These days, a lot of time and effort goes into generating leads for your business. Once you have these leads, it would be a shame to lose them, because it means you will have wasted all that time, effort, and money that went into acquiring them in the first place. The best way to avoid losing leads and having your customers jump ship is to put in place a lead nurturing system and use it effectively.
That way, you’ll eventually have the opportunity to convert those leads into paying customers. If you establish an effective lead-nurturing system, and couple that with solid communications with your leads, you should be able to maintain them right up to conversion time. Here’s what you need to do in going about that.
Establishing a lead-nurturing system
Did you know that nurtured leads eventually make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads? Well, it’s true, and that fact alone should make it clear that nurturing your leads is an essential component of a successful business. So in addition to maintaining contact with your leads, a good nurturing system will keep leads on board until they convert to paying customers. And when they do convert, you can expect them to spend more money on buying goods from your company. So what are the steps involved with setting up this kind of system?
If your business has any size to it at all, you’re going to need to automate your lead nurturing system. Fortunately, there are plenty of programs and technology that can really help with that. One example might be Lead Spark, which offers a great way to unify messages, have automatic follow-ups, get Google reviews, reactivate one-time purchasers, convert website visits into chat sessions, and even capture more leads. The point is – you need a system that can automatically handle communications with your leads, so you’re in frequent contact with them and have a better chance of keeping them on board.
However, it will take more than just a good lead-nurturing program to get the job done. You’ll need to couple that with really good content creation on your business website because it’s crucial that you convince a lead you have the solution to their problem(s). Potential customers have lots of questions about your products and services, and your content is the best way to answer all those questions and issues. Make sure your content is not too salesy and pushing visitors to buy immediately. A much better strategy would be to provide as much information as your visitors might need to make a decision about purchasing from you. Make that information useful and valuable, and you may have your next lead.
Preventing your customers from bailing on you
All kinds of studies have been conducted on how much it costs to acquire a new lead and a new customer – and the results of those studies make it clear that it’s much cheaper to retain leads than to acquire new ones. Therefore, here are some things you should be doing to prevent leads or customers from abandoning ship with you:
Use several channels – this gives you the best chance to get your content in front of potential customers at the best times
Automate your efforts – as mentioned above, it’s best to automate your lead-nurturing process, because there are tons of repetitive tasks like sending out emails and notifications and posting to social media
Immediate follow-ups – the faster you follow up with a lead, the more likely you’ll maintain an ongoing relationship with them – customers like responsiveness, not aloofness
Segment your email list – by segmenting your email list, you’ll be able to personalize your responses to a greater extent, and avoid the one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with leads
Score your leads – by prioritizing your leads, you’ll be able to give the most attention to those that are most likely to convert. This in turn will help you to avoid wasting time and resources on unlikely-to-convert prospects.
Retargeting – when a lead goes elsewhere and still sees ads for your business, it’s a form of retargeting. This is a good strategy because it keeps your products and services in the mind of your leads.
The bottom line
The best way to keep leads and customers from jumping ship is to maintain regular contact with them and to nurture them through the buyer’s journey until they finally make a purchase. Obviously, there is lots of room to slip up and drop the ball, so it calls for some conscientious effort on your part to keep that lead in the fold. However, by taking some of the approaches described above, you should be able to avoid the huge cost of acquiring new leads and customers constantly – save significant money and time by nurturing those leads and keeping them in the fold.
