If you are running a small business, you very well know the difficulties posed by not having enough leads. Your leads probably are your biggest saviors when it comes to remaining in the playing field for a long time. Thus, lead nurturing is an important task for all small business owners.
Whether your leads are interested in your products or they are not, you can always nurture them through proven methods that have often been discussed. Lead nurturing is an important activity not only for small businesses but also for medium and big businesses. In this article however, we shall only discuss lead nurturing from the perspective of small businesses.
Small business can make friends with their leads very easily
The smaller a business is, the more it depends on its leads for its future sales and profits. A small business should continue to track its leads without stalking and make sure that there is always some sort of communication. In fact, the ideal scenario is to consider your leads to be your acquaintances or distant friends, with whom you stay in touch once in a while. The best way to make friends with your leads is to go and start following them on their social media accounts.
Every human being likes his or her presence being acknowledged. We are all here in this world to be recognized and validated. When our presence is validated, we feel special. Follow your leads on their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Interact with them non-intrusively. If it is their birthday, wish them on Twitter by sending a tweet. Or like a picture of their on Facebook, without being a cryptic stalker.
Follow what leads talk about. If leads are talking about the floods in Serbia, express your sympathy and talk about how hard it is to deal with floods. If it is on Facebook, you could probably narrate an incident yourself. If it is on Twitter, you could probably tweet them a picture of survivors being rescued. Show that you care about their fears, worries and joy. This will help to build a long lasting non-business relationship.
The kind of communication that we described above is non-intrusive, non-commercial yet persuasive in its own way. When they are consistently but non-intrusively communicated sans marketing communication, people tend to notice you. They see a human identity behind the business garb. That makes them value you and thus, your business as well. Slowly, leads will begin to start noticing your products and services as well.
Once they realize that you have something great to offer to them, they will begin to buy your products and even comment about how great it is (only if your products are great enough). Make sure that you express your gratitude and continue being the non-intrusive acquaintance that you always were. They will slowly become your cheerleaders. They will begin to speak positive things about you on social media.
It is clear that leads attract more leads. When you make sure that you are being nice to your leads, they will begin to notice as well. More importantly, their friends will notice that you both are being nice to each other. Their friends and followers will end up becoming your leads. And then, it becomes your duty to start becoming their friends as well. The cycle of lead nurturing can thus continue when you begin to emphasize the human face behind the word “lead”.
When you can no longer keep making friends with your leads, you could hire a social media agency which will continue to do the work that you were doing. Businesses grow and so will their social media activities. As long as you are a small business, you can afford to do all the social media activity yourself. However, when you become successful and large, making friends with your leads should be the responsibility of a professional social media agency.
