Unless you're completely new to the B2B marketing game, you're probably familiar with lead nurturing. Lead nurturing campaigns are those sets of educational emails that are released over an extended time period, with the aim of nudging your buyers along their buying journey as they get ever nearer to being ready to buy.
For B2B marketers understanding how to do lead nurturing correctly is vital because...
Here are the top 4 mistakes that B2B marketers should avoid when it comes to nurturing their leads:
Often the goal is "I want as many customers as possible as soon as possible", but having a goal that's too generic makes your nurture campaigns impossible to measure. Instead, refer to your sales and marketing funnel, and determine some clear, realistic goals that you can aim for. Speak to your salesperson if necessary.
Brainstorm goals that are:
For example, you can say "I want to increase my customer base by 10% in 6 months using a lead nurturing campaign."
It's important to have specific numbers and information on time. That way, in 6 months, you can clearly identify if and by how much you have exceeded or missed the goal's mark.
Do you even know who your personas are? To know them well, you need to understand their:
You have to seek to understand them in a deeper way so your campaigns are personalised to the needs of each persona and not a faceless market segment. If you make your email copy generic and bland, then your messaging won't resonate with your target buyers.
Many B2B marketers make the mistake of pushing content that their buyers are just not ready for, causing their campaigns to be ineffective. For example, just because someone downloaded an informative ebook doesn't mean they're ready to free trial your software.
There are basically 3 stages that your buyer goes through:
Best practice dictates that you refrain from mentioning your product/service until they are well into the consideration stage.
Putting yourself in your buyer's shoes can be as simple as asking yourself the following questions:
Each email needs to contain a natural next step to take. Otherwise, your email becomes one of the many spammy messages delivered to their inbox daily. It will barely leave an impression - or if it does, it's likely to be a negative one.
You need to adapt your content and message around your buyer's needs and what stage they're at in their buying journey.
B2B marketers make one of the following mistakes when it comes to nurture campaign timing:
Too eager to batch and blast? People have tons to look at in their inbox so pull it back to 1-2 emails a month. Anything more than this can serve to annoy your prospects (and you really don't want to do that).
Too scared of coming off as spammy? Consider what a webcast by CleverTouch revealed:
You have no reason to fear hitting the 'send' button if what you're sending your prospects is truly useful to them at the stage they're at in their journey.
In the end the best policy in striking the balance between "too often" and "not enough" is to look at your analytics and listen to what your buyers are telling you. Every industry and job role has a different appetite for information.
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