Lead nurturing involves a number of marketing strategies that try to convert people into buyers or customers. This obviously does not happen overnight and it is important for marketing teams to nurture those whom they identify as leads. While gathering leads and generating leads are themselves huge tasks, it is a bigger task to nurture those leads that they have in their database.
Writing emails once in a month and then forgetting all about it is simply not going to do the trick. There will need to be a more extensive and complex strategy in order to nurture those valuable leads. For this to happen, some sort of automating is required. Otherwise, it will not be possible to gain control of the leads to converts pathway. There are many ways with the help of which you can nurture your leads in an automated and regular manner.
It may come as a surprise that such as a delicate and fragile relationship can actually be automated. In the world of marketing, it is always a combination of automation and direct human-to-human interaction. You must always bear this in mind before setting forth to automate your lead nurturing. Otherwise, you might end up looking like a salesy robot that will ultimately drive away leads.
The answer to the titular question of whether one can automate lead nurturing is a resounding ‘yes’. However, care must be taken to ensure that this automation is not abused or misused by marketing teams. In this article, let us take a look at how automation can help you with your lead nurturing process.
How can an automation tool help in lead nurturing?
What is really required is an automated and multi-step campaign that effectively catches the imagination of your precious leads. Using automation technology will help you to better understand your leads and thus, come up with a strategy that will help you to nurture them. It is all about remaining relevant in a time when too many companies will be trying to nurture your leads while you try to do so yourself.
Thus, the key is to come up with an automated lead nurturing strategy that is effective and is not about simply staying in touch. Automation tools should be programmed to nurture your leads in such a way that situation where leads are likely to make a purchase are recognized the real-time so that they can be contacted and further persuaded to make that final decision to purchase. All this needs to happen without looking like you have set up an automation system.
The trick is to respond immediately and automatically to every behavior that comes across as sales-ready. This might include visiting certain web pages on your website that are product oriented or these leads talking on social media about making a purchase. For this, you need a software program that is vigilant and always aware of your leads’ online behavior.
Understanding the multiple ways in which a lead nurturing tool helps you
An automation tool helps you to reach every sales lead personally and promptly, leading to a more positive opinion about your company. This is not possible when humans do the same job. A good automation tool also helps you to come up with a good email marketing strategy that is customized to groups of people, rather than everyone at once.
These emails can be written based on the demographics and psychographics of the leads. You might also be able to customize landing pages with information that is most likely going to attract your leads. This can be done with the help of previous communication with your leads, which too is a form of lead nurturing.
Similarly, forms and registration pages can be customized based on your leads and each lead may get a page that is customized to their liking. This helps to increase sales and enhance customer satisfaction. Each time a lead opens, reads or clicks on something or responds to your call to action, you can choose a different action from your side to take place. This kind of streamlining is not possible if these activities are not automated.
At the end of the day, automation helps you to measure and analyze success. Measuring helps you to assess ROI and analytics will help you come up with better lead nurturing techniques. At the end of the day, automation certainly helps you to strike a better relationship with your leads, a relationship that might transform into a long-term customer relationship.
The relationship between social media management and lead nurturing
With the influence of social media increasing, it is important to stay abreast with all the social conversations about your company. Whenever someone talks about your company in a neutral or favorable manner, that person is a lead. You need to ensure that this individual or entity is nurtured in the future on social media and also in private email communication. So, use social media automation tools to recognize social communication and conversations about your company and begin to nurture those who are talking about you. This is something that is not possible to do so with manual tools.
Looking ahead
Certainly, with more people using the Internet than ever before, the need for an automating lead generation will increase. You will need to follow up the automated lead generation with a genuine human to human communication as well. With an increasing number of people communicating online and on social media, you will not be able to hire extensive social media teams to keep track of all the communication that takes place.
An automation tool will help you to sort out leads and choose the ones that are most likely to convert. These leads can be further nurtured with the help of your staff contacting them directly. At the end of the day, we must realize that lead nurturing is neither fully automated nor fully manual. It needs to be a symbiosis between the two methods.
This will certainly help you to convert as many leads into sales as possible. Nurturing is not easy but the effort that you will put into it will single-handedly determine your success in converting leads into buyers.
