Source: How to Improve Lead Nurturing with Social Media | Instant Lead Generation For Social Selling
Sales and selling is changing rapidly; to improve the vital “lead nurturing” sales activity we have to learn the impact social media is having on business today. Lead nurturing is an often undervalued or even misunderstood sales activity in terms of time and effort. Social media has now become the go to channel in lead generation so it is critical that every sales person understands how to improve lead nurturing on the social networks.
So what is lead nurturing? Lead Nurturing is a process of developing relationships by utilizing various social media channels. This can be done by supporting prospects with valuable, relevant and engaging information so that the prospect will become more aware of you based on your knowledge off the industry. The first goal of social selling for any sales and marketing person in improving the lead nurturing process, is to support and educate prospects with the goal that in future they will convert to paying customers.
The second goal in improving the lead nurturing process is moving a prospect from just been aware off your product and services to one where they actually considering you as a viable vendor.
Tips To Improve Your Lead Nurturing Process :
- Map Out The Prospects In The Decision Making Process :
It is important to realize that numerous larger organization have various partners involved in the general decision-making procedure, so it’s really important to know which people we have to target from top to bottom management and accordingly plan the right technique and content to reach those people. When you map out how to reach prospects or decision makers in the business, you’ll have improved your chances to nurturing that lead.
The solution for a beneficial lead nurturing system is to make the on-going communications (blogs, white papers, articles, case studies) with your prospects as relevant to them as possible. This is your chance to segment your prospect database and think about your social media content which matters most to them, targeting their specific hot topics by industry, geography and roles. Keep in mind, the more your messaging is relevant to their buying criteria the more they should react positively leading them to convert to a customer overtime.
- Be Consistent With Sharing Your Content :
It is vital to be constant on social media sites and continually sharing your content with your prospects. Today emails blast are seen as interruption marketing and will only lead to reduce message reinforcement, this could lead to a poor view of your organization. As you create your various content pieces such as white papers, case studies, videos and webinars, make sure that the content is useful plus select the correct channel (LinkedIn , Twitter , Blogs) to share that correspondence.
- Focus On Quality Content Marketing :
The solution to achieve incredible success in lead nurturing lies in creating quality content. It can be instructive, informative, educational, humorous, entertaining, inspiring. Incredible content not only achieves good response rates but also can lead on into more deeper discussions with prospects. Quality content marketing is about thinking from customer point of view. A strong rule in how to create quality content is to out-educate your competitor. While other people are out “Interruption Selling”, focusing on sharing your content through social media platform which adds valuable knowledge generate more leads. The greater part of lead nurturing can be repurposed to educate your audience through messages, whitepapers, site content, webinars, blog entries, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Build your social media marketing machine to deliver quality content as this has been proven to drive more leads and positioning yourself as a thought leader in your field. In time this content sharing will see transformations in your sales pipeline. The hard work pays off at the point when clients are prepared to engage with you in a sales discussion, and you are their first choice of contact.
- Buyer’s Buying Journey
The initial phase in developing lead nurturing procedure is to have a reasonable understanding of the buyer’s buying cycle. You should have the capacity to analyze your buyer’s buying cycle. It is the premise of any great lead nurturing effort to develop your content and messaging to match progression of the buying cycle. One of the best methods to analyze your buyer’s buying cycle is to analyze social media interactions around events or time of year.
Look for indications of brand or product interest through the buying cycle. Each social connection they make, anything they download from your website any interests they have expressed on the social media networks. You can utilize this data to see that on what buying stage they are at and publish the kind of content that engages them at this point in the buying cycle. In the situations where the average sales cycle takes a longer time to close, a lead nurturing strategy is justified regardless of the time and exertion. This is a critical step in lead nurturing converting prospects into buyer’s sooner rather than later.
When Lead Nurturing Improves
Lead nurturing is about a consistent approach to stay engaged with future customer’s. When you execute your plan effectively, you can build up customer’s awareness of your company. It is possible over time that as your content shares grow and your influence on the industry and prospects grows, the prospects will come to view you as someone to stay in touch with and keep you top in their priority list. Lead nurturing requires patient “Gardeners are good at nurturing, and they have a great quality of patience, they’re tender“. You have to be persistent in the process of building a powerful lead nurturing program. It just requires giving thought and analysis to your approach.
This implies, keeping in mind the end goal to achieve success in the lead nurturing process you will have to keep sharing your content, even with the prospects stuck in your sales pipeline. When you keep on sharing knowledge you construct a stronger association which results in pushing prospects up the pipeline and changing them into a considerably more qualified lead.
If you’re not sure whether lead nurturing should hold a place in your strategy, some of these thought-provoking lead nurturing stats just might make you rethink your stance.
1) Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Source: Forrester Research)
2) Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group)
3) Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads
4) In 2007 it took four attempt to reach a prospect to a cold call, Today that figure is eight attempts.
If the content you are sharing is not working according to the plan you created, change your content. Always try to create new or differently themed content – don’t give up keep sharing content. Go back and analyze any information on buyer’s preference and refocus your content to ensure it improves lead nurturing. Always strive to improve and learn what your prospects respond too and you will see the difference in your sales pipeline.
Sales Training Programs on Selling and Social 