Over 96% of your website visitors aren’t ready to make a purchase. How can you turn interested leads into returning customers? That’s where lead nurturing comes into play. While multiple lead nurturing tactics are available, content marketing for lead nurturing is the best strategy for converting customers today.
Learn what content marketing is and how it helps you nurture leads and convert more prospects.
Key Takeaways:
- Content marketing for lead nurturing reaches customers you know about and those who haven’t given their personal information yet.
- The buyer’s journey isn’t a straight line and requires overlapping strategies, which content marketing supports.
- You can build trust and convert customers through content marketing for lead nurturing.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing uses online content to perform marketing strategies like content marketing to generate leads, nurture prospects, and convert customers. Digital content comes in many forms, including:
- Social media posts
- Blog posts
- Video
- Ebooks
- Whitepapers
- Case studies
- Audio and podcasts
- Images
- Infographics
Some of the most common places to distribute content marketing media are through your website, social media pages, and third-party websites.
Content marketing is often considered an inbound marketing technique that draws customers to your content through search engine optimization (SEO), paid content, and content syndication.
What Is Lead Nurturing?
Lead nurturing is the strategy you use to build trust with potential buyers. For example, sometimes buyers express interest in your company but aren’t ready to make a purchase. Instead of losing that prospect, you can continue connecting with them and working through the roadblocks that keep them from purchasing.
You can turn them into customers by investing time and resources in building a relationship with those leads.
Lead nurturing is often considered an outbound sales technique because you use contact information from interested prospects to reach out to them through phone and email to turn them into buyers. However, when you only rely on outbound sales techniques, you will miss out on leads that never provided their information or on using other effective touchpoints for nurturing. Adding inbound lead nurturing techniques through content marketing reaches more potential customers.
Why Do You Need Content Marketing for Lead Nurturing?
Over 97% of marketers use content marketing in their strategies. However, generating leads isn’t enough since only 3% of consumers actively buy. In addition, 63% of consumers who research information on your company won’t purchase any products.
Lead nurturing is essential in your content marketing strategy because it builds a bridge between generating leads and converting those leads into loyal customers. However, you need a broader approach than just nurturing the leads you know about.
You can reach more potential buyers by creating lead nurturing content that appears in searches, on consumers’ social media feeds, and in their inboxes.
5 Reasons Content Marketing for Lead Nurturing Is the Best Strategy
Here are five reasons you should include content marketing as part of your lead nurturing strategy.
1. Reaches Leads You Haven’t Collected
A lead is anyone who shows interest in your brand products. For example, leads might be visitors to your website, followers on social media, and those that heard about your brand through word-of-mouth. Over 79% of marketers prioritize lead generation, attracting and gathering information from interested buyers.
Sharing regular public educational content for everyone to find and read ensures both the leads you captured and those you haven’t received the information they need to make an informed decision.
In addition, when you exchange your marketing content, like ebooks and videos, with prospective buyers, you can collect more contact information. You can use that information in your other lead nurturing strategies alongside your content marketing.
Source: StartupBonsai
2. Content Marketing Has a Wider Reach
The average customer requires around eight touchpoints before making a purchase. If you restrict yourself to one or two lead nurturing channels, you won’t be as effective as spreading your content across several channels through content nurturing.
Content marketing allows you to reach your leads through online searches, social media, and email.
3. The Buyer’s Journey Isn’t a Straight Line
A common term that marketers use is a “sales funnel.” This phrase implies that consumers start at the top and move down towards sales. However, that isn’t an accurate reflection of the buyer’s journey today. As the following image shows, it’s rarely a straight line. Instead, the customer journey jumps steps, backtracks, and takes unexpected twists. This is because customers have access to more information than in the past, which gives them more flexibility in their research and purchase behaviors.
Source: Gartner
Because the buyer’s journey isn’t as straightforward as previous marketers assumed, you need to adjust your nurturing strategies to reflect the spiderweb journey customers take.
Creating lead nurturing content marketing for the awareness, consideration, and conversion stages is one way to support today’s customer journey. Content for each stage should be considered lead nurturing material because of how intertwined the customer stages you.
You can also improve the journey by aligning your sales and marketing teams. This ensures that your lead nurturing strategies are relevant for all leads, no matter where they are in their nurturing and purchase journey.
4. Content Marketing Works Well with Email Marketing
You can promote your content marketing through email. About 90% of marketers use email in their content distribution strategy. For example, welcome emails have an 82% open rate, which is a strategic way to encourage new leads to take the next action or explore more content.
Email marketing ensures your content gets in front of your highest quality leads.
5. Content Marketing Builds Trust
Content marketing effectively builds relationships with your customers because it isn’t a lengthy sales pitch and isn’t intrusive like calls or pop-up ads. Instead, consumers can learn valuable information from your content and get glimpses into who your business is.
While many forms of content marketing don’t directly lead to a conversion, they establish you as a reliable authority in your industry. Therefore, as those leads continue researching their options, they are more likely to trust your recommendations and products when making a purchase decision.
Track Your Leads through Marketing Automation
An essential part of lead nurturing is tracking your customers so that you can offer customized and timely information. Marketing automation ensures you don’t lose leads along the way and distribute each prospect to the most compatible sales agent at the right time.
Schedule a demo to learn more about our lead tracking solutions.
