One of the largest foundations of lead nurturing when it comes to online marketing is through B2B companies, who are offering their services to other businesses and making things simpler for everybody involved.
However, with so many B2B businesses out there creating their own lead nurturing campaigns and trying to draw in the same kind of customers from the same kind of industries, how exactly can you make your own mark in a specific niche and convert leads into loyal customers?
It might sound like a challenge, but once you know the basics and create a simple automated system, everything begins to fall into place and simply starts working. But first, a little background on the nature of B2B lead nurturing ideas and how they work in today’s world.
The Way of Lead Nurturing Lead
nurturing has come a long way, especially with the advent of the Internet and how it has changed the way we communicate with one another and discover brands.
Being online means being exposed to so much more and gives many more options and choices to the customer, which means businesses need to really be on their toes in order to capture the most sales figures for their own goals.
Lead nurturing, however, goes beyond the usual sales gimmicks that have dominated other forms of media–and this is especially true for B2B lead nurturing ideas that so many B2B companies are now utilising.
Instead of being this huge brand entity that has no human or emotional connection with their target audience, lead nurturing wants to source these cues–such as visual or a great customer experience–in order to help leads become customers in the near future. Instead of going for quantity, lead nurturing wants to go for both quality and quantity when it comes to a target audience.
Now, B2B lead nurturing can be easier or even more difficult than catering to consumers, depending on the product and the approach you’re taking to get those leads. If you’re experiencing an uphill battle when it comes to your leads, then it might be time to try on the following B2B lead nurturing ideas instead.
Produce Relevant Content
This is the staple, the king of all rules when it comes to B2B lead nurturing, and will only continue to grow in popularity and necessity. Content marketing, or the practice of using content such as blog posts and video, goes hand-in-hand with lead nurturing because it helps draw in the lead with relevant and highly topical content that they want to have.
This is especially true when it comes to B2B dealings, which require a “show me what you can do” mentality to marketing. Consumers don’t need specifics, but businesses do, which is where highly engaging content comes into play.
If you’re not taking the time to invest in a business blog, white papers, video marketing or other forms of content, then you need to begin doing so immediately. You want to become a thought leader in the niches you’re trying to sell to, which can be successfully achieved through informative and entertaining content.
Also, content can be dropped into all of the stages of your sales funnel with varying degrees of information and engagement. For your first level, you can simply offer a free white paper that intrigues the lead into going deeper and eventually becoming a customer through infographics, branded blog posts, webinars, or even a demonstration of your product. With content and B2B lead nurturing, the opportunity is endless.
Make Them The Focus
It’s a well-known fact that people like talking about themselves. It shouldn’t be considered self-centered or selfish, it’s just a way of how people socialize and interact with one another.
It is also a great tactic to include into your B2B lead nurturing ideas because the customer wants to be the focus of your lead generation and sales funnel (even if they don’t quite know it yet).
Going in the same direction as the first idea of creating relevant content, you want to be able to spark something of substance with your leads. This can include a live feed of frequently asked questions, having an open forum for customers to speak on their opinions and concerns, encouraging feedback, and just generally making the lead front and centre instead of entirely focusing on lead generation goals.
Because when you’re catering to the lead, the goals will fall into place just as easily and won’t feel like a chore.
Another way to look at it is that you’re addressing pain points in your lead’s day-to-day routine, not just a major one that their business faces and needs to fix. You want to be able to have the answers right at the get-go, instead of trying to make false promises just to sign them on.
Tell Relevant Stories
Are you noticing a pattern in relevant content? Here’s another one for you: being able to connect with the leads through stories shared on social media and your sales funnel.
B2B lead nurturing ideas such as these are already quite common, but aren’t you more inclined to trust a business that has proof of helping one of their customers and showing it off publically rather than saying nothing at all?
This is even true for the business world. People want results, they want proof, and they want to know that they are going to get something worth their time and money.
This means being able to mine for customer data and creating case studies, asking for testimonials, or simply encouraging open communication about your wonderful product on social media sites you are active on.
Bigger brands on Twitter retweet positive experiences customers have with their business and B2B companies need to constantly talk it up about how they have helped people fix their problems and have the results to prove it.
Besides on-going communication and making the sales funnel and process as easy as possible for your leads to go through, these are some of the best practiced and sure fire B2B lead nurturing ideas for a company looking to see more out of their sales goals.
All it takes is a little tweak and change to the system, but it’s enough to see a different world of lead nurturing and a much better retention of customers in the near future.