Generating leads is an essential part of every marketing strategy but the efforts should not end there. Nurturing the leads that show interest in your offer will help you increase the chances of turning them into a profitable sale.
According to HubSpot, 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to purchase. This does not mean these leads won’t buy at some point in the future. However, lack of nurturing is causing 79% of marketing leads to never convert into sales.
The real success of your PPC efforts lies in getting the best results out of each lead - and this can only be achieved with the right nurturing strategy. Here are 3 things to consider in order to define a PPC lead nurturing process that works for your business.
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Lead Scoring
If you are wondering what this is, you are not alone. Nearly 80% of B2B marketers have not established a lead scoring system to help them target their leads accordingly.
Lead scoring is the process of assigning values, often in the form of points, to each lead you attract. Leads can be scored on multiple attributes like the professional information they’ve submitted and how engaged they are with your brand. This process helps both marketing and sales prioritise leads, respond to them appropriately, and therefore increase the rate at which those leads turn into customers.
For example, if you know that looking at a page where you offer a trial is a buying signal, you assign that action a higher score than, say, downloading a guide. Leads accumulate points as they progress through the funnel and navigate your website, engage with your content and fill out forms.
Sales Funnel
Guiding customers from one phase of the buyer journey to the next involves delivering the right message at the right time, and that applies to both marketing and sales teams.
Contacting customer’s before they’re ready to talk can set the wrong tone and result in your salespeople wasting time and resources on the wrong opportunities. As obvious as it seems, data shows that about 60% of B2B marketers still send all leads directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads are qualified.
Nurturing leads starts by understanding where those leads are in the sales funnel. You are going to encounter leads at various points in the purchasing process so it will be important to define the differences between the three main areas in the funnel.
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Awareness
Leads at this stage are beginning to gain familiarity with the problem they have and how it can be solved. They are interested in knowing more about the challenge they have ahead and its possible solution.
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Consideration
These leads are clearly aware of their problem and are actively searching for solutions. While doing so, they consider offerings from a variety of businesses and engage with content that provides the most relevant and best answers to their problem.
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Decision
People at this stage are just about ready to make a purchase. They are focused on finding a solution to their problem.
Since B2B buying processes can be quite long, this funnel may end up looking a bit more complex than this. Once you consider the average touchpoints a lead needs to convert into a customer, you can start deciding how to best define this journey.
Content Marketing
You may give away an ebook or report to prospects and get them into your funnel. Once they are there, you will have to move them down the funnel with high-quality and relatable content that attends their needs.
Apart from using lead scoring and determining which area of the funnel they are in, you will have to shape a map of content offerings that best suit each lead.
If a lead downloaded a report on your site, they may just be educating themselves about the challenge they have. The key question to answer here is: what could they need next?
Knowing which content your users downloaded is, in most cases, not enough. Understanding how they interact with the content and what other actions they take on your site will be helpful when creating a PPC lead nurturing strategy.
Wrapping up
Even if you run the best PPC campaign in the world, lead nurturing is the critical element that will ultimately separate the wheat from the chaff. Implementing a nurturing process that aligns with your customer journey, will help increase the ratio of PPC leads becoming customers.
If you are looking to implement or improve the ratio of PPC leads turning into sales, ExtraDigital can help. Let’s talk and navigate the best lead nurturing path for your business.
