Lead Nurturing Systems
On average, someone needs to see your offer 8-13 times before making a decision.
Building A Relationship With Your Audience
If you’re not familiar with lead nurturing, it’s simply the process of developing relationships with potential buyers at every stage of the sales funnel and through every step of the buyer’s journey. People only buy from other people who they know, like, and trust. When you develop a relationship with your audience over time, it builds trust, helps them get to know you, and hopefully like you as well. This sets you up to make the sale.
If people don’t have a chance to get to know anything about your business, why it’s special, or how your offer can help them in a unique way, then it’s going to be hard to get them to buy from your company. The companies that are having the most success online today are developing a relationship with their audience over time. It’s very seldom that they only have one point of contact with their prospective buyers. In fact, their prospects tend to see their offer everywhere they look online from their Facebook feed to email inbox and there’s a good reason for this.
Why Is A Lead Nurturing System So Important?
Studies show that on average, someone needs to see your offer between 8 and 13 times before they make a decision to buy. That being the case, it would be easy to assume that very few people buy after seeing an offer the very first time. In fact, according to Episerver, 92% of consumers will visit a brand’s website for the first time for reasons other than making a purchase. That means only 8% of your website visitors are actually there looking to buy.
Converting More Customers
Since very few people are going to your website for the first time to make a purchase, there needs to be some system in place to get people back to your website or offer. There are many ways to do this from email newsletters to retargeting ads but the point is, in order to maximize your traffic, you need a lead nurturing system.
Why are so few people on your website to buy? Well, when people go online to make a purchase, they typically start by doing research. They hop on Google and start looking at all of the options they can find. Then they will compare the different offers and eventually make a decision on the company they would like to work with. So, it’s a bit of a process.
To maximize your conversions and get the most out of your traffic, you need to be connecting with your prospects throughout the entire sales process. From the time they land on your website looking to learn what you offer, to the point when they actually make the decision to buy, you need to be in front of them.
So, How Exactly Does A Lead Nurturing System Work?
Well, as we know, people rarely make a purchase after seeing an offer for the first time. A lead nurturing system keeps your offer in front of people by following up with them in different places. One of the most common ways to follow up with a potential buyer is with email.
I’m sure you’ve seen people giving away free PDF downloads on their website in exchange for an email address. Well, there’s a good reason for this. If someone visits your website for the first time and hands over their email in exchange for something of value, you now have the ability to follow up with them over time via email.
You can send new prospects emails at specific times during the buying cycle and maximize your odds of making a sale. Once you have a prospect’s email, it will be much easier for you to build a relationship with them. It’s quite common to send an automated email series that introduces your company, explains what makes you unique, and helps foster a positive relationship between your company and the prospective buyer. This will drastically increase your odds of making a sale.
How Could A Lead Nurturing System Impact Your Business?
When set up correctly, we’ve seen lead nurturing systems increase overall conversions by as much as 11X. Why is that the case? Well, when only 8% of your traffic is looking to buy, it’s vital to develop a relationship and stay in front of the other 92% of the people seeing your offer. When you start to capitalize on the other 92% of your traffic, your sales go up exponentially.
If you have highly targeted traffic coming to your website, the odds are that you invested either time or money to make that happen (and likely both). Since you’re investing to get that traffic, it only makes sense to get the absolute most out of the traffic you’re already getting. A lead nurturing system will allow you to do just that.
By bringing people back to your offer multiple times and developing a relationship with them, it’s possible to start converting people who weren’t looking to buy when they first were introduced to your offer. As you begin to convert more and more of the 92% of traffic that’s not looking to buy when they find you online, your overall return on investment begins to increase and online marketing starts to become very profitable.
Lead Nurturing Is A Vital Piece Of An Effective Marketing System
Just having a website that’s set up to convert with traffic going to it won’t be enough to make your online marketing profitable. A key piece to an effective marketing system is follow up. It’s absolutely vital that you stay in front of your audience for as long as possible to maximize your traffic.
When this piece of the marketing system is working in harmony with your website and traffic generation efforts, you will see your conversions and your sales skyrocket. You will begin to convert part of the 92% of visitors who aren’t looking to buy the first time they see your offer. Let’s face it, it’s hard to be profitable when you are only converting 1 or 2% of your overall traffic but if you can 5 or 10x your conversions with a lead nurturing system, then you’re in a much better boat.