The festive season is no doubt one of the best ways to maximise sales. But how? Well, if you’ve been as busy as we have, you would have created some kick-ass inbound campaigns all year round which means (if done correctly) you should have a full list of leads waiting to turn into loyal customers.
Now, it’s time to nurture them.
Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with potential customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey. It’s all about listening to the needs of potential customers, then providing them with the solution, or answers they need.
Lead nurturing is crucial because most of the time, only a small percentage of your inbound marketing leads will be ready to make an instant purchase, leaving behind 90% of leads that are not quite ready. If you’re not nurturing those leads, you're missing a massive opportunity to turn them into buying customers.
In fact, according to Forrester marketers see a 20% increase in sales opportunities from nurtured vs non-nurtured leads. And what’s even better is that companies that actively succeed in lead nurturing generate 50% more sales.
Impressive.
So, lead nurturing in general is a no-brainer. And the festive season might just be the best time. Here are a few tactics to get you started.
SEO and content marketing
One of the best ways to turn leads into customers is by offering valuable advice. Buyers are already surfing the internet for answers, and your brand is in a unique position to provide solutions. Search terms go up during the festive season and content marketing welcomes customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey to help them move through the funnel.
Plus, in a world where customers are ever-aware of ads and are constantly bombarded with marketing at every corner, wouldn’t you rather they found you? Get specific with the keywords you know your hot leads are searching for, and provide valuable content based on it. When your leads keep landing on your site time after time, they’re bound to make a move.
Create festive season campaigns
Perhaps your leads aren’t quite ready to purchase yet because they’re waiting for the perfect time to gift someone, or they’re looking around for a better price. Give them the opportunity to purchase at a discounted price, based on the holiday season. Think discount codes or Black Friday campaigns.
Creating festive season campaigns, also means getting social. Leads count as followers or potential customers interested in your brand, too. And they’re more than active on social media, especially during this period. According to Facebook, in 2018, nearly 19 million people had 40 million interactions with holiday related shopping on Facebook.
To create a great social media campaign, you’ll need a good content offer, a strong CTA and an interesting creative that will encourage sharing and engagement. This last part is especially important as peer-to-peer sharing is the best way to get your message heard. Plus, it’ll help build up your list even further for the new year.
Get personal
If you’ve followed your leads behaviour carefully throughout the year, you will have noticed at what stage they are in the buying process. Sometimes, leads just aren’t going down the funnel.
It’s time to get personal.
Email marketing is still one of the best ways to communicate with an audience. But personalisation and timing is crucial. With that in mind, email marketing continues to be the most effective tactic for lead nurturing.
Personalised emails produce significantly better results than mass-produced mails. Studies have indicated that personalised emails can generate up to 6 times higher revenue than non-personalised emails do. With HubSpot Sales and automated workflows, you can even send triggered emails when someone downloads content, visits particular pages, or even clicks on specific links.
Automation and Workflows
As your leads continue to grow, it’s likely that your marketing team may not be able to keep up. Perhaps you might be at that stage already, and the thought of nurturing leads during the holiday season might be too much work altogether.
Enter automation.
Marketing automation is a technology solution that can automate your marketing efforts across various channels to improve efficiency and drive more sales. With HubSpot, you can automate a workflow to help you streamline processes, especially when your team has more than 50 hot leads. It’s easy for a small business to keep track of a short list of leads but as your company starts scaling, you’re still going to want to create meaningful campaigns that are tailored towards your leads. So while your leads are becoming overly active during this time, you don't have to overwork your team, too.
Get started with lead nurturing and inbound marketing
Well there you have it. A few great ways to nurture your leads this festive season. Remember, you are always fighting for your leads attention, and if your brand isn’t nurturing leads, it’s likely that your competitors are. Don’t miss out on an opportunity to gain sales and loyal customers this festive season.
Lead nurturing is just one aspect of the full inbound marketing spectrum that works hard at attracting traffic, generating leads, closing customers, and even supporting existing customers.
If you’d like to discuss a more detailed approach of how we can nurture your leads, or even generate more leads for your brand, get in touch with us.
