Lead nurturing in B2B is one of those things that companies find easy to talk about in the sphere. But, no one really tells how complicated the matter actually is. And we all know that lead nurturing is what turns the lead into a client. Lead nurturing helps the lead to thrive in the sales funnel so it can get qualified and turned into a purchasing client eventually. So, how to turn leads into clients with lead nurturing successfully? Read on.

The leads don’t see your funnel. They don’t know what your funnel stages are. Your leads only know the experience that you offer them in the stages of your funnel and how they feel as a result.

Main stages of lead nurturing

The main stages of your lead generation nurturing funnel are Top of the funnel (TOFU), Middle of the funnel (MOFU) and Bottom of the funnel (BOFU).

Sounds simple right? Let’s dive briefly in each of these stages just to get a glimpse of what you need to figure out from this article:

Top of the funnel (TOFU) – this is the stage where your leads are desperately looking for a solution to their problems. They need ideas and resources that in return would help them to find a solution to their problems. In the TOFU stage, you need to know how to attract relevant people to your sales channels. Here, you have to help your prospects enough so you can transfer them from unfamiliar interest to conversion.

Middle of the funnel (MOFU) – in this stage, the leads are taking action towards expressing their interest in your business. This is where you find out the person or the company’s level of lead qualification. You can learn a lot more about a prospect’s motivation in this stage. That’s why you need to share a lot of content and resources here to help the prospect take a purchasing decision.

Bottom of the funnel (BOFU) – You’re going to need lots of “Yes” answers from your leads to take them to the BOFU. This is where the lead qualifying to a sales opportunity happens. If the prospects are already in the BOFU that means that you’ve convinced them enough with your marketing efforts. Furthermore, it means that they’re ready to make a purchasing decision.

These stages are just a small glimpse of what the b2b lead generation funnel really is. Without further ado, let’s have a look at how to nurture interested prospects to a sale.

Don’t focus on one lead channel alone

Without a proper lead generation process, you won’t even have leads to nurture them. Your lead generation process shouldn’t be focused just on one channel. This means that you need to look for leads in different places such as:

• Your email list;
• Social media;
• Public events;
• Sales/marketing development team.

You shouldn’t rely just on one lead source alone. This is one of the main slip-ups in b2b lead generation. You should always develop your strategy around several lead channels.

The first thing that you need to do is to figure out where your business is at with lead generation process at this point. Test every possible lead channel. You need to find that one channel where the lead generation and conversation with prospects are going good.

Communication is key at this phase of lead generation. Yous tart with your lead generation process from the moment you say “Hi” to a prospect.

Progression is key

The first thing that businesses do is to have a look at their existing contact database. But the question is, can you engage those contacts a little further into your lead generation funnel?

If these contacts are people and companies that you’ve picked up during your TOFU stage of the funnel, then think of progression as an extension of those initial conversations. Look again at every lead generation source. Then, ask yourself what kinds of relationships you actually started with those contacts.

Then, ask yourself what kind of content or value you can provide to initiate those conversations further.

Convert, then nurture more

The main goal that you want to achieve with lead nurturing is to convert leads into sales qualified opportunities. When you’re trying to convert a lead, you need to know when you’re going to hand the lead from the marketing to the sales team.

This is a tricky situation, because you don’t want to lose the relationship that you have with your prospect. You can always find the sweet spot by leveraging your lead scoring and qualification efforts, which is why you have your sales team in the first place.

But, this doesn’t mean that when the prospects are ready to purchase from the sales team you should stop marketing to them. You should always work close with your sales team to help your marketing team find out additional problems that the prospect has. In turn, this will help the marketing team to provide more value upfront to the lead and continue nurturing it until long-term purchasing opportunity is established.

As a startup, you need to think long-term and acquire customers that will prove profitable over a lifetime. You need to position your business in the most profitable space on the market and create a huge demand for your product. Alone you’ll spend a huge amount of time on research, digital marketing, testing and content creation to reach the right leads. You got to ask yourself if you’re experienced enough to do it in your startup phase.

If your answer is “No” then you should consider BizzBee experts to do it for you. Leave the work to professionals while you focus on your product.