Congratulations. You’ve just finished a successful lead generation campaign and the flow of prospects into your sales funnel is thick and fast. You’re converting a good chunk of those into paying customers, but some of those leads are hanging around in the sales funnel and don’t want to budge. What’s a marketing superstar to do?

This guide will walk you through all things B2B lead nurturing. We’ll explain the concept of B2B lead nurturing and reveal the best strategies to maximize wins for your marketing team. We’ll share key B2B lead nurturing best practices and highlight some examples of lead nurturing done well.

B2B lead nurturing, defined

2 major reasons why B2B lead nurturing is crucial

96% of visitors to your website aren’t ready to buy. Let that sink in. Basically, everyone that lands on your site is a warm lead – they might like the look of you, but they’re not prepared to make any commitments just yet. That makes a stellar B2B lead nurturing strategy absolutely vital for your marketing efforts. There’s a host of benefits to lead generation, but these are two of the biggest and most important for B2B marketing.

1. You’ll build deeper, stronger relationships

B2B sales cycles tend to be much longer and more complex than B2C cycles. Effective lead nurturing allows you to sustain the interest and engagement of your potential customers over time. Nurturing leads over these longer cycles give you many opportunities to showcase the value of your brand and address the pain points of your customers, helping you to cultivate a much deeper relationship between you and your leads.

2. You’ll stand out from the crowd

Good B2B lead nurturing also helps to differentiate your brand in a crowded space. In a world where the overwhelming majority of potential customers aren’t ready to buy, the importance of lead nurturing can’t be overstated. All these warm leads might be intimidating, but they’re also a huge opportunity. If you can capture and retain their attention with high-quality experiences and robust solutions to their problems then you have a chance to become the biggest fish in your pond.

Demystifying the B2B lead nurturing process

8 Steps to create a winning B2B lead nurturing campaign

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Learn how to shape up your email nurture campaigns
Looking for inspo? See these great email marketing examples

Do these 4 things and crush B2B lead nurturing

Succeeding at B2B lead nurturing takes focus, determination and cooperation. Keep these four B2B lead nurturing best practices in mind when designing your lead nurturing strategy.

1. Find your flow

You need to know what you’re offering before you dive into the nitty gritty details of a lead nurturing campaign. What problems do you solve for your customers? What makes your value proposition unique? Why should they choose you? Use the answers to these questions as inspiration for your campaign to take your leads on a coherent journey that convinces them to buy.

2. Show, don’t tell

When it comes to creating compelling content it’s better to work with human nature, not against it. We’re visual creatures so combine your written content with images and infographics. Create interactive content that delights and informs your leads, and make it deeply personalized to demonstrate how well you know them. Leverage data-driven personalization to deliver targeted messages that resonate with your leads and increase their chances of conversion.

3. Keep it consistent

It’s an old adage for a very good reason: consistency really is key. Schedule your outreach to align with target time zones and build a dependable rhythm of communication with potential customers, but don’t do it so often that your email frequency overwhelms your leads.

4. Never stop nurturing

Qualify the lead, send to sales, secure the conversion, and then what? Most brands ease off the gas here but continuing to nurture a converted lead after the sale is a winning recipe. Keep supporting your customers to gain their loyalty and they’ll be coming back for more.

Stellar B2B lead nurturing at a glance

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