Lead nurturing and marketing automation – what’s it all about?

So you have reached the stage where you have a solid PR and marketing strategy in place, driving people to your website and collateral, and therefore have built a substantial community of individuals with a genuine interest in your business – now what?

They’re very unlikely to be ready to buy right now, so how do you keep them interested and engaged in your offering, without hassling them with sales calls within minutes of their first download?

Whilst tracking visitors on your site and celebrating the rising web traffic and content downloads is step one, you now need to consider how you are going to develop your relationships and nurture your leads. After all, what use is a name stored in a database unless it converts to a lead?

What is required is a longer term plan which continues to engage individuals that have shown a level of interest in your messaging and/or service offering, such that when they reach the stage of making a purchase, probably several months later, you are still visible and valued. How? Use the regular (but not too frequent) and personalised offer of further relevant, useful content to develop a dialogue and a long-lasting relationship with prospects. This is Lead Nurturing.

There are several ways in which you can manage the process of lead nurturing depending on company size and requirements. Whilst a simple spreadsheet which holds all the details for the prospects may seem appealing, the manual process of regularly checking when they were last contacted can be a laborious task. Paired with the difficulty of keeping track of an ever-increasing prospect list, it soon becomes apparent that a spreadsheet isn’t the most scalable process!

We recommend an automated process which contacts prospects at predetermined intervals over a certain period of time, with relevant information based on their previous interest in your website. One of a Marketing Automation software platform’s principle functions is to allow you to do just this – to set up the workflows, logic and triggers that enable you to schedule the relevant collateral to be sent to the right person at the right time. It will also provide the detailed reporting necessary to fine-tune your approach over time.

With an efficient, well-thought-out lead nurturing process that is supported by plenty of content of various types, and with a marketing automation software platform in place, you will be able to manage and nurture the leads that your other marketing activities have driven to you. In short, such an approach will enable you to get the very most out of your PR and marketing campaigns by using your content to maintain individuals’ interest.