How to Build Customer Profiles with Lead Nurturing

Are you using automated lead nurturing for your inbound and online marketing? If not, you are missing opportunities for a two-way exchange of information that can increase the effectiveness of your sales force.

We know that only about 25 percent of new leads to most business websites are actually ready to buy when they first convert. (Click to Tweet)

The rest are seeking information. They don’t want a call from the sales department just yet. And if you shove them straight into a sales decision, chances are you’ll lose them.

That is what makes lead nurturing so important. It can provide the information that leads are looking for and keep them engaged with your company as they move toward making a decision.

(This blog post explains why the landing page conversion is just the beginning.)

Lead nurturing doesn’t only provide your prospective customers with the information they are seeking; it has a dual benefit of also feeding information back to you.

Find step-by-step instructions for implementing lead nurturing in our Introduction to Lead Nurturing ebook.

How Lead Nurturing Builds Customer Profiles

Automated lead nurturing kicks off when a prospect completes a landing page form to access an offer on your web page. That offer could be a white paper, case study, webinar or even a coupon.

This provides your first pieces of lead intelligence, typically a name and contact information, or an email address at the very least. Now you can begin to build a lead profile with that information and the knowledge of what that lead found compelling on your website.

With lead nurturing, your new lead should automatically be offered additional content that is relevant to her original action on your site. Relevant is the key word here. If the lead came to your site and downloaded information related to Service A that you offer, don’t just randomly send them information on Service D.

By offering additional, more in-depth relevant content, you will bring the lead back to your site again. And then you can continue to build a profile as she downloads content that is further down the sales funnel.

Progressive Forms Add to Customer Profiles

One way to add to your customer profile, without damaging your landing page conversion rate, is by using progressive forms. This method of personalizing your lead’s experience means they don’t have to re-enter the same information they have provided in the past. Your landing page form should automatically populate those fields for repeat visitors.

But because the lead is accessing more detailed information, you may want to ask for a little more info in exchange. If your top-of-the-funnel content requires only a name and email address, the next level could ask for a company name, phone number and/or job title. The landing page form is still kept short, but you are collecting a little more information that can be used to further tailor later interactions with the lead.

As the lead then returns again (hopefully) to request your bottom-of-the-funnel content, such as product comparisons or a product demo, now is the time to ask for those last bits of information that can be used in making a sales qualifying call: specific solutions the lead is seeking, budget range, and timeline.

Now your marketing and sales departments have a fairly detailed picture of who the lead is and what she is looking for, without having to make cold calls based on a single website interaction. Think how much more smoothly a sales call can go when your account representative can refer back to the content the lead downloaded and open a conversation about her specific areas of interest and engagement with your site.

This two-fold benefit to lead nurturing—an exchange of information that helps prospects move toward a buying decision while providing your marketing and sales departments with information that will help them present the best solution—is why nurtured leads average 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Click to tweet)

Knowing all this, we have to wonder why only 35 percent of marketers have established automated lead nurturing. (Click to Tweet)

Do you need to learn more about how it could work for you? Start by downloading An Introduction to Lead Nurturing, or request a demonstration of how HubSpot’s integrated content and marketing system simplifies the process, from landing pages to nurturing emails, lead profiles, and more. Wouldn’t you like to know more?