Do you know how to build a nurture marketing strategy? This is a concept too many small businesses aren’t taking advantage of to the fullest – or at all. Hence, in today’s blog post, we’ll explore the important facets of nurture marketing for small businesses and how it can function for your business.
What is Nurture Marketing?
You’ve got your small business set up for digital marketing success. Your website is up and running, a few lead generators collecting email addresses on there, and your content marketing blog posts are going up every week.
But is there anything more to do, especially to convert more leads to sales?
This is where the nurture marketing magic happens. Nurture marketing is how you convert those interested leads who aren’t ready to make a purchase decision yet. You can convert them into customers over time, by providing them with interesting, informative, valuable content via email.
Why is Nurture Marketing Important?
In many sales funnels, the process lends to a lot of waste. Your marketing team works hard to bring in potential leads. Then, you run PPC campaigns, perfect your SEO and develop a robust content marketing strategy. As a result, the names and email addresses of people who are intrigued roll in.
And what do you do with all these leads? Many small businesses toss them over to sales, and let them decide on which to take further action. And doing so can get you conversions and revenue, no doubt.
But in smaller businesses, your sales team doesn’t have time to chase after those more ambivalent leads. These leads are the ones who need more time or effort to get them to convert. They only have the bandwidth to go after the most promising leads, and everyone else is discarded. Hence, much of your marketing efforts have gone to waste, causing unneeded leaks in your sales funnel.
Soon you have a huge email list of leads who could be great potential customers, but your list is sitting unused except for one or two times per year.
So how do you use those leads to the fullest, engaging them enough so they take enough interest in your products or services to make a purchase, without wasting your sales team’s time?
As it turns out, it can be done well and for all less cost, with nurture marketing.
How to Build a Lead Nurturing Strategy into Marketing for Small Businesses
Nurture marketing strategies can vary from industry to industry, but they all have something in common – it’s about following up via a targeted, automated email campaign. You want to touch base with your leads at strategic points in the customer journey.
So, how can small businesses accomplish this?
Step 1: Set Up the Intro
Well, your nurturing campaign should start the moment a prospect gives you their email address.
This can happen when they:
- sign up for your newsletter on your website
- download content as part of your lead generation strategy
- engage with your social media content
After, you send an email marketing campaign that you have set up as automated to start once that signup hits your email list. The first email just introduces your business to your new lead, as a welcome and a simple ‘thanks for signing up’.
Step 2: Offer Value and Get Clicks
Next, it’s time to offer real value to the prospect. You send 3-5 emails spaced apart by a few days to a few weeks, depending on the typical length of your sales cycle. Those emails contain no hard sales pitch – just information your target audiences will engage with and value. It’s very effective to have these emails link to one of your blog posts or other type of content with further information.
This middle sequence of emails serves two purposes.
First, it helps build your authority and trust in the eyes of your prospect. They see that your business is willing to share information that can help them without a hard sales pitch, and they see that you know what you’re talking about too.
It also gives you information on which prospects are likely to become qualified leads. As such, it informs them on what types of products or services they might be interested in. This way, you can follow up with a more targeted campaign or a call from sales.
How this works is that you target each of these middle emails to a specific topic.
Say your business sells furniture, for both homes and businesses. You can design the first email to offer information about bedroom furniture, the second to talk about living room items, and the third to discuss office furniture. Based on the links your prospects click, you will get an idea of what they’re each looking for and can send further email campaigns based on their expressed interest.
Step 3: Call Them to Action
Your final email in the nurture series should be a strong call-to-action – this is the time to push the sale more. Remind your prospect about all the information you’ve shared and why what you offer can improve their lives, fulfill their desires, or fix a pain point.
By now, you’ve gained their trust and stayed top-of-mind, so they’re more inclined to decide on making a purchase.
Why Nurture Marketing Campaigns for Small Businesses Work
Nurture marketing sounds like it wouldn’t work well for every industry. In fact, it benefits any small business in any industry.
This is because it comes down to increasing efficiency and decreasing waste in the marketing and sales process. As a result, it’s a low-effort way to build a relationship with potential customers, which in turn finds more qualified leads and makes more conversions.
And the best part for small businesses is that all this effort can be done with very little budget. Set up your email automation and let prospects qualify themselves, and let your content work the way it’s designed to make those conversions.
We live in a busy, distracting world, where the competition challenges businesses to perform better. Even strong potential leads can get leave your sales funnel before they have time to make a purchase on their first visit to your site. Your nurture marketing strategy should keep your business on the mind of your prospects until you have the time, and now the goodwill and authority, to close the deal.
Need Help with a Nurture Campaign?
At Content First Marketing, we know exactly what goes into a good nurture email campaign. You need a thoughtful strategy, compelling writing, and the data analysis to make the right decisions.
Does your small business needs assistance creating the nurture marketing plan that gets you real, measurable results and helps grow your business?
Schedule a free business review here to find out how we help businesses grow. You can use these insights for inspiration, and let us do the marketing for you.
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