Aaron M.

Lead nurturing is a priority for businesses. Why? Because leads who are effectively nurtured produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities . But managing to effectively engage leads can be a problem. Many businesses successfully manage to attract leads but fail to nurture them into customers, and around 65% of marketers don’t have a lead nurturing strategy in place. When nurturing leads can help to build trust, increase sales, and leave customers happy , not having an effective lead nurturing strategy can be costly.

What is lead nurturing? Lead nurturing is the process of converting your generated leads and prospective customers into fully-fledged customers . Lead nurturing involves providing valuable content that is relevant and appealing to the needs of your prospects to help guide them along each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Nurturing your leads helps lead your potential customers to take the next step. It may also help provide you with information to continue delivering more targeted messages in the future.

If you are looking to create a successful lead nurturing campaign to help boost more sales-ready leads at a lower cost, HubSpot provides all the tools you need.

1. Setting clear objectives The very first thing you want to do with your lead nurturing is set clear objectives . The objective you set will form the foundations of your campaign. Without setting an objective, you won’t know what to strive for and your campaign won’t have a clear focus. It also provides a way for you to monitor and evaluate your campaign later on.

When setting objectives for your lead nurturing campaign, they should be SMART :

Specific – what do you want to accomplish? Measurable – what metric will you measure success on? Achievable – can the objective be reached within the given timeframe? Realistic – is it possible to achieve the objective? Time-bound – within what timeframe do you want to achieve the objective? There are also two types of objectives you should define: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative goals are expressed in specific numerical terms and can easily be numerically measured. Qualitative objectives help in organising and maintaining a lead’s actions and details.

Once you’ve got your objective nailed down, it’s time to identify the customers you want to nurture.

2. Personas Identifying the people you want to target with your campaign is just as important as setting a clear objective. Having a clear idea of who you are targeting will help to shape your campaign. Developing your buyer personas is the most effective way to understand your target audience.

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer , combining both demographic and psychographic data . By using research and real data, you will be able to come up with a deep understanding of who your customers are, their habits and experiences, what challenges they face, and also how they make decisions.

The most important reason for developing your buyer persona in a lead nurturing campaign is so you can identify exactly what content will appeal to your prospects during each stage of the buying process. Knowing what content your prospects want to see will stand you in a much better position to nurture your leads.

Once you’ve developed a persona, you can start adding it to the HubSpot CRM:

Within HubSpot, click on the settings icon in the navigation bar at the top right corner 2. Scroll down to ' Properties ', under 'Data management', in the left sidebar

3. Search for ‘persona’ in the search bar

4. Click on the ' Persona ' property

From here, you can create a new persona or edit an existing persona .

Using the persona you develop beforehand, enter the details into the corresponding fields. Fields marked with an asterisk * are required. Once you’ve finished, click ' Save '.

The next step is to find out about the buyer's journey and the different stages within this process.

3. The buyer's journey The buyer's journey will form the foundation on which to base your campaign, as it is the process a prospect takes towards the points of purchase . Knowing about the different stages of the buyer’s journey will help identify what content to deliver, and when.

The three stages of the buyer’s journey are:

The awareness stage is when a prospect has become aware of a problem (or pain point) that they need to solve. This phase involves broad searches to find possible solutions to their problem. Having the right content in the right place is crucial at this stage to make sure your product or service resonates with your prospects. Without awareness, you cannot progress them through the buyer’s journey. Providing helpful and informative content that will stand out is crucial for your business to become part of your prospects evoked set.

Content ideal for this stage:

Videos Blog posts Social posts Infographics Interactive content, e.g. quizzes The consideration stage is after the prospect has conducted their initial search and is now aware of the options available to them. Your prospect will now have a clear understanding of their problem and possible solutions that are available to them. During the consideration stage, the prospect will consider the best option available to solve their problem. Providing informative and helpful content with a focus on expertise, will help resonate with your prospect and set you in good stead for the decision stage.

Content ideal for this stage:

Newsletter Event Ebook Whitepapers Case studies The decision stage is the final stage of the buyer’s journey. At this stage, the prospect has narrowed down their choices and will seek to make a purchase decision. They will also have a solid idea of how to address their problem or pain points.

Content ideal for this stage:

Demos Pricing page Free trials You should always ensure that you spend time auditing your content. This will help to clarify how successful each content item is at engaging with your prospects.

Emails Lead nurturing emails are one of the most effective ways to help lead prospects along the buyer’s journey. Not only does it keep your prospects in contact with your brand, but it also greatly increases the chances of a lead purchasing your product .

Emails are still an effective tool that can help reach your target audience. The average person checks their emails 15 times a day. This shows that emails are still an effective medium.

Lead nurturing email campaigns use different email messages at different stages of the buyer’s journey to help convert prospects into customers. These campaigns usually begin once you’ve generated a lead . Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about manually sending emails out to prospects at each stage throughout their journey. The workflows section in HubSpot can manage this process for you.

Check out these 8 tips for writing an effective and compelling email.

4. Using workflows in HubSpot to manage your campaigns Workflows is a marketing automation tool that helps to better manage and effectively organise your lead nurturing campaigns . Using workflows will help to reduce errors in delivering the wrong content to a prospect and will make your inbound leads more attainable.

Using a workflow involves creating a set of rules that when met, automates the process of sending tasks, information, and emails to your prospects . Using workflows in HubSpot helps you to nurture leads more effectively by automating your marketing. Workflows can be a great asset due to:

Integrated CRM Easy to set up and implement Reduce costs Save time Improved targeting and segmentation To show you how to set up workflows in HubSpot, check out this tutorial:

5. Create a campaign Once you’ve created your workflows, you’ll then want to set up a Campaign in HubSpot. A Campaign in HubSpot to assign assets relating to a specific campaign (including emails, blog posts, landing pages, etc.). Creating your campaign will enable you to measure your campaign effectiveness.

To create a campaign in HubSpot:

Navigate to Marketing > Campaigns 2. Click ‘ Create campaign ’

You will then be greeted with a dialogue box that will allow you to input all the data relevant to your campaign.

3. Once you’ve filled in the fields, click ' Save '. The campaign will then be shown in the list of your campaigns.

To add assets to a campaign, click on the campaign name, then in the top right corner, click ‘ Add assets ’. You can then add any marketing assets and workflows you’ve already created in HubSpot.

6. Measure and analyse your campaign performance The final stage in creating a lead nurturing campaign in HubSpot is measuring and analysing your campaign performance. Using the campaigns analytics tool allows you to easily measure and evaluate its effectiveness of your campaign you created in HubSpot.

Some key metrics you should consider evaluating include:

CTAs

Views Clicks Click rate Submissions Submission rate Emails

Open rate Click rate Bounces Unsubscribes Scam reports Landing pages

Page views Form submissions New contacts New customers Bounce rate Social posts

Reactions Comments Shares HubSpot Tracked Clicks Network Tracked Clicks Impressions To analyse your campaign performance in HubSpot, click on the campaign name under Marketing > Campaigns , and you will be able to see all the data to help you analyse the campaigns performance.

Final thoughts Nurturing your leads is an essential part of creating a successful inbound marketing strategy. Making use of the tools available in HubSpot will help to improve your conversions, increase sales, and keep customers delighted.

Inbound marketing helps you to attract high-quality leads by providing useful, relevant and valuable content. Unlike outbound marketing which interrupts prospects with messages they may not be interested in, inbound marketing in contrast looks to provide solutions to problems they already have, helping form connections and brand advocates.

HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing, sales and service hub to help you streamline your processes. Developed on the inbound marketing methodology, they have many tools available to help attract quality leads and delight your customers, including both CRM and CMS tools. As a certified HubSpot Partner Agency, we can help you to get the best from the HubSpot platform.

If you would like to find out more about Inbound Marketing or HubSpot Management, get in touch today for a friendly chat .

Aaron M.

United Kingdom 188 followers 188 connections

Experience

Dreamscape Design Ltd

Education

Coventry University

Licenses & Certifications

CMI First Line Management Level 3 Certificate

Chartered Management Institute

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