An essential process that makes inbound marketing successful is lead nurturing. Once you’ve implemented call to action buttons, landing pages, and compelling offers, your website will be sending leads to you fairly regularly.
Since website leads are generally colder than a referral or someone you meet in person, you’ll need to take action to warm those leads up using a process called lead nurturing.
Lead Nurturing with Email
Once someone has downloaded your compelling offer — an ebook, guide, or template — from your website, they are now part of your inbound marketing funnel. People who’ve downloaded information for the first time are probably not quite ready to buy so you need to provide them with additional material that helps solidify your role as a credible and trustworthy product or service provider.
You can do this by emailing these top of funnel (TOFU) leads and inviting them to an upcoming webinar where you present information on a topic relevant to your industry. In this webinar, you are not selling your product or service, but are providing detail that educates and informs.
People who sign up and attend your webinar have now expressed another level of interest in you as a credible source. The next step is to follow up by email with another top of funnel offer. This can be an invitation to attend another webinar or it can be an offer to download a kit containing a guide, video, and calculator that helps your prospect better educate themselves about the problem they are trying to solve.
Middle of the Funnel Lead Nurturing
Once prospects understand that you are a credible source of information and feel like you can easily understand their challenges, it’s time for another email communication that’s specifically focused on some kind of demo or free consultation. This offer is targeted to your middle of the funnel (MOFU) leads and is your opportunity to position your offering specifically within the context of the prospect’s business problem.
This may the last interaction before the prospect is sales-ready or from their perspective, ready to buy. With the prospect now at or near the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), it’s up to biz dev, sales, or the company owner to help the prospect take the last step to becoming a customer.
What kind of lead nurturing process works for your business?
Image by Meredith Harris
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