You’re talking with a prospect, and they like everything you have to say, but they’re just not ready to seal the deal. Maybe they don’t have the funds. Maybe they’re not currently in a situation to need your product/services, but they might be at some point in the future. What do you do?
You have three options. The first is to let them know you’re available whenever they’re ready and leave it there. Actually, you only have two options because this one is terrible. Don’t ever go with this option.
The second option (and first real option) is to make a note to follow up with them at a later date. If you have an assistant, you might hand this task off to them, or you can put it in your calendar yourself to make sure you don’t forget. This option means you have to reach out to each prospect individually and think of something to say to them that’s not some version of, “Hey, want to buy my product/services yet?”
The third option is to invite them to sign up for your newsletter and/or connect on social media. Personally, I always make a point of connecting with someone on LinkedIn if I think they could be a good prospect or referral partner. If they have Creator Mode turned on, I’ll click on the bell symbol on their profile, which ensures I get notified any time they post something. That way I can react to and engage with their content, which is a great way to stay top of mind without constantly harassing them. It also increases the likelihood they’ll see my posts, which I make sure are always full of valuable content marketing tips. That positions me as an expert in my field and conveys the value I provide to my clients so when they are ready to hire, they want to hire me.
That said, I focus on LinkedIn because I know that’s where most of my ideal clients and referral partners tend to hang out. If you know your target audience is hanging out on a different social media site, invite people to connect with you over there.
The same is true of my newsletter. I send out weekly tips and tricks so people can implement those strategies themselves until they’re ready to hire me. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve gotten seemingly out of the blue because they signed up for my newsletter and saw all that value coming into their inbox every week.
I say “seemingly” out of the blue, because to say they appear on their own discredits all the hard work I put into my content marketing. On the one hand, I want to practice what I preach and avoid being the cobbler without any shoes. But I also do it because it works. It helps people see the value I provide and gives them a reason to reach out when they’re ready.
What’s my strategy? I’m glad you asked.
Table of Contents
- Identifying Your Target Audience(s)
- Mapping Out the Buyer Journey
- Crafting Your Call to Action (CTA)
Identifying Your Target Audience(s)
You can’t nurture leads without first knowing what’s important to them and what interests them. You can’t know that without first understanding who your target audience is, so if you have not already created your marketing personas, that needs to be your first step. Everything else is determined by who your target audience is, including where hang out (both online and in person), so you need to first get a very clear idea of who it is you’re trying to reach. [As it happens, I’ll be going through the process of identifying and describing your target audience in next week’s webinar, which is free to anyone interested in learning more about marketing personas.]
Mapping Out the Buyer Journey
Next, you need to know where your clients are coming from. Where do they tend to find you? What are the next steps once they become aware of you? What is most likely to convince them to buy (or to schedule that consultation or that phone call you can use to convince them to buy?)
Keep in mind there are probably several different ways for prospects to find you. I’ve gotten clients through networking, webinars, social media, and referrals. That means your buyer journeys will probably look more like a spider’s web than a single funnel, and your lead nurturing efforts should reflect that.
This is especially true if you have different offerings for people at different levels. For example, I have people who don’t want to be bothered with their blog at all and hand the reigns over to me. Then there are those who hire me to do some of the work, but they still want to be involved in the process. Finally, there are those who are still going the DIY route, and I have a whole section of offerings just for them.
How can you divide up your clients/target audience? What are the different points at which people need you and how can you convince them to reach out once they reach that final stage?
If you want an article that covers the buyer journey in more detail, I covered it in this blog post.
Crafting Your Call to Action (CTA)
You put too much work into crafting your content, making sure it answers your target audience’s questions and positions you as an authority in your industry to assume readers will follow up on their own. Without the right prompting, most people will finish reading your awesome content and then just click away, never to be seen again.
The solution to this problem is a compelling CTA. It comes last in the lead nurturing process because you need to understand where your readers are in the buyer journey so you can know the next step in the buyer journey to lead them to. You also need to understand your target audience so you can know exactly which words/phrases will motivate them to take the next step in the buyer journey.
While it sounds simple in theory, it tends to be more complicated in practice because most pieces of content will be read/viewed by people in multiple stages of the buyer journey. For example, if someone searches a keyword you used and reads one of your blog posts, they’re in the awareness stage, the very beginning of the buyer journey. But if you share your blog posts in your newsletter (as you should), you’ll also get readers who are already familiar with your brand and what you have to offer.
There is no easy answer to this solution. Personally, I tend to include a CTA to reach out to me in my newsletter so my subscribers see that message, but other blog readers don’t. At the end of the blog post itself, I tend to include something like this:
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