Let’s say you are car shopping. Are  you going to buy the first car you look at without searching anymore? Probably not… Chances are you going to shop around with a checklist, do some research, ask for opinions, and negotiate costs.

Why would you think that a prospect is going to stumble onto your website and immediately do business with you? The “Rule of Seven” says that is takes approximately 7 touches to close a deal, and THIS is where lead nurturing comes in.

 What is “Lead Nurturing”

Lead nurturing is a marketing process designed to educate and build relationships with your leads and prospects who are not quite ready to buy yet.

 Why Do Small Businesses Do Need Lead Nurturing

The Rule of Seven

As already mentioned, the “Rule of Seven” claims that it takes approximately 7 touches to close a sale. If you are doing marketing well, then you are targeting your ideal customer with customized, targeted messaging on a regular basis. So why isn’t your ideal customer ready to buy RIGHT NOW? For a lot of reasons… they don’t know you well enough, they don’t need what you offer at this very moment, or you simply haven’t earned their respect. Lead nurturing helps you establish those relationships, build trust, and stay top of mind over time.

Automate your follow up

Following up with new leads and maintaining communication with current customers is a problem that all small businesses face. It is easy to only focus on “hot” leads and let all others fall by the way side. By using a system that will allow you to send automated email marketing campaigns and trigger tasks and reminders to you, you minimize the time and effort on your part to follow up with all of your contacts, which gives you more time to focus on those ‘hot’ leads and make more sales.

Score your leads

Whether you meet leads at a networking event or they come in through an online web form, all leads are at a different part of the buying cycle. Tracking behaviors such as email opens, link clicks, white paper downloads and webpage visits will give you an idea of who is most interested. You should be focusing on contacting people who have indicated that they are interested with behaviors like these. Ideally, using a sales and marketing software than can track and score this information for you will save you time and the headache of trying to keep track yourself.

How do I start nurturing my leads?

Use current marketing materials

You don’t want to use material that sounds salesy and chances are, most of your current marketing material does. Your current marketing materials can make a good outline or starting point though. Use what you have and do some additional research if necessary to write a few short and educational articles about your industry. Give the prospect tips on buying but don’t mention your product or service.

Leverage other people’s content

Start following blogs and publications that write about your industry. They need to provide good, educational information (but isn’t written by a competing business). Keep and archive good ones that your find (I like Diigo.com for keeping track of articles that I like).

Start a blog

A blog is a great way to not only attract people to your website, but to keep ideas in writing. Old blogs can be revamped into a new e-mail marketing campaign so it’s great to have content like this on hand.

Send your content out to current prospects via e-mail

You should develop an e-mail marketing campaign with your new content. Don’t put long articles into your e-mail, no one will read them. Stick to a short introduction and then a link to the article or blog. Again, this can be a link to someone else’s article as long as it isn’t a competitor.

Give new leads your content via social

LinkedIn groups are a great place to post your content. Find groups that make sense to post your content (writing about group insurance? post in small business groups) and write a short description with the link. Also, post your links on Facebook and Twitter. You never know who may click to read and become a prospect in the process.

So you’re a small business looking for new ways to market your products and services and drive sales. Did you know that more than 80 percent of purchases are driven by emotion? You would think that most buyers are rational, strategic, and simplistic in their buying process, but they aren’t. For most people, emotions often drive their decision to select one vendor or product over another and they rationalize it later.

Don’t believe me? Why do people buy Volvos? Marketing studies show it’s because they feel safe. How about Toms shoes? Because they are comfortable? Nope. It’s because they support kids in third world countries with every shoe purchase and tap into the emotions of their buyers to want to make a difference in the world.

So if you want to really get the most from your marketing efforts and drive sales for your small business, you’ve got to market and speak to the inner emotions of your prospects and customers. In this short video you will get the 3 critical questions that will help you identify and target your prospects hot buttons. I guarantee that answering these questions will help you tap into your buyers emotions and give you the boost in sales you have been looking for:

Everybody has their hot buttons and those hot buttons usually are related to a pain they’re trying to solve, a risk they are trying to reduce or an opportunity they’re trying to gain. In order to get anyone’s attention, you must speak to their hot buttons. Guru Zig Ziglar said it best: “Logic makes people think, and emotions make people act.”

So, go look at your marketing material, your website, your online forms and the emails you’ve been sending. If they don’t speak to the readers’ emotions, then it’s probably time for a simple exercise in understanding your prospects emotions and brainstorming headlines.

I hope you find this short video helpful. At Hatchbuck we provide really easy to use and affordable sales and marketing software that helps you engage and consistently communicate with prospects and customers.

To learn more about Hatchbuck, view our software here: