Lead nurturing is a concept that is as old as the art of selling a product. When a potential prospect expresses an interest in your product, you’ve got a lead. Once you have a lead, then the challenge is converting the lead into a sale. Depending on the customer, or the nature of the product / service that you’re offering, the conversion process can require a lot of care and feeding. Ergo the term, “lead nurturing”.
In the age of Google and social media, the type of inbound marketing used to generate a lead can dictate how the lead is nurtured through to conversion.
A well-managed lead nurturing campaign should be designed to follow up on an initial contact that a prospect has made with your organization. For instance, let’s say someone who is interested in your product fills out a web form on your website requesting more information. Great! You’ve just landed what every online business covets: a very qualified lead. Now the goal is to convert the lead.
There are a couple of ways this lead can be nurtured to conversion. If the prospect has provided a phone number in the web form, you could pick up the phone and introduce your company and product. On the other hand, Software as a Service (SaaS) tools such as HubSpot can be used for truly targeted lead nurturing, from initial point of contact to closing the sale.
Using the proper resources and strategies for managing your social media and search engine inbound leads is vital. You wouldn’t go through the time and expense of creating and managing an inbound marketing campaign otherwise, right?
Previous posts in this series:
Online Marketing: Creating Content
Optimizing for Search
Monitoring Social Media Outlets