How to Effectively Nurture Leads Through Your Sales Cycle

It’s not easy acquiring customers, leading them through your sales funnel, and finally converting. Many of your leads will drop off—for some, it may be early on because they stumbled onto one of your ads but weren’t looking to purchase yet; for others it may be later in the buying cycle when they opt to go to a cheaper competitor. Whatever the case is, many of them will churn, which is natural, but ensuring that as many leads make their way through the entire path to purchase is paramount.

The first step to any effective sales funnel and nurture strategy to nudge your leads down the path to purchase is your content. Content crucial to success in the ecommerce world. Whether it’s search, SEO, messages, and media engagement, and whether it’s organic, earned, or paid, content can do wonders for your engagement, which in turn will aid your sales cycle. 

Content can attract a lot of attention. Content Marketing Institute found that 72% of marketers experienced an increase in leads through content marketing. But it’s also about the quality of your content. Generic or irrelevant content will get lost in the mix and not excite your audience. But high-quality, engaging, relevant, and sometimes even personalized content can do wonders for your engagement. 

One of the best benefits of high-quality content is its versatility once it’s created. High-quality content can be utilized in demand generation campaigns, digital marketing, social media marketing, website blogs, and SEO. Grabbing attention with great content can attract a wider net, and also keep the most relevant people in your target market in your funnel. 

Retargeting should be another key aspect of your nurturing strategy. This must occur across all channels based on engagement. Retargeting is a goliath in marketing ROI. Retargeted ads on Facebook were found to be 76% more effective than display ads. This makes sense, because leads you know are interested in your products and services are going to be the most likely to convert. 

However, it’s important that you retarget on all channels and based on engagement. For example, let’s say a customer engages with a social media post, but your retargeting strategy is focused on your blog content; your brand will miss out on an opportunity to engage this customer. Gathering data from every relevant channel is crucial for retargeting efforts—measuring your engagement everywhere can let you know what your customers are interested in and what you should target going forward.

Finally, the third part of your nurturing campaign should focus on email. Many marketers are unsure how effective email marketing remains, but don’t get caught up in the scare. In 2020, email marketing has generated $38 for every $1 spent. Your email campaigns must be focused on personalized marketing to get there though. 

Drip and engagement campaigns are only as effective as the data that goes into them. For example, say you’re a furniture company. Blanketing your entire audience with the same email that includes a coupon for a writer’s desk isn’t going to be effective for most of your audience. Email marketing is all about the segmentation strategy used to engage them. Utilize data to get to know your consumers to effectively target them. Sending the example email above to your customers who spend a lot of time on your website’s writer’s desk products, looked at blogs related to “staying focused while working from home,” and liked your Instagram posts of desks would be one example of proper segmentation. 

Your nurture campaigns must be similar. Leading your customers through the exact customer journey you want them to follow will be beneficial to your sales cycle. Having the power behind the scenes in guiding them down a streamlined customer journey, one where you know exactly what their next move is, is an effective way to increase conversion. The customer journey is complicated when done organically, so give them a helping hand and guide them down the one you’ve built out.

Your customer journey and sales cycle can feel complicated and hectic and like many of your leads will drop off. And honestly, that will likely always be somewhat true. But with the above strategies, you can ensure that more top-of-the-funnel customers will make their way down to the bottom and convert.