6 Errors in Lead Nurturing That Hurt Conversions – Avoid Them Now

There are 6 lead nurturing mistakes that are worse than all others and are actually costing businesses thousands of conversions, so read on to make sure to avoid them.

The Importance of a Lead Nurturing Strategy

Before we start, we need to discuss the importance of a lead nurturing campaign. A business can have a fantastic product and price point, but no customers. That happens when they don’t nurture their leads, meaning they don’t reach out to possible customers during the sales process.

It’s incredibly important to build strong relationships with website visitors so that the chances of them becoming paid customers go up.

When companies fix their lead nurturing strategy, they’ve seen up to a 79% increase in their conversions. That’s an incredibly high number and one that should push all marketers to improve their lead nurturing strategy.

1. Not Researching

The first, and one of the most important, steps for lead generation and nurturing is understanding prospective customers. To do that, research is necessary but many companies skip it and see their strategies fail. Regardless of the product or service, it can’t be sold to anyone until the company understands who is buying it, or who would want to buy it.

Get to know customers better, and find out why they bought products from you – did it help their lives in a certain way, and how. This information is critical for reaching out to new customers in the future.

If you’re just starting out with a new business, research will have to go deeper like with Facebook’s Audience Insights to learn about competitor strategies and who their followers are.

2. Not Optimizing Lead Magnets

Marketers need to use lead magnets to try to get email addresses from their prospects, and if that’s not the case already, set it up now. That way it becomes a lot easier to create targeted mailing lists for the email nurturing campaign.

Once that’s done, it becomes important to optimize these lead magnets because they can actually increase your lead generations and conversions by 400%. To get these benefits, the lead magnet needs to be optimized to appeal to the website visitor as much as possible, and also located in the right place on your site.

Lead magnets need to be easy to consume but still valuable enough for the audience to want it. So, you can make it an ebook, but not a full-blown one. It can be a short course, it can be a video or something similar to that. Lead magnets are exceptionally useful and you should definitely have one on your page.

Follow these tips to optimize your lead magnets:

• The main lead magnet acts as a catch-all by solving a major problem that the buyer persona developed in the research phase is faced with.  This lead will capture their email and bring them closer to your product or service which will make them more likely to purchase from you later.
   
• Blog post pages should use content upgrades as the lead magnet because they’re set up for specific blog posts and give readers information about the next step. You can even create different lead magnets for different blog post categories, so the readers will be interested no matter where they land.
• Opt-ins should be optimized to maximize conversions, and placed in a high-converting place on the site. It should always be embedded in the content as well as include an exit popup and scroll popup. These can help you understand how your demand works and what you need to do in the future.
• The lead magnet has to be well-designed so it appeals to prospects and is really valuable when they do download it.  As mentioned, it should be a book, a course or a video, something that users can easily consume right when they download it but that provides a huge amount of value for them. Give your best to make the information in the lead magnet useful to your audience.
   
• Tests should be done on each lead magnet to see which ones are the most successful.

READ ALSO: Lead Distribution Software – an Essential Guide to Lead Routing

3. Not Having an Email Campaign

Many marketers capture leads but then they still don’t make sales. This means that they don’t have a good lead nurturing campaign. Once your leads have clicked on your lead magnet, you need to have a lead nurturing funnel for the next steps.

A lead nurturing campaign that will successfully transform prospective customers into paying clients includes a goal for the campaign (what product you want them to purchase or what action do you want from the prospect).

It also has a segmented email list that is tailored to each lead depending on how you received their email, and what their needs are. This increases open rates and click-through rates because the message will be tailored to each recipient. Break down the list based on their buyer persona, their demographic, interests, what stage they’re at in the sales cycle, and more.

Then, choose the right software for email marketing that will help you with automated emails and list segregation. It can also map out your campaign, including which emails to send out and when, including value-driven and offer-driven emails to build trust with subscribers before immediately pushing on them a sales pitch.

RELATED TOPIC: You Are Sleeping on the Value of Email Signatures, Here is Why

4. Not Following-Up

Another major mistake is not following up when a lead is interested in your product or service. The level of follow-up directly reflects how likely you are to turn leads into customers that purchase from you.

About half of potential leads in business are not followed up, and that reflects a massive missed opportunity, especially as the majority of them will then go buy from your competitor. Instead, use software that will check and follow up with your leads automatically.

MUST-READ:6 Ways to Effectively Follow Up with Your Leads

5. Having a Weak Sales Pitch

The last step of a good sale and lead nurture strategy is having a good sales pitch. To do this, you have to show why the client needs the product, and why it’s better than any other product. How does it meet their needs?

There are two main types of sales pitches in online marketing – those that target the masses via a sales page or email broadcast, or there are one-on-one target pitches through calls or emails. Depending on your business and product, choose the right pitch for you.

Then, you need to figure out how to deliver the pitch, whether it’s by using a sales page or email newsletter. This is an important step to convert your lead, so invest in the time and resources needed.

READ ALSO: Lead Nurturing: How to Regain Control of Leads

6. Not Testing and Improving

You absolutely need to test your campaigns, or you won’t know how to improve them. There are so many great tools for analysis and metrics that don’t require any work from you. Monitor every strategy you have and then modify it as appropriate, and you’ll see your lead nurturing techniques will reward you with more conversions.

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