3 Lead Nurturing Mistakes That Are Costing You Business
What is Lead Nurturing?
Lead nurturing is a critical process in marketing. Once your company is able to create leads, you
need to work on the leads to convert them into customers who can provide you business revenue.
This requires that you develop a good relationship with the lead by nurturing them. This is lead
nurturing. It is the process of interacting and connecting with the customer to build relationships
at every stage of the sales funnel.
The importance of lead nurturing can be understood from the fact that 50% of leads you get
would not have made up their mind. This necessitates having to work on them to convert them.
The fact is that in the end 80% leads never convert to sales. Lead nurturing can help you connect
with the lead, understand their needs, and sell more effectively. It is a sure way of converting
leads to customers.
If your company can nurture leads well, you would be able to achieve 50% more sales than you
are doing. The costs involved would be lesser as you can focus on converting more of the
existing leads instead of spending money to generate more leads. When you nurture a lead and
convert it to a customer, you can expect such leads to make purchases of almost 50% more than
other leads. This clearly highlights the importance of lead nurturing.
Lead nurturing mistakes
Lead nurturing involves a lot of effort as your sales team needs to develop a close relationship
with leads to be able to nurture them effectively. The process needs to be planned and executed
in a professional way. Not doing so can end up in making you lose leads. There are some
common mistakes that your company may end up doing that would cost you business.
We present three such lead nurturing mistakes and tell you how you could overcome them.
1. Sticking to telecalling as your main contact method
Many salespersons are unfortunately still under the impression that telecalling is the best method
to contact customers. They insist on making calls to leads to move ahead with the sales process.
Things are different today from how it was years back. Telecalling no longer gives the results
expected. The problem with telecalling is that it is an intrusive method, where you intrude into
the lead’s privacy to talk to them.
People who are busy with their regular routines are not interested to spend time talking with
marketers. Once they find that you are a salesman, they may not just cut the call but block you.
This will effectively close the lead for you. The fact is that nearly 80% people prefer text
messages over phone calls. Text messages are non-intrusive. The receiver can ignore or choose
to read it at his/her convenience.
People who are busy will not like to spend time answering phone calls. They would prefer to
communicate through short text messages that take less time and allow them to continue to do
their work while communicating. A good marketer one who quickly adopts to text messaging
and uses it effectively to reach out to customers. Studies have shown that nearly half of people
respond to messages received from companies. Since people keep checking their phones
regularly, sending business text messaging to leads is the best sales strategy for you.
2. Not personalizing your interactions
When you use text messages or emails for that matter, a common mistake you could make is
sending mass messages/mass emails. This is where you use a standard message and send the
same to all your leads. This does not create a good impression and there is a possibility the
receiver may feel that he/she is being spammed.
Personalizing messages will have a powerful impact on the selling process. Most leads are likely
to ignore a message that looks like a mass message sent to thousands of people. If you can
personalize this message, it would appear as though you are reaching out specifically to the lead.
This would make the lead read your message and gives you a better chance of lead conversion.
Messaging software can help you personalize messages easily. You would have a database of
leads with their names. Just adding their names to the message can help you personalize it. The
lead feels you are addressing him/her directly and this would prove to be a good strategy. Using
information like his company name, birthday, past purchase details would help you make a great
impact through personalization. This will help you nurture your lead more effectively.
3. Be specific
When you send a message, a common mistake you may make is by sending a generic one. It is
just like mass text messaging, a generic message sounds like one. You need to be specific by
addressing the needs of the lead. A general message talking about your company is definitely not
as effective as one that directly tells the customer how your product as a solution for her needs.
To do this, you need to segment your leads. Find out what your lead is looking for. The answers
are probably available in the form the lead has filled in. You can use a messaging software to
create the database. You can use filtering criteria, so you send targeted messages to your leads.
You can then send specific messages to each customer segment. Such kind of an approach would
be the best way to nurture a lead. Generic information is available everywhere.
A potential customer wants to know if your product meets his requirements. Your message
should focus on that. By doing so, you would be able to target your leads better and the process
of lead nurturing becomes much more effective. The key to doing this is by better capture of data
and using software tools to send such specific messages to different customers.
Knowing about the common mistakes can help prevent you from committing them. You can
avoid these mistakes and use smart strategies to nurture your leads effectively.