What convinces you to buy? The product or service you’re considering matters, of course, but so does the buying process. If you aren’t satisfied at the start of your search, you’re unlikely to carry it through to its natural conclusion. To get more satisfied customers, you first need to satisfy your leads.
The key to satisfying your leads’ needs is a well-designed nurture program. To put together quality lead nurture streams, you need to pay particular attention to three metrics: content, relevance, and timing.
Content
Nurture programs rely on a steady stream of content to carry leads along the sales funnel. Where many companies fail their leads is in having too little meaningful content. They’re concerned with telling prospects about their benefits and features instead of creating a more educated audience. Until leads thoroughly understand the problem they want to solve and the ways in which they can solve it, they aren’t ready to make important buying decisions. Content lays the necessary groundwork for leads to understand problems and solutions holistically.
Leads also know they need plenty of information to make the right decisions. You want them to get that information from you and not your competitors. With authoritative content aimed at educating leads, not just marketing to them, you become more than another vendor. You’re now a trusted source of knowledge, and they’ll remember you when it’s time to buy.
Weekly blog posts and regular social media communication gives your content breadth. White papers, webinars, and e-books give it depth. Both should be a part of your nurture programs.
Relevance
The best content strategy in the industry can’t help you if you aren’t talking about what your leads want to know. To be relevant to your leads, you first need to know who they are. When you define your buyers with thorough analytics and an integrated database that lets you draw on knowledge from multiple sources, you’re able to align your marketing and sales approach to their specific needs.
Lead gen programs aren’t intended to be one-size-fits-all marketing. They’re tailored for the leads who move through them so prospects don’t have to sift through information that’s not relevant to them. Coming up with three to five nurture streams that allow you to address leads’ needs more specifically will result in far higher lead satisfaction than a generic approach.
Timing
The right information at the wrong time has almost as little impact as irrelevant information, so timing is essential. To illustrate why, let’s say you’re in the market for a car. When you’re just starting your search, you aren’t looking at detailed spec sheets or financing options, so marketing aimed at these bottom-of-funnel decisions aren’t on your radar yet. Once you’re farther along your buying journey, you’ve already decided on the broad details such as price and style; you aren’t going to be swayed by options that fall outside your range, and you’re not going to appreciate a dealer who tries to show you cars that don’t match your needs.
Your MARKETING AI® manages timing effortlessly, routing leads to the proper nurture stream for their needs and ensuring that they get the information they want when they want it. Focus on lead satisfaction with effective nurture programs, and customer satisfaction follows naturally.
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