Content Marketing, however, cannot stop there. Publishing and distributing content is, in reality, only the starting point of an effective Inbound Marketing activity . To obtain concrete results, in terms of sales or at least strong engagement with buyers, it is necessary to create an effective lead nurturing process.
What is lead nurturing?
What does lead nurturing mean? In practice, lead nurturing means ensuring that content consistently accompanies the customer throughout the various steps of the entire purchasing process, the buyer journey. Prospects go through various touch points of the brand, or various points of contact with the company in the research, knowledge and consideration phases, before becoming a buyer. Literally, what needs to be done is to “nourish” the contact , preparing “appetizing snacks” with the aim of “whining” them along the way and finally pushing them to purchase.
What is lead nurturing for?
This is a fundamental activity: the buyer is not immediately ready to make a purchase because he or she must evaluate, weigh and compare what he or she finds on the market. Lead nurturing allows you to accompany him or her through all these phases and influence his or her choice. Studies confirm that in B2B, the strategies implemented for the acquisition and conversion of leads into customers are often vain and expensive, to the point that 80% of marketers interviewed in a recent survey state that the efforts made for lead generation have not led to the expected result in terms of increased sales, 77% believe that the nurturing campaigns carried denmark telegram data out are mediocre or need improvement (Source: Lead Nurturing & Acceleration Benchmark Survey).
Lead nurturing and marketing
For these reasons, lead nurturing and marketing must go hand in hand . To achieve satisfactory results and create effective campaigns, it is essential that lead nurturing (especially B2B lead nurturing) is included in a broader marketing strategy. It is necessary to draw up a strategy that takes into account different aspects, such as, for example, using storytelling to build engaging narratives or automation systems to keep the buyer “beaten” in his decision-making process. Making lead nurturing and marketing go hand in hand also means coordinating with the sales department in order to create an integrated and successful buyer management system.
Lead nurturing between marketing and sales
A good starting point is to verify that the marketing and sales departments have the same vision and objectives . The priorities on the products and services to sell and aligned messages on the strengths to communicate to the market should be identical between the two departments. Unfortunately, the needs of these business areas are often different: marketing asks for follow-ups and feedback on the leads passed to sales, while sales would like more and better quality leads from marketing.
