B2B Lead Nurturing Tips for Higher Conversions

B2B marketers are constantly looking for ways to fill up the top of the sales funnel with leads. However, once the lead enters the funnel do you think it is gonna get pushed ahead in the funnel on its own? Well, obviously not! Hence, to push the lead ahead in the funnel and to convert into sales you need to have a powerful lead nurturing strategy. But before that, you must make sure your B2B marketing and sales teams are aligned. This will help to form a strong foundation for your lead nurturing system. Keep reading the blog to know the best B2B lead nurturing tips for higher conversions.

Lead nurturing is the method of developing and reinforcing relationships with the leads at every stage of the sales funnel. It is a process in which you listen to your prospects and exhibit your service as a solution to their problem.

Communicating with your potential customers at every stage of the sales funnel helps to build their trust. It also aids in maintaining a connection and makes your prospects believe that you care enough to ask.

These days people are smart and proactive. Once a problem arrives they start looking for solutions to their pain points on the browser. You can take this as an opportunity and put up quality content that shows your service as a solution that they need.

B2B marketers often feel like they are hitting the brick wall when they are unable to convert leads. However, to achieve great results in lead nurturing you must stop and reflect on what is working best for you. We have given below some of the best B2B lead nurturing tips that can enhance your conversion rates.

Oftentimes you might get many leads in your sales pipeline. But you must have realized the fact that having many leads isn’t as important as having quality leads. Also, not every prospect is very serious about taking up your service. So, you must make sure that you are putting your sales efforts into the right prospects. Nonetheless, to do that you need to have a proper lead qualification process. You can divide your leads into the following categories so that you know who to prioritize more:

• Non-Qualified Leads: The easiest way to start your lead qualification process is to determine which leads are not qualified. These can be people who unsubscribed from your website or bounced back. You can put the prospects that are not qualified on this list.
• Marketing Qualified Leads: These are the people who have shown interest in your services in some way or the other. They might have visited your website and subscribed to receive your emails. These leads have a high chance of being converted to a sales opportunity.
• Sales Qualified Leads: These are prospects that are surely interested in your services. They are ready to engage with your sales representatives and want to know more information about your solutions.

You can use lead scoring techniques to determine how interested a prospect is in your business. Lead scoring is a method in which a point value is assigned to the leads based on the actions that they have taken. The higher the point value the higher the chances of the lead closing a deal. Some of the actions on which the lead scoring is based are as follows:

• Web page or website visits
• Following your business social media accounts
• Request for call back

Remember the score may change from time to time. Some of the leads may score today more and a week after less. Thus, it is important to target leads with the right content when they are at their peak and showing more interest. For this, it is important that your sales and marketing teams are in proper coordination.

Nowadays, people want everything fast and have multiple options. One thing that you should always remember is that the leads go cold too fast. Thus, it is vital for you to reach out to them as early as possible.

• According to a report by Dr. James Oldroyd, “The odds of the lead entering the sales process or becoming qualified are 21 times higher when contacted in less than five minutes versus 30 mins after the lead was submitted.”
• Another study suggests, “Only 7% of B2B companies responded to leads within 5 mins or less and more than 50% of companies didn’t respond at all.”

That means if you will have a 24/7 support team then you have a higher chance of getting more leads. Thus, you must make sure that you are following up with your leads and contacting them ASAP.

Lead nurturing can be a lengthy and cumbersome process. Therefore, you can’t always put so much time and manpower into it. You can lift off this burden from your workforce by citing which of your marketing processes can be automated. There are many marketing automation tools available in the market that can prove to be a helping hand in your business processes.

You can use email marketing automation tools to keep your leads hot. Sending emails frequently helps you to keep your leads fresh and reminds them of your business. The email marketing tools also allow you to analyze how many people clicked and opened your mail.

In today’s pandemic time, the digital world has come out as a savior for marketing. People are more active on social media than ever before. You can use social media to your advantage and make it a part of your lead nurturing strategy.

You can optimize your social media profiles and get leads from there. Providing educational and value content to your audience will keep them engaged and interested. Social networking sites such as LinkedIn or Twitter are professional websites that are used by B2B marketers to target audiences.

In the lead nurturing process, you can engage with your potential customers and know what they are expecting. You can recognize and get to know about your errors from the customer’s point of view.

Once you know what people appreciate and what they don’t like then you can make the necessary changes accordingly. Taking regular feedback from customers helps you bridge the gap. This not only makes customers feel positive about your company but helps you to better connect with them.

As B2B marketing trends are constantly changing you need to keep up with them. Analyzing your marketing tactics from time to time helps you to know what’s doing well and what’s not. You can see where you are missing out on opportunities? How can you increase the probability of securing a deal?

During the evaluation process, you must ask these questions:

• The number of leads that you are getting in a specific time period
• The type of actions that you are taking towards each lead
• TIme taken by you to respond to a lead
• The success rate of each marketing strategy
• From where are you getting your maximum leads
• How many leads are turning into customers

Knowing all these answers will let you know your growth rate. This will also help you to identify your weak points and refine your B2B marketing strategy accordingly.

A successful marketing strategy involves not only just bringing high-quality leads but pushing them ahead in the sales funnel. To do that you need to have an effective lead nurturing strategy. However, lead nurturing isn’t as easy as stealing candy from a baby. Sometimes, some leads immediately turn into sales while others might take months or even years to pass to another stage of the funnel. But with solid lead nurturing strategies you can shorten up this process and achieve your desired conversion rate.