The ultimate goal of any sales and marketing team is to increase total sales volume by maximizing the number of lead conversions. Various processes of lead generation and lead nurturing are followed to aid in this process. But despite their best efforts, some organizations cannot scale up their sales because of underlying mistakes in their lead nurturing system.
Let’s look into them and find possible solutions to these core problems.
What do you mean by lead nurturing?
A lead is a potential customer for products provided by a company that has not yet made the purchase. Lead nurturing refers to communication with this potential customer from the company to convert them into actual buying customers, i.e. lead conversion.
The entire sales journey from the lead generation to the final lead conversion should be under the purview of lead nurturing. Lead nurturing keeps the leads warm and potential customers interested, ensuring more conversions. According to Forrester Research, around 47% of B2B marketers claim to close less than 4% of their marketing leads. On the other hand, companies with proper lead nurturing can generate 50% more ready sales leads at a 33% lower cost.
The first step of lead nurturing is the generation of proper leads with complete and correct contact data.
You can either gather contact information manually or use a sales intelligence platform. For example, SalesIntel provides human-verified B2B lead contact data and 90-day re-verification that has been proven to increase call-to-connect ratios by 100% from a mere 5-10% to around 15-20%. Once the lead contact information has been found and added to the database, it is time for lead nurturing.
6 common mistakes in lead nurturing and how to avoid them
1. Lack of adequate research
Most marketers jump into the lead nurturing process without adequate research. But a lack of analysis has been shown to reduce conversion rates. Marketing teams should do in-depth research to understand the products a lead is interested in, the problems they face, and why they are looking for a solution. Lead conversion rates go up when the company can connect to the buyer personally. It is also important to understand the lead’s buying journey stage to make the most effective outreach.
SalesIntel makes the research process easier with its firmographics and technographics to find, segment, and personalize content for leads. Our lead scoring systems can also make high-priority lists for more effective lead nurturing strategies.
2. Inadequate follow-up
Lead nurturing is a long-term process. It may take months or even a year to convert a lead into a buyer in the case of B2B sales. Lead nurturing examples from the software industry found that around 29% of businesses may take 6 to 9 months to purchase any new software. Some businesses may take even longer.
Regular outreach to leads requires marketing teams to develop a planned lead nurturing schedule during this long process. Research has also found that sending messages through different channels during this process increases the chances of getting a reply back from the lead by around 14%.
For proper ROI from the lead nurturing process, it is also important to continue maintaining a customer relationship after lead conversion to encourage repeat sales or a continued subscription.
3. Slow and unclear conversion process
The end goal of lead nurturing is client conversion. But sometimes, even when leads respond to the messaging and end up on the landing page, purchasing does not happen. This may be due to an unclear and slow conversion process.
Marketers need to ensure their landing pages should be clear and brief. Leads may be deterred if there are too many redirects or steps from the landing page to check out. CTAs are sometimes too vague to incite proper action. Inconsistencies between the outreach messages sent by lead nurturing teams and the actual landing page can also shake the lead’s confidence in the brand and reduce the possibility of conversion.
4. Not analyzing your nurturing results
Every process needs to be systematically analyzed to get the maximum ROI. Similarly, lead nurturing also needs to go through intense analysis and scrutiny. The analysis will show which channels performed best for long-term conversions. Marketers will then be able to focus on those specific channels of communication. The times when conversions are most likely to happen can also be helpful information to structure marketing campaigns.
But analyzing lead nurturing is not just about finding the areas for more investment. It also involves identifying the problem areas. The stage where most leads drop out of the customer journey can be an essential tool to improve the lead nurturing system. Bounce rates for landing pages can be an excellent marker to identify operational roadblocks.
SalesIntel offers 1,200 on-demand researchers and 200 full-time researchers. You can place custom research requests for any industry, vertical, or persona, and we’ll get the information you need within hours.
5. Not having a well-planned sales pitch
A sales pitch is why a lead is finally convinced to make their purchase. But in reality, many marketers do not have a clear content strategy for their sales pitches.
Most leads do not want to initially spend more than a few minutes gathering information about a potential purchase. So in this brief amount of time, they must be given adequate information about what products a brand offers, its benefits, why the lead needs this product, and how it is better than competitors. All this information needs to be planned beforehand by properly training sales reps and working with skilled content writers.
A quick and professional summary of all the basic information required by a leader is ideal for conversion. Well-established brands with a huge market presence can get away with little information in their sales pitch as most of their leads will be aware of the products they sell, but most other brands need to work hard to create convincing content for their leads.
6. Shying away from automation
In the past, many companies shied away from automation in their sales process. They did not want to invest in expensive sales, marketing, and CRM software and tried to work with manual databases.
But, now that multi-channel lead nurturing is becoming important for adequate sales, it is imperative to move towards automation. Sales and marketing software utilizes the company’s database and can send personalized marketing messages to different leads at every step of their customer journey.
The sales reps are freed up for direct communication with leads and customers when necessary. According to reports by Gartner, almost 90% of all sales team leaders are now considering investing in some technological solutions to improve their engagement with leads and customers.
SalesIntel clients claim that their database has grown by 15 times after using our contact data solution. When used to trigger automated marketing messages, this huge database can lead to massive improvements in sales volume.
Without proper lead nurturing, it is impossible to get the maximum ROI from automation and software investment. When companies implement multi-channel lead nurturing strategies with the help of software-driven automation, customers get personalized support through every step of their buyer journey. This builds trust with the brand and creates strong brand awareness.
By refining your lead nurturing process and identifying key drop-off points for leads you can find ways to significantly increase your conversions.
SalesIntel helps you fine-tune your lead nurturing system and improve your bottom line.
