A steady stream of well-qualified, “sales ready” leads is the holy grail of professional services marketers everywhere. Yet it is surprisingly rare. Why is that?
We believe that one of the big reasons is a lack of appropriate lead nurturing. That’s why we have prepared a brand new lead nurturing best practices guide designed specifically for professional services marketers.
Why You Should Care About Lead Nurturing
Here’s a hint: It’s not just because lead nurturing is lonely and needs a friend. There are solid business reasons behind this guide.
- First, most professional services sales are complex. Complex sales involve a longer education and closing process. Lead nurturing is well suited to these needs, as it does a better job of making your case and making it stick.
- Second, most professional services sales require that both expertise and trust be established before a decision can be made by the client. Lead nurturing is a natural way to accomplish both those objectives.
- Third, an effective lead nurturing program can save you considerable time and expense when compared to traditional approaches to relationship building. It is much less time intensive on the part of business developers and billable staff.
In fact, you might well be able to make a case that lead nurturing should be the centerpiece of your business development efforts. Most potential clients can’t be “talked into” using professional services. They buy when a recognized need arises. Lead nurturing helps them recognize that need — and positions your firm to provide the services that fulfill it.
Lead Nurturing Best Practices
The lead nurturing best practices guide covers six key topic areas.
- The rationale for a program and the strategy that drives it. This section will help you understand the role lead generation plays in an overall business development program. If you need to sell the idea to your team, this is the chapter for you.
- The components of an effective lead generation campaign. It answers the questions around what needs to be in place. This chapter will be very useful in your planning efforts.
- Common types of lead nurturing offers. Many marketers struggle to identify what types of offers they should send to prospects to nurture the relationship. This chapters answers that question.
- A content strategy goes hand in hand with the offers. How do you decide what to write about? How much of your expertise do you give away for free? In what depth do you cover topics? These are just a few of the questions that a content strategy will address.
- The most important metrics to track. You’ll want to track how well the program is working so you can share the success you are achieving and pinpoint where you need to focus your attention. This tells you what to focus on.
- Getting through to the inbox. You’ll learn what you must do to stay compliant with email regulations and other tips and techniques to maximize results. There is more to it than you might imagine.
These six chapters are rounded out with a section on free resources. All of the lead nurturing best practices are focused on professional services firms so you don’t have to determine if a recommendation is relevant to your industry.
Download your free copy of Hinge’s new lead nurturing best practices guide here.
