Any sales and marketing team’s ultimate goal is to increase total sales volume by increasing lead conversions. Various lead generation and lead nurturing processes are used to help with this. Despite their best efforts, some businesses are unable to increase sales due to fundamental lead nurturing system flaws.
Examine them and find solutions to these core issues.
What is Lead Nurturing?
A lead is a potential customer for a company’s products who hasn’t made a purchase yet.
Lead nurturing is the company’s communication with this potential customer to convert them into actual buyers.
Lead nurturing covers the entire sales cycle, from lead generation to conversion. Also, lead nurturing keeps leads warm and interested, increasing conversions. According to Forrester Research, only 4% of B2B marketing leads are closed. Companies that properly nurture their leads can generate 50% more ready sales leads at a 33% lower cost.
Step one of lead nurturing is generating qualified leads with complete contact information.
You can manually collect contacts or use a sales intelligence platform. After finding and adding the lead contact information to the database, lead nurturing begins.
The following are the 5 common mistakes in lead nurturing and how to avoid them:
- Insufficient research
- Lack of follow-up
- Slow and ambiguous conversion
- Ignoring your nurturing results
- No prepared sales pitch
-
Insufficient research
Most marketers rush into lead nurturing without sufficient research. Without analysis, however, conversion rates suffer. Marketing teams should thoroughly research a lead’s needs, problems, and reasons for seeking a solution. Personal connections increase lead conversion rates. To make the most effective outreach, you must understand the lead’s buying journey stage.
-
Lack of follow-up
Lead nurturing takes time. B2B sales can take months or even a year to convert a lead into a buyer. In the software industry, lead nurturing examples found that 29% of businesses take 6-9 months to purchase new software. Some companies may take longer.
During this lengthy process, marketing teams must develop a planned lead nurturing schedule. Sending messages through multiple channels during this process increases the chances of getting a response from the lead by 14%.
To maximize ROI from lead nurturing, it is critical to maintain customer relationships after conversion to encourage repeat sales or subscriptions.
-
Slow and ambiguous conversion
Lead nurturing’s goal is client conversion. Even when leads respond to messaging and land on the landing page, they don’t always buy. This could be due to a slow conversion process.
Marketers must ensure their landing pages are concise. Too many redirects or steps from the landing page may deter leads. CTAs can be too vague to motivate action. Inconsistencies between lead nurturing outreach messages and landing pages can also erode lead confidence in the brand and reduce conversion rates.
-
Ignoring your nurturing results
To maximize ROI, every step must be thoroughly examined. Similarly, lead nurturing requires intense scrutiny. The analysis will show which channels converted the best long-term. Marketers can then focus on those specific channels. The best times to convert can also help you plan your marketing campaigns.
But analyzing lead nurturing is about more than just ROI. It also involves locating the issues. The stage where most leads leave the customer journey can be used to improve lead nurturing. Landing page bounce rates are a great way to spot operational issues.
-
No prepared sales pitch
A sales pitch is what finally persuades a lead to buy. A clear content strategy for sales pitches is lacking in many marketers.
Most leads don’t want to spend more than a few minutes gathering information. So in this limited time, they must be adequately informed about a brand’s products, benefits, why the lead needs them, and how they outperform competitors. This information must be planned ahead of time by sales reps and content writers.
A professional summary of all the lead’s basic information is ideal for conversion. Some established brands can get away with less information in their sales pitch because most of their leads know what they sell, but most other brands must create convincing content for their leads.