In our last post, we discussed how to convert traffic into leads – i.e. funnels, website, landing pages and chatbots, and how they fit into your overall marketing strategy.
If you’ve gone through steps 1 to 3, congratulations! You’re at a point now where you should be able to generate a reliable stream of leads. And provided you’ve got a good offer and the price is right, your system should also be profitable.
That’s amazing!
But we’re not finished yet. Now, it’s time to patch up the leaks so you can squeeze out as many leads as possible from your lead generation strategy.
The truth is, most people who see your offer, click on one of your ads, or come to your website aren’t ready to buy right now. There could be a ton of reasons why that is but they don’t really matter.
What does matters is that many of them will be ready to buy in the future. So rather than waste that future business, you want to have a way to stay in touch with them so when they are ready to buy, you’ll be front of mind.
The way that we do that is by building out a nurturing system. We say ‘nurturing’ because these people require ‘nurturing’ for them to make that final decision to buy.
The most common tools we use to nurture potential leads are email marketing & autoresponders, Facebook groups (or any kind of online community that you manage), messenger marketing, and re-marketing.
All of these marketing tools revolve around creating high-quality content so that these people begin to view you as THE ‘expert’. Essentially, you want them to think that they’d be stupid to go anywhere else for the product/service you provide so when they are ready to buy, they won’t think twice about who to buy from. Your business is the obvious choice.
The content can also speak to their problems, their pains and their desires, and show them how your products or services can help them solve those problems and/or reach their desires.
Believe it or not, there’s a ton of money to be made in these nurturing systems.
On average, only 3% of people are ready to buy there and then. Whereas 20-30% are interested in your products/services, but they’re not ready to buy right now. There’s a lot more people in the ‘not ready to buy now’ category. So if you can set up a system that takes people from ‘not ready to buy’ to ‘ready to buy’, you’ve got an incredibly powerful lead-generation tool on your hands.
Choosing Your Nurturing Channel
You can get VERY sophisticated with nurturing systems combining Facebook groups, autoresponders, Facebook remarketing, display remarketing, messenger marketing, etc, etc.
They’re all great tools and can be extremely effective.
HOWEVER, they can also be really complicated, especially if it’s your first time dealing with them. You also need to be working with large numbers to really take advantage of them.
If you try to do it all at once, you’ll get overwhelmed and give up. So, just like everything else, I recommend keeping it simple to begin with. Start with ONE nurturing channel, get good at it, build an audience and then expand from there, if you feel you need to – in many cases, one channel will be enough.
The best channel to begin with is email marketing – i.e. building out your own ‘list’ / database. Everyone has an email address and you can get so advanced with nurturing system, it’s ridiculous. But you can also start very simply – just with one newsletter email per week or month.
The best thing about using email as your nurturing system is that you OWN your list. You own the contact details so no matter what happens, you’ll always be able to stay in touch with them.
That’s not the same with other platforms. For instance, if you choose to build a Facebook group, Facebook has the power to change their rules and regulations or shut down your group altogether overnight and your business could be screwed as a consequence – it’s happened many times before!
Google has done similar things. So has twitter.
You don’t need to worry about that with email marketing because you own the list. Sure, you’ll be subject to the rules and regulations of the software provider you use (e.g. Mailchimp, Active Campaign, Infusionsoft), but if they change their rules and regulations, you can simply move your list somewhere else. Or, use an open-source system (like Mautic) and bypass the possibility of being shutdown altogether.
That’s why email marketing is the such a great channel overall and an excellent channel to begin with.
But, it’s not the only channel and if you don’t like the idea of email marketing, the second best nurturing system you can build is an online community, usually via a Facebook group.
Facebook groups are more interactive and in general, people are more likely to join them because they haven’t been spammed to death (yet), they get that sense of community and they can get answers to their questions directly from the ‘expert’ i.e. You!
People love that. But of course, that level of interaction comes at a cost – your time. Online communities take time to build, time to manage and time to stay on top of. And as I touched on above, you don’t usually own the group so you’re subject to Facebook’s rules and regulations.
And if did own the platform, it would be incredibly time-consuming to manage and expensive to build.
Regardless, online communities are still a great nurturing tool and can become a powerful tool in your marketing strategy.
How to Get Started
Both Facebook groups and email marketing rely heavily on high-quality content. You need to give people a good reason to consistently visit your Facebook group or open your emails. The best way to do that is to consistently provide them with high-quality, useful content that’s directly relevant to them.
You’ll have to do some thinking here about what type of content that is – this is when having a niche can really pay off. If you’ve got a specific group of people your business focuses on, you can produce content that’s going to be specifically useful to them – that will make the content more interesting and subsequently keep them more engaged.
For instance, if my niche was self-employed plumbers, I could produce content that shows plumbers how to generate leads by doing their own digital marketing.
When you have a niche, finding out what type of content to produce is also easier – all you have to do is ask them what problems they face and what they’d like to learn more about.
Then, it’s a matter of producing that content in the form of video, text or audio, and getting the word out there – i.e. posting in your Facebook group and/or emailing your database.
Now, of course, you’ve also got to sprinkle in posts & emails that promote your products and services too. You’ve got an agenda that needs to be served and you’ve got to remind these people how you can help solve their problems. Otherwise, what’s the point?
And as long as you’re providing useful content, people won’t mind – they get it and they’ll be happy to hear how you can help so when they’re ready to pull the trigger, they can get started straight away.
The key here is balance.
A good rule of thumb to stick by is 66% of your posts/emails should be useful or educational. The remaining 33% can be promotional.
Any more than that and people will start to think ‘spam’. Remember, the main reason people are in that group or on that email list, to begin with, is for them – their own agenda. They want something useful, usually for free, so make sure you’re giving them that.
Produce brilliant content that makes it clear you’re the expert and they would be stupid to go anywhere else for your products or services.
Then gently remind them how they can get even more by purchasing your products/services every now and then.
The rest of the steps in the series:
As always, if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section below or feel free to send us a message here.
