The Most Pervasive Problems in Lead Nurturing

Sales teams in all organizations spend hours agonizing over strategies to scale up their sales volume. Various techniques are used to convert prospective buyers into paying customers. But an important aspect that is often ignored is the process of lead nurturing.

What is lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing is a form of outreach to keep leads warm. Even if there is no conversion at present, lead nurturing converts them into paying customers in the future. 15% of B2B organizations do not have any lead nurturing systems. The rest have lead nurturing systems but frequently cannot get effective results because of common mistakes. Let us look at some of the most common lead nurturing mistakes and what you can do to avoid them.

Common mistakes in lead nurturing and their solutions:

Giving up too quickly 

Sales reps often tend to remove contacts from the lead nurturing lists if they do not make any progress within a few days. But lead nurturing has to be a long-drawn process. To visualize how long the lead nurturing campaigns need to be for each lead, track each lead’s customer journey.

SalesIntel provides technographics and firmographics for lead scoring so that sales reps can always be aware of the exact position of a lead in their customer journey. You can then create a schedule of outreach long enough to convert the maximum number of leads into buyers.

Customers who are just in the initial stages of product research may require months of outreach before a conversion. On the other hand, customers far ahead in their customer journey may be converted with a single outreach message.

Reacting too slowly

If a business takes too long to initiate outreach after the initial interest shown by the customer, it leads to a dramatic drop in the efficacy of the outreach campaigns. According to research published in Harvard Business Review, there is a 400% decrease in the chances of lead conversion if sales reps wait 10 minutes for the first outreach instead of just reaching out within 5 minutes. This means that sales reps need to have accurate lead contact data at their fingertips all the time.

SalesIntel provides human-verified accurate direct dial numbers of customers so that sales reps can connect with customers as quickly as possible. SalesIntel customers have seen their call-to-connect ratio jump from 9-10% to 15-20%, an almost 100% increase.

Lead nurturing is not drip marketing 

Many marketers often confuse drip marketing and lead nurturing strategies. While drip marketing is an effective style of connecting with customers, it is not adequate to convert leads into customers.

In drip marketing, businesses send pre-scheduled emails with product information and offers to their prospects. But a lead nurturing campaign has to be more nuanced as it deals with qualified leads and wants to start a sales conversation. So lead nurturing cannot be just incentive-based and informative. It has to understand the lead’s pain points and then answer how the products/services can resolve such issues.

Focusing on only one channel

Lead nurturing is a difficult process because the sales and marketing teams have to convince contacts that their product/service is superior to competitors. This is no easy task, and focusing on only one communication channel is not enough to grab the lead’s attention. Every lead has different preferences of where they like to do their pre-purchase research. Targeting omnichannel communication ensures that all leads come across the outreach messages and are more likely to convert.

Research claims that by 2022, almost 50% of companies will still not have unified customer engagement channels. This can will lead to a disjointed and unsatisfactory customer experience. So if you are keen to get ahead of your competitors in terms of sales volumes, now may be the perfect time to organize your omnichannel outreach campaigns.

Unappealing content

When customers do their online research before making any purchase, they start to receive marketing messages from multiple sources. Hence, it becomes imperative for brands to create engaging content to hold the lead’s attention. Adequate market research into the ideal customers and demographics of interested leads can help create the most engaging marketing content for different leads.

SalesIntel’s B2B contact data includes research into information and news about different prospective companies to help make better marketing content.

Not conducting internal reviews 

The bottom line for any sales or marketing team is ensuring the maximum ROI from their campaigns. The expectations from lead nurturing efforts are similar, but this is only possible if the organization avoids complacency and constantly keeps working to improve and maintain its lead nurturing efficiency.

Organizations need to conduct internal data analysis to find which times are most effective for sales calls, which type of content gets the most response from mail list contacts, which outreach channel has the most conversions, etc. This will make it possible to create the most effective sales strategy for each business depending on their clientele and their sales team’s strengths and weaknesses.

How SalesIntel can help

According to customer testimonials, SalesIntel increases a company’s database of contacts by 15 times. Companies gain a huge number of customers whose responses can be analyzed by proper sales intelligence tools. This allows you to inform future sales goals and campaigns based on actual data. We also re-verify their contact data every 90 days to ensure that the database stays fresh and accurate.

SalesIntel provides companies with a huge volume of contact data that they can use to apply their lead nurturing strategies.

No matter how many contacts a sales team has or how much they spend on their lead nurturing campaigns, results will not be satisfactory without rectifying these frequent mistakes. The schedule of lead nurturing outreach, its content, and its mode of communication has to be carefully planned and segmented for different types of customers.

Customers have access to a lot of information and choices before making their purchase. Simple marketing strategies are no longer enough to build any brand awareness or brand loyalty.

Long-term customer relationships have to be forged slowly with the help of lead nurturing systems. These systems need to be personalized and targeted towards specific customer needs and preferences. Business data analytics also play a significant role in this process. They give companies information on whether they are on the right path and provide them with scope for correction.

SalesIntel’s data-led lead nurturing campaign help establish a brand identity and create a community of loyal customers.