It's one thing capturing the attention of a potential client, it's another to convert them into a customer. Lead nurturing has been one of the primary B2B marketing goals for the past three years, and it shows no sign of changing. So what can we expect from lead nurturing in 2017?
What is lead nurturing now?
Gone are the days where the telesales team would constantly check in with their leads. Now, with the automation tools at our fingertips, prospects can be nurtured with no human interaction whatsoever. You can now identify website visitors and put them in an auto-nurture campaign without even having to call them. Or you can place a lead in a campaign depending on which links they engage within your emails.
Lead nurturing techniques already being used...
As we mentioned above, identifying website visitors needs is a technique that more and more B2B SMEs have adopted over the past three years. After all, it's a successful way to see what your prospects aren't telling you. Now that businesses are expected to anticipate their lead's needs, it's more important than ever that we identify what our web visitors are interested in.
UTM tracking is also another important tool in a marketer's arsenal. Knowing which campaigns drew the attention of your leads, and from which channel, will enable you - the busy marketer - to create more focused, targeted campaigns. By knowing what your prospects are looking for, you and your sales team can truly identify what information a lead needs in order to convert to a sale.
But what's next, we hear you cry?
So, prospects and clients want us to predict their needs before they even know what they need themselves. Alas, we don't have crystal balls and fortune-telling abilities to help us. What we can do, as marketers, is pre-empt every possible scenario within the buyer journey.
Sounds like a lot of work, right?
Hence where automation comes in. Using tools such as marketing workflows, you can create a number of email campaign journeys that are based on prospects and customers movements. For example, if you send them a weekly newsletter with three articles and they click on article A, you can then send them to an email stream solely designed around the topic of article A.
That's just the beginning of what you can achieve. Here we give 5 other workflow examples that can help you start looking at lead nurturing in a much broader, big-picture sense.
To find out more about tracking and attributing your marketing activity, book your place on the 1-day Google Analytics course.
Did you find this blog useful?
At the IDM we are passionate about educating marketers and providing resources to help advance your career.
If you are interested in enhancing your CV and upskilling, browse through our wider range of marketing courses and qualifications; from one-day short courses to post-graduate diplomas.
Our learning and development team will be happy to advise based on your needs and requirements.