6 Ways to create a solid lead nurturing campaign [With examples]

As a competent professional, you understand the necessity of engaging with your customer. And this can be effortlessly practiced with lead nurturing. 

Lead nurturing helps you build personalized relationships with prospects at every stage of the sales process.

The lead nurturing campaign aims at educating leads about the brand, its product, and its services.

Hence, a targeted lead nurturing campaign is the best way to attract leads and secure conversions. In fact, nurtured leads have a 23% shorter sales cycle.

This blog gives detailed knowledge about- Lead nurturing campaign, their benefits, how to create a successful lead nurturing campaign, required examples for reference, and a FAQ section to answer your curious questions. 

So, let’s get started! 

What is a lead nurturing campaign?

A lead nurturing campaign aims to capture and nurture leads till they reach the bottom of the funnel, turning them into paying customers.

You should develop a lead nurturing campaign based on your user behavior findings and available data.

Throughout the campaign, you provide a piece of essential information that helps customers in their decision-making process. This concludes that a series of personalized lead nurturing emails impact your customer’s journey. 

Lead nurturing campaign is usually executed using email automation and lead nurturing software. So, it is vital that you choose software catering to your requirements. 

What are the benefits of a lead nurturing campaign?

Though 65% of marketers don’t nurture their leads, here’s why you shouldn’t make the same mistake:

• The primary benefit of having a lead nurturing program is seeing an increase in lead conversions. This is because of the series of informative emails you send, which assists them in progressing towards the funnel. 
• Additionally, having a lead nurturing campaign lets you experience a higher ROI. This is because sending personalized emails shortens your sales cycle and lowers customer acquisition costs. 
• The complimentary benefit of performing a lead nurturing campaign is building a solid customer relationship. As you continuously maintain a series of communication with them, it develops a strong sense that you understand your customers’ needs and goals. 
• The lead nurturing email campaign aids in developing your brand image. While assisting leads with relevant information, you become a trusted source of their buyer’s journey. Hence, when the time comes, your customers prefer you over your competitors. 

As per statistics, brands that practice lead nurturing experience 50% higher sales-ready leads than non-nurtured leads. Moreover, you would receive 4-10 more responses from a lead nurturing email campaign than a standalone email.

After learning the benefits, you surely want to build a successful lead nurturing campaign.  

So, let’s closely look at the process of creating a lead nurturing campaign in simple steps. 

How to create a lead nurturing campaign?

Creating a lead nurturing campaign is a thoughtful process. Hence, here are 6 simple steps to help you build a successful lead nurturing process. 

Step 1: Goal setting  

Goal setting is the primary step while creating a lead nurturing campaign. Determining the right goal gives you the correct direction. 

You must ensure your goals correspond with your prospective customer, resulting in mutual benefit. 

You can set a goal from the top to the bottom of the funnel by asking: Who are my ideal buyers? What problem am I trying to solve with my product or service? 

In this scenario, you may aim at: 

• Increasing the number of opportunities entering the pipeline 
• Attracting more customers from a specific segment or industry  
• Increasing customer base who fit your ideal client profile 

Or you can set a goal from bottom to top – What product am I trying to sell? In this scenario, your goal can be to increase purchasing a particular product or service. 

Similarly, your goal may be –

• Shortening your sales cycle 
• Enhancing process efficiency 
• Have lower customer acquisition cost 
• Generate more warm leads and so on 

Hence, it is essential that you analyze and set your goal. 

Step 2: Choose your target audience 

Here, if you’ve set your goals from top to bottom, you are already aware of your target audience. However, if you haven’t done so, you need to answer- Which of my buyer persona benefits from the product or service I am trying to sell? 

The buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. 

On the contrary, if you aim to enhance the efficiency of the process, you must segregate the buyer persona from all your leads database.  

Similarly, if your goal is to shorten the sales cycle, then you need to figure out the most common buyer persona in your database. This will help you eliminate the extra steps and help you make smart efforts.  

Once you understand your target audience, you can frame your lead nurturing campaign strategy accordingly. 

Step 3: Formulate your buyer’s journey  

To efficiently create a lead nurturing campaign, it is essential that you map your buyer’s stage in its journey. 

Here you need to have good knowledge about the buyer’s journey process. So, the buyer journey process is divided into three stages: top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel.  

• The top of the funnel, also known as the awareness stage, is a stage where your buyer starts knowing about your products or service. At this stage, you collect your buyer’s information and put it into lead management, resulting in lead generation. Simply, the lead here comes searching for a solution to its problem. 
• The middle of the funnel, also known as the consideration stage, is a stage where your buyer is viewed as MQLs, I.e., Marketing qualified leads. So here, your objective is to enlighten them about your products and services. You must send personalized automated emails to nurture them with targeted content. 
• The bottom of the funnel, also known as the decision stage, is the last stage where your buyer decides to purchase your product or not. Typically, the marketers and salespeople work together to persuade them to make a purchase decision. 

You may feel like starting from the top of the funnel towards the bottom, i.e., to start with your buyer persona. However, you can even start from bottom to top, focusing on your product or service towards the buyer persona.

Both ways are correct depending upon the goal you’ve set for your lead nurturing campaign. 

Step 4: Guide buyers depending upon their funnel stage  

After mapping your buyer stage in the funnel, it is essential that you have a content plan to be implemented. 

You need to send targeted and personalized content when it comes to executing a lead nurturing campaign.

Your buyers at every funnel stage would demand unique content. You can determine this content by asking certain questions yourself while moving through the funnel.  

To understand your buyer needs and strategize content at the top of the funnel stage, you can ask yourself questions like:

1. What is the problem that the buyer aims to solve? 
2. What are the consequences of buyers neglecting the solution? 
3. How does your product solve the problem and help the prospect achieve its goal? 
4. How do buyers educate themselves about this goal? 

The answers to this question will help you create your targeted content.  

Now, to understand your buyer needs and plan content at the middle of the funnel stage, you can ask questions like:

1. How do buyers decide on the right product or service to achieve their goal? 
2. What sort of solutions do buyers investigate? 
3. How do buyers perceive the pros and cons of each product and service? 
4. How do I strategize my content in an informative and persuasive way? 

Similarly, you can answer the below-mentioned questions to plan the bottom of the funnel stage content: 

1. Why would your buyers choose you over your competitors? 
2. Who needs to be involved in the buying decision, and what will be their perspective while making the decision? 
3. What standards do buyers set to evaluate the offer? 
4. What offers will entice the buyer to make the purchase? 

These are specific questions that will help you create content and help you attain your goal of nurturing your leads till they turn into your paying customers. 

Step 5: Determine an accurate channel to communicate  

Now that you are ready with your buyers and the campaign content, you must determine the most appropriate channel. 

Remember, communicating through the right channel and at the right time will help you attain your set goals.

Here are some examples of channels you can use fora lead nurturing campaign: 

• Emails 
• SMS marketing 
• Retargeting ads 
• Landing pages 

You should evaluate and choose the preferred channel based on your buyer’s preferences.  

Step 6: Automate the process 

The final step here is to automate your lead nurturing campaign. You need to implement a CRM to automate your journey. 

Among various CRM available, here’s the CRM that can assist you in automating your journey right from collecting to nurturing leads and turning them into paying customers. 

You can check out Salesmate, a unified customer platform that empowers businesses to streamline their sales, marketing, and CX processes.

Salesmate enables you to automate various lead nurturing processes such as Lead Scoring, Email Marketing Campaigns, Live Chat, and creating Automated Journeys with Marketing Automation.

With such robust features, you can boost your marketing and sales team’s productivity.

It is proven to be a one-stop Customer Relationship Management software that allows you to create a personalized lead nurturing campaign and automate the entire journey.

Lead nurturing campaign examples as per funnel stages  

After learning about developing the lead nurturing campaign, let’s look at a few examples that you can use as per funnel stages –

Top of the funnel example

Top-of-the-funnel campaigns help you increase your brand awareness and require maximum lead nurturing efforts from your sales and marketing teams. You can run campaigns like: 

1. Awareness campaign

Here the aim is to make the potential lead familiar with the brand. This takes a long period of time. However, the best part is that your potential lead learns about the brand from yourself.

Awareness campaigns usually include –

• Offer email campaigns
• Product launch invitation
• Hard-hitting advertisements that connect with the target audience

2. Welcome campaign

It is the first email that you send to your audience when they provide their contact details to you.

Hence, it’s a chance to create the first impression of your brand to your customers. It is a brief message that consists of warm greetings.  

Here’s an example of the same.

Middle of the funnel example  

Here’s where your prospects are at the consideration stage, so you must showcase your product or service’s values. This stage operates campaigns like: 

1. Competitive campaign

This campaign emphasizes how your product is better than your competitor’s product. This can be done in various ways, like having a comparison blog or a landing page that compares features.

2. Product campaign

After introducing your brand, it is crucial that you educate your leads about your product. Here you must convey how your product solves the pain points along with other features and benefits.  

A very good example is mentioned below for your reference –

Bottom of the funnel example

Being the last stage, this is where you either win or lose a deal. So, you need to tread carefully and execute an effective lead nurturing campaign strategy. Below are a few examples of the same.

1. Industrial expert campaign

Here your motive should be positioning your brand as an industry expert. It can be done by publishing high-value content and receiving reviews and ratings from a third-party analyst. 

You can even mention reviews & testimonials of your delighted users. 

2. Promotional campaign

At this stage, your buyer may purchase at any moment. Hence, you need to plan your offers accordingly.   

Your focus here should be on offering special discounts, occasional offers, and so on. Also, make sure you have a clear CTA to persuade more buyers.  

Here’s a great example of offering a festive discount – 

These are examples of lead nurturing campaigns at different stages of the funnel.  

Now, it’s time to answer the most frequently asked questions. 

Frequently Asked Questions on lead nurturing campaign 

Here are some frequently asked questions about lead nurturing campaigns: 

Conclusion 

A lead nurturing campaign is one of the most effective ways to convert leads into loyal customers. They show that you appreciate your leads.

At the same time, provide valuable information without annoying or overwhelming them with too much information at once.  

Hence, whenever you want to improve your sales process, start with creating a lead nurturing campaign. Moreover, lead nurturing campaigns must be automated to enhance process efficiency.  

So, without losing your potential buyers, have a lead nurturing campaign and automate the entire process using Salesmate CRM.