Lead nurturing is one of those things that’s easy to talk about but hard to do. In this post, I will share how to apply lead nurturing to help advance leads through three stages of your demand generation funnel to get more sales-qualified opportunities.
Remember this:
Our customers don’t see our funnels. They only have the aggregate experience of what they see, hear, and feel from us. Yet, it’s helpful to notice that all customer buying cycles fit into three distinct funnel stages.
Let me explain.
Three Lead Generation Stages You Need to Nurture
- Top of the Funnel (TOFU): People at this stage are searching for ideas, tips, and resources to help them answer questions and get ideas for problems they’re facing. You’re attracting relevant visitors, but they are unknown. Your goal is to assist and provide enough value to get a conversion and move them from anonymous visitors to known people (i.e., name, company, email, etc.)
- Middle of the Funnel (MOFU): At this stage, people took some conversion steps to express interest (subscribe, register, download, etc.). You need to learn if this person and/or their company is a fit and their level of qualification. You also want to learn about their motivation. During this stage, you’ll share content to help progress them from interest towards purchase intent.
- Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) – People are moving through a series of micro-yeses and decisions on their journey. At this stage, you’re moving them from being a lead to a sales-qualified opportunity. This is where the hand-off from marketing to sales occurs and where people ultimately make the buying decision.
All three are part of an integrated lead generation funnel, and this article touches on each element while taking a closer look at lead nurturing.
Read on for five lead nurturing tactics that will help you move people who’ve expressed interest in sales-qualified opportunities.
Top of the Funnel: Use a Portfolio of Channels
Without lead generation, there are no leads to nurture, and I recommend a portfolio approach to lead generation involving at least three to four different lead types like the following:
- Online
- Events
- Inside sales/sales development
Don’t rely on just one primary lead source. The best marketers approach their work as portfolio managers would run their mutual fund. Portfolio managers are always strategizing and testing the optimal investment strategy. Think about it.
The following mind map shows some of the channels you can use in your lead generation portfolio.
Identify what’s working right now in your lead generation portfolio and try new things. Switch channels in and out as you test. Your top-of-the-funnel lead generation becomes a multi-touch process when you use more than one channel.
You’ll find one channel is good at starting a conversation, while another might work better at advancing your discussion. You begin nurturing leads from the moment you say hello.
One last thing. Look at your budget for the top of the funnel. Marketers allocate the largest chunk of their budget to TOFU (channels, content, and martech). I recommend you allocate about 20% to 40% to nurturing the leads you already have in the middle and bottom of your funnel.
