It's new-fashioned courting without the dinner date—but there’s conversation, some dancing, and eventually a commitment. We’re talking about high-funnel lead generation, which is the process of nurturing and converting a lead generated by a high-funnel campaign into a customer. There are many levels of lead generation. It can mean converting a website visitor into a subscriber who provides an email address to download a report. It can mean turning that subscriber into a paid customer who buys your product or service. The key is to take good care of the leads, because according to data from Jumplead, we know that nurtured leads increase sales opportunities by 20 percent.
Another way to think of leads is as perishables—kind of like the bananas on your kitchen counter or the strawberries threatening to develop mold in the fridge. If you let them sit, they’ll go bad. Leads that are left out lose interest or forget about you completely. The way to avoid this is to again, nurture them, and that means engaging warm prospects with information they need, insight they want, and content they enjoy consuming.
Leads demand timely follow-up. Here are some ways to make sure it happens.
Timing Is Everything
If you want to increase lead conversion to sale by 75 percent, then simply follow up on leads in a timely manner. How fast? Consider your expectations when you email a request to someone or text a question to a contact. We live in a need-it-now economy, and your prompt reply to leads builds confidence and meets a universal demand for instant gratification. So, the faster the reply the better. Like the bananas, don’t let the lead sit. Like the first date, avoid waiting to call for a second rendezvous. Otherwise, the lead will perish and lose interest.
Treat Lead Generation Like a Job
If dedicating time to nurturing leads is an issue—and we get it, there are only so many hours in a day—consider these statistics and you’ll see the ROI of crafting engaging content that your leads care about. Demand Metric reports that content marketing generates more than three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62 percent less.
What type of marketing is most effective for high-funnel lead generation? According to Demand Metric, the three most common B2B high-funnel lead-gen strategies are emails, events, and content.
We’ll leave you with this stat that underscores the importance of treating leads like a job and nurturing them right now. Marketing Sherpa says 79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales, and the reason is because a business lets leads go cold.
Drip, Drip, Drip
One way to continue “touching” leads is through drip campaigns that are a sequence of messaging (emails, usually) sent on a schedule to target leads with a specific result in mind—whether earning their business as a customer or getting them to subscribe to your communications. The benefits of drip campaigns are increased brand recall, you keep leads engaged, and you can build trust.
According to marketer Douglas Karr of Martech Zone, drip campaigns usually get three times the clickthrough rate of individual email sends. And because prospects are generally not ready to buy when they first connect, the ongoing engagement keeps them “warm” so they don’t perish or, well, dump you.
The key with drip campaigns is to keep them personal, even if they are automated. Be sure you’re targeting the right leads with a message that will resonate with them. And create a trigger so they must request or ask for more—which moves them to the next “drip” they’ll receive. Otherwise, you risk frustrating a lead that doesn’t want another email, which could backfire into a bad review or distrust in your brand. Execute drip campaigns with care.
Get Personal
Just as you should customize drip campaigns as much as possible, though they are automated, the way you nurture leads with other touches should also be warm, so they welcome it. In essence, give them something they value. Give them something to talk about. Give them something to keep them coming back for more. What is that something? You’re the best one to answer that question, but here is some guidance:
- White papers or reports that share information leads might be seeking from your brand
- Blog content that answers questions leads might ask of you or others in your field
- Social media engagement that is interesting so leads will “like” and share it, remembering your brand as the source
- Email newsletters with content that is curated to leads’ interests
Go Bananas!
That’s our way of saying, get on top of lead generation and have fun with it! Consider it a challenge—set goals and measure how many leads you convert into customers. Whatever you do, don’t let those leads sit. There are plenty of other fish in the sea you’re competing with, but if you can be the responsive one—the one that gives leads information, answers their questions and builds their trusts, you’ll see your conversion rates rise.
To learn how Biocompare can help you generate high-funnel leads, contact your Sales Executive or email us at sales@biocompare.com.