The Best Way To Nurture Leads: Using Expert Content

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Lead nurturing is the process of cultivating leads that aren’t ready to buy. It’s a strategy that companies use to engage with their leads, build thought leadership, and inform them about their products and services based on what their needs are and how the company can provide them with solutions. Essentially, it allows companies to keep their business and brand top of mind and build strong relationships with their leads before they become customers. But without effective lead nurturing strategies and tactics, like well-executed content marketing, the process can often feel difficult.

Why Content Is Key for Lead Nurturing

According to multiple studies in 2022, almost 80% of new leads do not result in a sale due to lack of lead nurturing. That means companies need to focus on lead-nurturing if they want to retain the leads they generate and increase their overall sales.

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As you develop leads and nurture them into paying customers, content is one of the most effective ways to engage with them at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Whether it’s a blog on how to solve a particular pain point, a white paper on a trending industry topic, or a white paper that discusses a trending industry topic, content is the best way to inform your lead and attract them to your business.

Along with content’s versatility in form and subject matter, it also provides businesses with a variety of communication channels to help reach their target audiences wherever they are. Whether they prefer emails, social media, or target advertising, content creation and distribution allows you to engage with your leads and nurture them in the most efficient and effective way.

Strategies for Using Content to Nurture Your Leads

Here are some strategies to help guide your lead nurturing campaign and improve its effectiveness:

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1. Develop Customer Personas

Developing profiles can help you figure out who your buyers are and what they might be looking for in your content. Most often, that involves creating fictional personas based on your ideal customers. That might include what industry they operate in, their pain points, and how your products or services might provide a solution to them. 

Creating personas based on this information can help you better understand the journey your customers take to get from reading or viewing a piece of content to making a purchase with your company. In turn, that can help you create more effective content to engage with them and nurture them for a future purchase.

2. Use Marketing Automation

Marketing automation can work in different ways to assist your lead nurturing strategies. For instance, you can use automation to send leads to your sales department when they interact with your content. That includes when they fill out lead-gen forms, as well as when they click on a link in your email newsletter. Once the lead clicks on these, your sales team can determine which piece of content interested them the most and how best to start a sales conversation.

Automation can also work in other ways. For example, if you promoted a white paper download or shared a piece of video content you can use strategies such as programmatic advertising campaigns to automatically buy ad space and target customers with effective marketing content. That might include promoting a white paper download or sharing a piece of video content. This form of automation can target your audience based on different factors, such as their location, what brands they’re interested in, and when they’re most likely to buy. 

You can also pair programmatic advertising with custom audience lists, such as those you get with Randall Reilly’s proprietary data, and target your audience even more effectively. That means getting your ads in front of people who are most likely to purchase your products and services to help boost your sales and revenue.

3. Personalize Your Content

When someone fills out a lead-gen form, they often give you pertinent information, such as their name, email address, and possibly what industry they operate in. Using that information, you can personalize your content to build better relationships with your leads. That’s because personalized content makes leads feel like you’re speaking directly to them and that you’ve tailored the content to fit their needs. That can result in a higher chance of them engaging with the content or making a purchase.

4. Use The Right Timing

As you nurture leads and communicate with them through content marketing, it’s crucial that you pair the content with where your leads are in their buying cycle. If your lead isn’t ready to make a purchase and you send them an email with a promotional offer, it’s not going to be very effective. Instead, use data and marketing research to determine what time of the year your leads tend to make purchases and the best way to approach them with your content marketing efforts.

Depending on the industry you operate in, the timing of contacting leads and prospects might vary as well. For example, if you sell construction or agriculture equipment, it’s been shown that buyers often think about their purchases 12+ months in advance. That means, if you know what time of the year your lead tends to make purchases, you should start to nurture them a year before that or earlier.

A great way to get these insights is by using data products like EDA or RigDig BI. These tools provide prospect profiles that you can use to uncover key information about your potential buyers. That includes what pieces of equipment they already own, what brands they prefer, and when they tend to make new purchases. Using that information, you can develop a more effective lead nurturing strategy to boost the effectiveness of your sales and marketing campaigns.

5. Measure Content Performance

As you create content for your lead nurturing campaigns, it’s important to measure its effectiveness. If it’s not performing the way you want it to or it’s not contributing to your goals, it’s helpful to change and adjust your strategies to improve their results. For instance, let’s say your nurturing strategy is to engage with your audience with personalized emails. If you notice that your open rates or click rates for emails don’t increase, you might need to alter or add to your tactics.

That might include segmenting your audience list to narrow the focus of your personalization even further. It might also include focusing on a different content strategy altogether, like social media marketing or programmatic advertising.

You Don’t Have To Do It Alone

Whatever tactic you use to improve your lead nurturing, it’s important to understand that you don’t have to do it all by yourself. Randall Reilly currently offers expert marketing services to help you capture and engage with leads more effectively. Whether you’re hoping to employ long-term content marketing solutions or you need effective data to pair with your programmatic advertising strategies, we have the tools and the expertise to help you. Contact us today to see how we can strengthen your lead-nurturing efforts and improve your marketing and sales campaigns.