize your lead nurturing campaigns, we’ve compiled a list of tips for your review. Consider our suggestions, decide whether they could help you polish your efforts and take action! The sooner you commit to improving your lead nurturing approach, the sooner you’ll enjoy positive results.
- Utilize multiple channels
It’s great to be an expert at a particular lead nurturing approach, but you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. For example, being a direct mail expert is great, but focusing on just one strategy guarantees you won’t generate leads from other sources.
So, which new channels should you start exploring? Many brands succumb to a fad mentality and run straight to the “next big thing” (certain social networks come to mind) instead of first determining which lead nurturing approach is likely to deliver the most promising results.
B2B telemarketing is one example of a valuable channel that many brands don’t fully utilize for lead nurturing. In a recent report on lead generation from LinkedIn’s B2B Technology Marketing Community, well over half of survey respondents reported telemarketing as an effective channel for lead generation.
If you’re not actively calling your leads, you could be missing out on new opportunities.
- Rethink lead qualification criteria
Rethinking lead qualification criteria can improve lead nurturing. At what point is a lead with whom you’ve been communicating fully qualified? Over an extended lead nurturing campaign, what activities typically occur that move that lead into qualified status?
- Avoid the hard sell
Remember: you’re nurturing leads, not trying to convince them that now is the time to buy.
B2B companies with a mature process generally know how to avoid this problem, but be mindful of how your inside salespeople or third party telemarketing vendor handles their responsibilities. If they’re being paid on commission, they might be more inclined to push for the sale rather than nurture leads over a broad period of time until the buying climate is right.
- Segment your audiences.
Segmenting audiences can help you target your message to different types of buyers. As a result, you can develop more precise lead nurturing campaigns that better align with those audiences’ critical business issues.
You’ll also be more prepared to develop content that speaks to each segment’s specific business problems. Speaking of developing content…
- Create collateral with contextual relevance
A growing body of research indicates that targeted lead nurturing produces better results. According to Marketing Sherpa, targeted emails can yield a 208% higher conversion rate when compared to “batch and blast” email marketing. Investing in custom marketing collateral works. We’ve even invested in it ourselves, launching a full-fledged lead engagement platform built upon the notion that customized content can help B2B organizations build more effective lead nurturing campaigns.
In the end, improving your lead nurturing campaigns can have a sweeping impact on your marketing and sales results. If you’re ready to implement these changes at your organization, Intelemark can help. Contact us today to discuss a test campaign and optimize the different ways you might communicate with your leads!