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A B2B lead nurturing plan can help build thoughtful communication and strong bonds with your clients. When you have a nurturing programme in place, your prospects do not get bombarded with generic content. Instead, they get personalised content based on their actions, interests, and pain points.
But many marketers do not back their nurturing programs with proper research about the buyer’s persona and other crucial data. It can result in bad-quality leads and a longer sales cycle.
So, in this article, I will discuss the things you must do before creating your lead nurturing plan. With the help of this blog, you will learn how to understand your audience better and tailor a more personalised buyer’s journey for them.
Prerequisites For Creating a High Converting Lead Nurturing Plan
In lead nurturing, the two most crucial things are
- Extensive research
- Lead segmentation
Both of these factors come before the planning and execution of a lead nurturing plan.
Let’s understand them one by one.
1. Research
Research is essential to determine which lead nurturing channel works better for your audience. It helps you discover new nurturing content and also makes sure that you use your existing resources in the best way possible.
Research can assist you in filling gaps in your lead nurturing campaign and changing the way you approach a potential lead.
Below are the key points you must focus on for strengthening the foundation of your lead nurturing plan.
a. In-Depth Research about your Target Audience
Lead nurturing gives you the opportunity of revisiting your buyer’s persona that you might have created in the early phase of your business. As the market changes, your target audience pain points and needs also change.
While you might be monitoring these changes from a distance, the time has come to take a closer look.
b. Repurpose Existing Content
Repurposing existing content is an economical and time-saving approach to nurturing leads.
For example:
- Flowcharts or webinars that you created to promote your business can get reused when offering valuable information about your products to potential prospects.
- You can also reuse your blog articles and compile them into case studies that showcase what your products and services offer.
- Another way of repurposing your content is to create downloadable versions of your existing resources and use them as lead magnets.
c. Setting Criteria For Qualified Leads
Qualified leads are those significant leads who have shown an interest in purchasing, but they must meet specific requirements to be called qualified. The passing criteria for qualified leads can include geographical locations, customer profile, staff count, email open rate, etc.
These indicators must help you discover your qualified leads efficiently before starting a lead nurturing campaign.
2. Lead Segmentation
Lead segmentation is the process of breaking down your collected leads into various groups based on different parameters. These parameters encompass demographic information, behavioural information, transactional information, and so on.
By clustering your prospects into multiple segments, you can deliver messages that address their unique needs at each stage of the sales cycle.
With the help of lead segmentation, you can strengthen your lead nurturing plan and deliver personalised solutions to different types of customers. You need to update your lead segmentation process on a timely basis as the consumer relationship changes with your brand.
While lead segmentation is used further in the lead nurturing process as well, it is always a good choice to get a head start by segmenting your leads the minute they enter your sales funnel.
Different types of segmentation you can use are:
a. Demographic Segmentation
Demographic segmentation implies distributing your target audience according to certain characteristics such as:
- Gender
- Age
- Income
- Occupation
- Level of Education
This type of segmentation is one of the oldest and cheapest methods to isolate your prospects into groups. Demographics help you understand the individual you are addressing and create a better marketing pitch for them.
For example, in B2B, marketers distribute their audience according to job title, industry, responsibilities in the company, and other profession-related factors.
Capturing demographical consumer insights is commonly done with the help of landing pages, quizzes, or surveys.
b. Geographic Segmentation
Geographic segmentation involves separating your leads based on their physical location. The information of your prospects that you can use under this form of segmentation is:
- Residing Country/City/ State
- Timezone
- Language preference
- Region type (urban or rural)
- Climate
- Culture
Consumer needs and interests can vary from region to region. Geographic segmentation helps you understand those needs and promote your business to satisfy their specific problems.
c. Firmographic Segmentation
Firmographic segmentation revolves around grouping your prospects according to their company attributes. Some measuring firmographic traits are:
- Company size
- Company type
- Industry
- Functions
- Services/ Products
- Annual revenue
With the help of the segmentation, you can design more effective advertising campaigns by learning more about your targeted market firms. Firmographics-based segmentation is particularly beneficial for B2B marketers as they help them better understand their target audience
d. Behavioural Segmentation
Behavioural segmentation can segment your prospects by their behaviours and site interaction patterns.
The factors that you can measure under such segmentation are:
- Frequency of webpage visits (landing page and website pages)
- Source of arriving
- Referred lead magnet
- Preferred content (webinars, newsletters, e-books, etc.)
- Triggering keywords
- Email CTR
Segmenting prospects based on behaviours can allow you to take a more targeted nurturing approach. It lets you know at what stage your lead is in their buyer’s journey. You can also predict prospects’ future purchases and proactively educate them about those services.
e. Transactional Segmentation
Transactional segmentation divides your established clients based on their spending patterns. This segmentation assists you in identifying those customers who are suitable for upselling or cross-selling.
The factors your should use for transactional segmentation are:
- Type of recent purchases
- Monetary transactions
- Regularity in purchases
Marketers use this segmentation pattern for leads who have already done business with you. It helps create a specific segmentation strategy for established clientele and increases customer retention.
You can mix and match various lead segmentation methods for creating an optimum way to segregate your leads and easily understand which has a higher chance of becoming a buyer.
How To Use Research and Lead Segmentation For Creating A Lead Nurturing Plan
After gathering your research and deciding which lead segmentation methods you will use, now you can combine the two for generating a top-notch lead nurturing plan.
For example, say you have a B2B SaaS enterprise, and you want to nurture your leads in the most effective way. Let’s see how we can do that:
Starting with research, you must first revisit your buyers’ personas and understand their challenges. Below is a form according to which you can review information about your buyer personas.
You can create the above form for two or three of your target personas. As I have taken the example of a B2B SaaS company, I have also included firmographics in the form.
After creating your buyer’s personas, you can start auditing your content and figure out what type of resources you have.
You can use the above format for auditing your existing content. In the table, the buyer’s journey stage represents the funnel stage for which the content was prepared. The format/ type will clarify whether the content is in a blog post, webinar, or ebook format.
The target buyer persona column is for those with more than one ideal buyer and can specify it here. A content audit will help you understand how to repurpose your existing content to engage your audience.
The next step is to group current leads according to lead segmentation methods that best suit a B2B SaaS company, such as firmographic segmentation, behavioural segmentation, and transactional segmentation.
Next comes deciding your qualifying lead criteria for the B2B SaaS enterprise, which you can set with the help of the buyers’ persona chart and the lead segmentation groups that we discussed earlier in the blog.
After completing this process, you will be all set to start planning the workflow of the lead nurturing campaign.
Conclusion
By forming a lead nurturing plan that aptly utilises research and various types of lead segmentation methods, you will surely create a lead nurturing plan that can help you secure profitable consumer action.
With the help of this blog, you can start segmenting leads and re-engage your established clients with your best resources and create an admirable client base.
Before you go, you can download this PDF that covers a variety of lead nurturing ideas to optimize your lead nurturing efforts.
If you want to understand what type of content you need to produce for a successful lead-nurturing campaign, check out my blog about When You Should Start Building an Effective Lead Nurturing Campaign.
Related Article:
Optimizing Lead Nurturing for Higher Qualified Leads
5 Steps To Win Back Lost Leads With Lead Nurturing
B2B Startup Marketing Guide: Key Elements and Strategies
How to Improve B2B Website Conversions: Effective Strategies
Lead Nurturing Email Examples: Successful Samples to Follow
