6 Lead Nurturing Strategies & Best Practices

An effective lead nurturing strategy will help you turn more of your leads into paying customers.

But, it’s not always easy – you have to fight for your audience’s attention against other companies, and prove to your leads why it’s worth investing in your product or service.

In this article, I’ll show you six lead generation best practices that you can implement to help your business turn more leads into happy customers.

What is Lead Nurturing?#

Lead nurturing is about building trust with people who have shown an interest in your product or service. 

A lead could be anyone who has asked a question about a product on your ecommerce site, to someone who signed up for a demo of your SaaS product.

It will usually take several touches before someone goes from being interested in your product or service to pay you, so it’s vital that you establish a lead nurturing process.

6 Lead Nurturing Strategies and Best Practices to Turn Leads into Customers#

1. Use Live Chat to Answer Key Questions#

When a visitor arrives on your website, they’re looking to solve a problem. The faster you can show them how you can solve it, the more likely they are to become a customer.

Your live chat software can be a powerful tool to:

• Identify visitors who are showing buying intent
• Answering time-sensitive questions
• Collecting information about leads

In fact, research shows that live chat can improve your conversions by up to 40%.

Most live chat platforms – like JivoChat – can identify the pages a visitor is on. If they’re on your pricing page, you can see it. If they’re visiting two of your feature pages, you’ll know.

Using that information, you can then trigger a proactive workflow, such as showing a live chat popup that asks if they need any more information about your pricing plans.

If they say yes, you can ask for their contact details and keep in touch.

When the same visitor comes back to your website in the future, you’ll know who they are and can tap into your past conversation history with them, so your sales or customer service team can provide the most relevant information to them.

Chat to leads on your website with tools JivoChat

Most live chat tools can also be connected with your CRM system, so you can easily track leads through your sales pipeline and always provide each person with the most relevant buying experience.

2. Use a Lead Scoring System to Prioritize Sales Efforts#

Lead scoring is the process of assigning a score to people in your pipeline.

For example:

• +1 point for visiting a pricing page
• +1 for joining a webinar
• +2 points for talking to your team via live chat
• -1 points for telling your team the product is out of their budget
• +5 points for scheduling a product demo 

As a lead’s score changes, you can send them different email sequences, trigger different liver chat messages, and tailor every interaction to their needs.

Most lead management software and CRMs will include lead scoring tools, and once you’ve set up your system, you’ll be able to easily score leads and keep your team on the same page about which leads to target.

Your sales team will be able to prioritize their time to ensure they’re always engaging with leads who are showing strong purchase intent. 

3. Add Personalization to Your Email Sequences#

Email is one of the best lead nurturing channels available to any brand, which is why 64% of B2B marketers say their email marketing strategy is effective for meeting business goals.

There are several reasons why email is so effective for lead nurturing:

• Highly personalized: Your emails can be targeted based on criteria like your prospect’s name, location, actions they’ve taken on your website, and even their purchase history with you. Most good email software providers will let you segment your audience and create targeted campaigns for each segment, so you can create different campaigns based on the lead status of each person in your pipeline.
• Easy to automate: Email software will help you set up different campaigns that you can easily set to target specific segments of your sales leads. Once your system is in place, your email campaigns will run automatically, and you’ll only need to get involved when a sales lead takes an action you’ve asked them to, like signing up for a demo or starting a free trial. 
• You can choose your call-to-actions: With email, you can guide your sales lead through the buying process. For example, a colder sales lead may need to be nurtured more than a warmer lead. In your first email of a sequence, your call to action can be sending them to an educational resource. In the fifth email, it could be directly asking them to schedule a demo. Being able to guide your lead through the sales process with targeted call-to-actions means you control the interaction and ensure your sales team is only spending time talking to highly qualified leads. 

Creating multi-step email sequences in QuickMail

The best way to ensure your emails always stand out is by adding unique personalization.

When your leads see a personalized email in their inboxes, they’ll be happy to engage with it, either clicking a link you’ve added, or replying.

When the time comes to ask them to schedule a demo or start a trial, they’ll have all of the information to make the right decision. 

Nearly all email platforms will have detailed analytics to help you track your email metrics. You can use your metrics to easily identify high or low-performing sequences and report results to your team.

4. Use Multi-Channel Touches to Improve Engagement#

If you’re in B2B sales, you can consider using a multi-channel, high-touch approach to lead nurturing.

You could use Sales Navigator to add your prospect on LinkedIn and send a personalized InMail, letting them know you’re there if they have questions. This is effective because as well as knowing the existing information your lead has provided, you’ll see extra information about their professional background on their profile, which you can use to personalize your message.

Source: [How to Use Linkedin Sales Navigator To Generate Leads? [2022 Tutorial]](https://evaboot.com/blog/how-to-use-linkedin-sales-navigator) 

Or, if you’ve collected your lead’s phone number through a contact form or live chat, you can consider making a sales call to check in with them.

Whenever you have a new interaction, make sure to log notes and takeaways in your CRM to ensure everyone on your sales team is aware of every touchpoint a lead has had with your brand.

Adding multichannel steps is an excellent way to show your lead that you’re willing to put time and effort into ensuring they have everything they need to make the right buying decision for their business. 

5. Use Case Studies as Sales Enablement Content#

Case studies are an excellent lead nurturing asset – which is why 61% of marketers use them as part of their strategy.

Whenever you can, send your case studies and social proof to your leads.

Source: 34 Revealing B2B Content Marketing Statistics To Know

Case studies work so well as lead nurturing assets because your leads will see real success stories of people using your product or service, and can picture the results being applied to their business.

As well as that, it gives your company more credibility.

You can name-drop big-name clients, or show the incredible results you’ve generated for companies with similar characteristics to your sales lead’s company.

We’d recommend preparing a selection of case studies, each highlighting different benefits of your product or service.

For example, imagine you’re selling HR software. You could have a case study focused on how it helps HR managers find better candidates. You could have another case study focused on the ROI to the business of using your software to send to CFOs at your client companies.

You can send these to your sales leads, and they can use them to make a case for investing in your product or service to their own team.

6. Run Retargeting Ads to Keep Your Brand on Their Mind#

Running ads to your ideal customer profile is a good way to build awareness. But, if you want to increase conversions and nurture leads using ads, then retargeting is the best approach.

Retargeting is the process of showing ads to people who have already interacted with your brand.

For example, you could run retargeting ads to an audience of people who have visited key feature pages and your pricing pages.

It’s an effective way to keep your company on their mind, and convey different benefits of your product or service to your leads.

You can run retargeting ads with content such as:

• A customer testimonial video.
• A link to a case study.
• Link to a blog post focused on further educating them on their problem.

These will help nurture your lead toward a sale, and they won’t feel like you’re using ads to force them to sign up.

You can run retargeting ads on almost any advertising platform. But, in order to optimize how you use your marketing budget, make sure to focus on the channels that you know your audience spends their time on.

In Summary#

Effective lead nurturing will help you improve your lead-to-customer conversations. 

The best practices like those we’ve looked at will help you stand out in your lead’s inbox, ensuring that they’ll be happy to continue engaging with your brand on the journey to becoming a customer.

No matter which channel you choose to run your lead nurturing programs on, make sure to personalize every interaction you have, and always add value to your prospect’s life. They’ll see you as a trusted advisor and will be happy to continue the conversation, even if they’re not immediately ready to become a customer.

When they are ready, you’ll be the first person and company they turn to.