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10 Types of Lead Nurturing Campaigns to Drive Growth

Utilising marketing automation to implement different types of lead nurturing campaigns strengthens marketing efforts and personalisation, which can be a valuable tool for sales teams. 48% of marketers say most prospects require ‘long term nurturing’. In this scenario, implementing the same lead nurturing campaign for every potential customer becomes inefficient.

Businesses can capture, nurture, and convert leads on multiple platforms with effective content delivery by understanding various lead nurturing workflows. These workflows can be used by sales teams to better understand potential customers and tailor their approach accordingly.

While companies can develop their original lead nurturing ideas, starting with the standard campaigns is always good. The proper knowledge of preparing and compiling the basic types of lead nurturing campaigns makes it easier to customise a sales cycle into a better buying journey.

In this blog, I will discuss the various types of lead nurturing campaigns brands should use at different stages of the sales funnel to gain better conversion rates.

Types of Lead Nurturing Campaigns

Identifying suitable campaigns and the stage of the sales funnel is crucial to delivering content that resonates with prospective buyers. It is a dynamic marketing strategy that helps you deliver personalised content over a period of time to all your prospects, leads, and clients.

Filling the sales funnel with content is not enough. Identifying suitable campaigns and the sales funnel stage is crucial to delivering compelling content, be it to your email lists or through social media posts.

Keeping different stages of the buyers’ journey in mind, it becomes easier to curate content and create effective email marketing campaigns.

So, I have segregated ten types of nurture campaigns according to the sales stages to make it easier to strategise and plan efficiently.

Stage 1: Awareness

This stage aims to understand and decrease the awareness gap between a brand and its prospective customers. Lead nurturing at the awareness stage revolves around providing valuable content and solving consumer pain points that are built by understanding a brand buyer personas. It helps establish the brand as a market leader and increases brand affinity.

There are two types of lead nurturing campaigns that marketing teams can build:

(i) Welcome Campaigns

A welcome campaign refers to a series of messages shared with the lead after they officially enter a company’s sales funnel. It starts by confirming and thanking the prospect for signing up as a subscriber. The trigger action for a welcome campaign can be downloading a lead magnet or filling out a landing page form.

A lead at the first stage of the sales funnel has weak knowledge about the brand and what it does. The welcome campaign must deliver content that familiarises the leads with the company. Further, a prospect’s triggering action explains their area of interest. Businesses should share valuable information related to it and keep the consumers engaged.

A welcome campaign can end when the prospect starts interacting with the brand by visiting its website, blog posts, and social media. Once more intent data gets collected about prospects, their journey must be further personalised with educational campaigns.

(ii) Educational Campaigns

An educational campaign gets implemented by a business when it has performed lead segmentation on its prospect lists. Such campaigns focus on various buyers’ personas of a company and share relevant content that addresses common consumer concerns and issues.

By analysing a lead’s online behaviour and attributes, companies personalise educational campaigns.

Educational campaigns allow brands to maintain consistent interaction with their target audience. It pushes for a higher recall rate and keeps the brand at the top of consumers’ minds. Such campaigns establish the brand as a leader in the industry and generate credibility.

Content shared under educational campaigns includes:

Whitepaper
Detailed e-book
Checklist
Expert blog posts

Stage 2: Consideration

After transitioning from an IQL to MQL, leads enter the consideration stage. At this stage, various types of lead nurturing campaigns connect specific consumer problems to a company’s service.

It explains the different features and benefits of service to interested prospects, how it solves a consumer pain point and motivates potential customers to give it a try.

Let’s understand how they work:

(iii) Promotional / Service-related Campaigns

These campaigns cater to prospects who have shown interest in a company’s services. Leads under this campaign have high CTR for previous campaigns, and their online behaviour indicates a high intent to buy.

Promotional campaigns primarily discuss the USPs of a service and answer questions consumers might have regarding it. For example, B2B companies that provide SaaS use simple-natured blogs to explain the technical support their software can deliver to a business.

By addressing “how” a problem gets solved by the services, companies help prospects make an informed decision.

At this stage, businesses must share service or product-related information with the leads like:

Case Studies
Webinars
Service specification sheet
Free Trial

(iv) Discovery Campaigns

A discovery campaign encourages leads to sign-up for a discovery call or free demo. These campaigns point out the benefits of a live one-on-one session and solving a lead’s queries hand-on.

Discovery calls and free demos are essential for marketing as they help merge a brand’s services with another company’s goals. It assists in directly connecting with the target audience and listening to consumer issues and feedback.

The discovery campaigns point out the benefits of a live one-on-one session and solving a lead’s queries hand-on.

This type of lead nurturing campaign is beneficial for SaaS companies and consultancy firms.

Stage 3: Buying

The buying stage is the stage where all the marketing efforts pay off. Campaigns under this stage focus on making a brand stand out from the rest of its competition and becoming an ideal choice for its qualified leads.

The prospect already knows everything about the brand and service of their interest. The buying stage pushes different types of lead nurturing campaigns that boost the prospects’ confidence in a brand and helps them make purchase decisions.

There are three types of lead nurturing campaigns that companies should develop:

(v) Authority Perception Campaigns

An authority perception campaign shares prominent social proof about a company to raise brand credibility. While the potential customer is in the midst of making the final decision, they can get last-minute doubts.

These types of lead nurturing campaigns take care of such doubts and present various types of social proof to reassure prospects that they make the right choice.

Authority perception campaigns take care of such doubts and present various types of social proof to reassure prospects that they make the right choice.

Under such campaigns, businesses can share information like:

User-generated content
Testimonials
Press releases
Recent awards won
Honourable mentions

It is also possible that prospects might wander off to competitor sites for comparisons. To avoid such cases, the authority perception campaigns must also include what differentiates a brand from its competitors with the help of comparison tables.

(vi) Offer/ Discount Campaigns

Some leads might budge from making the final decision because of the price. By identifying and offering discounts to such prospects, companies can capture their attention and motivate leads to become a paying-client. Such campaigns work wonders when timed correctly.

A business can offer free trials, special discount offers, etc., to get the potential customer on board. It is also crucial to keep a close eye on the online behaviour of the targeted prospects and not lose them to competitors.

Stage 4: Retention

After converting leads into clients, it is crucial to maintain active communication with them. Regularly checking in for feedback and informing about updates related to the company and services results in higher customer lifecycle value. For businesses that have a subscription or contract-based services, a general reminder of the renewal of services works great.

Email nurturing is an effective tool for customer retention, where businesses can create personalized content to keep customers engaged and offer exclusive deals to improve customer loyalty.

Campaigns under the retention stage of the sales funnel focus on increased repurchases from the established client.

(vii) Cross-sell/ Upsell Campaigns

Cross-selling and upselling campaigns are essential for every B2B company to boost its growth. Established clients are like hidden sales opportunities to pitch upgrades and new services. As they have already gone through the whole sales funnel and understand the value of a brand, it becomes easier to re-convert past customers than chase new prospects.

When marketing teams are preparing cross-selling or upselling campaigns, they must keep in mind the latest pain points of the customers. Companies can capture such data with the help of surveys, feedback, tickets raised, and recent online activities.

(viii) Customer Training Campaigns

When a prospect finally becomes a customer, it is time for the brand to deliver all the promised services and validate their social proof. Companies must take the smart route and develop customer training campaigns to provide impeccable customer services to established customers.

Businesses must fill such campaigns with information that makes it easier for the customers to implement the purchased services. Under such campaigns, companies can share:

Step-by-step guide
Tips and Tricks
Hidden Functions
Personalised suggestions

(ix) Referral Campaigns

64% of marketers say that word-of-mouth is the most effective marketing tactic. Established clients are the biggest asset of a company, and referral campagins allow for leveraging them. Companies must motivate clients to advocate for the brand by providing customers incentives. It also helps identify loyal customers and reward them.

Let’s understand how SaaS companies offer referral programs with an example:

Evernote is a note-taking app that offers subscription-based services. For its referral program, it came up with an offer that benefited both the referrer and referee.

While the referee got a month of free premium services, the referrer got 10 points for the first three referrals, which means three months of free premium services. Due to this, 13% of active users of Evernote bought the services because of the referrals.

So a referral program that benefits all the parties involved is the best way to capture consumer attention.

(x) Re-engagement

After establishing a relationship with your customers, it’s important to continue engaging with them to maintain their interest in your products or services. Re-engagement campaigns can be an effective way to reach out to customers who haven’t engaged with your brand in a while and bring them back into the sales funnel.

Re-engagement campaigns are an important step in the sales process and can take many forms, including drip campaigns, retargeted ads, or personalized emails. The goal is to remind customers of your brand and encourage them to take action, whether that’s making a purchase, updating their preferences, or simply visiting your website.

Some effective strategies for re-engagement campaigns include win-back campaigns, surveys, and feedback campaigns. By tailoring your messaging to your customers’ specific interests and needs, you can make them feel more valued and increase the likelihood that they will engage with your brand again.

Re-engagement campaigns can take many forms, including email campaigns, retargeted ads, social media posts, or anything that boosts customer experience. The goal is to remind current customers of your brand and encourage them to take action, whether that’s making a purchase, updating their preferences, checking out additional features, or simply visiting your website.

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Additionally, don't forget to download the PDF resource offered on the page, which provides a comprehensive collection of lead nurturing ideas. Enhance your strategies and achieve improved outcomes in both your sales funnel and lead nurturing efforts for better business results.

How Does Fractional CMO Improve Types of Lead Nurturing Campaigns?

With a focus on precision and strategy, I bring specialized expertise to developing and optimizing types of lead nurturing campaigns for your business. From meticulous planning to seamless execution, my role as a B2B Fractional CMO ensures that your campaigns are finely tuned to captivate, engage, and convert leads with the utmost efficiency.

I thoroughly assess campaign performance using advanced technology and data analysis, delivering actionable insights to refine and elevate your lead nurturing strategy.

Count on my strategic leadership to guide your team in executing high-performance lead nurturing initiatives, fostering a culture of continuous improvement for sustained and impactful business growth.

Conclusion

Different types of lead nurturing campaigns help build a workflow that pushes for marketing and sales success. Companies can increase their conversion rate by developing targeted lead nurturing content for every stage funnel and sharing it with the prospects on time.

This blog highlights all the essential types of lead nurturing campaigns that are a must for every B2B business that aims for growth. Different types of lead nurturing campaigns work for awareness, acquisition, and retention to generate quality leads and long-term clients.

If you are new to lead nurturing, then check out the lead nurturing ultimate guide: