Part II: Nurture your Leads with Inbound Marketing Services
Last week we discussed how the tone and direction of inbound marketing services can have a drastic effect on your results. To sum up, inbound marketing services should be focused on the needs of your target market, and how your business can fill those needs.
With that in mind, we go onto the next part of our inbound marketing services story to see how we can nurture the leads obtained from marketing efforts and turn them into conversions.
How can inbound marketing services serve as lead nurturing tools?
Remember, inbound marketing services are all about finding the pain points felt by your target market and focusing on them with all marketing efforts. This focus on their needs builds trust in your brand’s ability to provide the best solution to their issue.
Let’s look at three of the most prevalent (and effective) inbound marketing services used for lead nurturing efforts.
Email Marketing
As lead nurturing solutions go, email marketing is probably the most familiar. But how do you ensure that your email marketing efforts provide inbound marketing services that nurture leads?
- Regular communications. Weekly, biweekly, monthly. No matter your timeline, be sure to reach out to your target market regularly.
- Educate, don’t sell. Keep your content educational, industry news, events, anything that can be of use to your target market.
- Give it away. For free, if you can. Offer downloads, whitepapers, reports, anything that could incentivize your target to consider your services or products for their needs. Better yet, offer your email recipients a discount for sharing their freebies with their friends, in return for an email signup, of course.
Blogging
Your content strategy most likely includes blog posts, but what do you blog about? Is it all promotions of your services and products, or are you seeking to inform your target market of tips, tools and options that can help them when they need it?
Make your blog a lead nurturing machine by furthering your readers understanding of your company’s perspective in the industry and how you focus your efforts to their benefit. Try to avoid promotional content as much as possible, and you’ll build that trust value within your target market
Social Media
Completing our inbound marketing services trifecta for lead generation is Social Media. Use your profiles, pages and accounts within the social sphere to share your blog content, offers, and tips or industry pointers.
Tip: Depending on the nature of your business, certain sites will be more effective for lead nurturing within your target market.
- B2B – LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter
- B2C – Facebook, Twitter
Lead nurturing is key to driving prospects into the sales funnel. No matter how many leads you may have, if they don’t convert, they’re effectively useless. Inbound marketing services are the most effective form of lead generation. Use them consistently and as ways to educate your target market of your views on the industry and you will drive prospects to your sales funnel by building brand trust.