What is a Lead Nurturing Strategy? Quite simply, lead nurturing is the process of communicating with a lead throughout the entire buyer’s journey.

And the bigger question is why is this important? According to the Online Marketing Institute, 73% of leads that are passed from Marketing to Sales are not ready to make a purchase.

So what does this mean? It means you need to bridge the gap between Marketing and Sales by implementing a lead nurturing strategy. An effective strategy will enable you to engage, educate, and share valuable content with leads as they move through the sales funnel.

Personas
Understanding your ideal customers and developing buyer personas is critical for creating quality content that acquires and retains customers. By understanding your customer’s specific needs you can tailor your message appropriately.

Lead Scoring
Scoring leads or attaching a numerical value to a lead is at the core of any lead nurturing strategy. Differentiating between quality leads and those who are just perusing your site is extremely valuable information. In order to effectively set up a lead scoring system there must be a collaborative effort between both Marketing and Sales. Together the teams will identify qualification criteria and assign point values for various activities. This system will then help marketers determine how to best communicate with the prospect moving forward.

Segmentation
Leads only want to see information that is relevant to them. Marketing campaigns need to be specifically targeted to address those needs. This is accomplished through list segmentation. Your business goals will dictate how you go about segmenting your lists. Over time and by tracking your campaigns you’ll be able to tell what types of segmentation work best for your audience.

Closed Loop Communication
To achieve success and provide customers with the best experience there must be a closed loop communication process between Marketing and Sales. Marketing needs to provide Sales with all acquired lead intelligence to help make the sale, and Sales needs to document their follow up activity in the CRM and share all feedback they receive from the customer about the marketing they received. Tracking all of this information will provide invaluable insights for future campaigns.

If your business is looking to implement a lead nurturing strategy, Measured Results Marketing can help, please email us or call 571-606-3106 to discuss your marketing goals.

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