Say goodbye to acting crazy. To the nervous finger syndrome. To communication that is not personalised and adapted to your audience. To improvisation. And welcome an organised marketing strategy that follows the step-by-step of a unique methodology to achieve memorable and growing brands.
have you started an Inbound Marketing strategy and its stages are not working? Your users are not qualified? What place do they occupy in the strategy? Do you have doubts?
We are awake (coffee in hand) and we are going to tell you with the help of our marketing and communication directors, Javier Gutiérrez and Daniel Collado, what are the stages of lead nurturing and the place of the customer in your Inbound Marketing strategy.
Take note, it will be great for you to know what, how and when to offer them content.
The user's step-by-step in an Inbound strategy
Beyond the classic buyer's journey through the stages of Inbound Marketing - DISCOVERY, CONSIDERATION AND DECISION -we are going to explore the stages that users go through with lead nurturing. It is not a magic formula (although it sounds like one), but the art of converting leads into customers.
Transforming sales opportunities into loyal customers is the dream of many companies, but only the reality of those who accompany their leads with the right content through the different stages of their journey, from discovery to purchase.
You will achieve this with Marketing Automation supported by CRM software such as HubSpot, which will make the journey much easier:
- Automate interactions with users, publish on networks, send newsletters..
- Personalise each marketing action to adapt it to the contact. On your blog. On your social networks. On your website. Wherever your prospects are.
- Track their journey through each stage of the buyer's journey thanks to a dashboard that shows how many contacts there are at each base (Sales Pipeline).
- It's effective with your company's buying processes. It even tracks when your customers open an email (look at your inbox, you've been notified with a message).
- There are no 'buts' to implement CRM in any sales department in an easy way. In yours either.
Remember to take into account the socio-demographic characteristics you have obtained from the forms. They are now part of your database! They are real behavioural patterns that will help you know what-how-when to offer content to your users. What information do they read? Did they open the last email you sent them? Which landing page did they register on? Which link did they click on?
Now that you know the right tool to accompany your leads and turn them into customers, let's see what stages they go through in lead nurturing. Think... What content is the most appropriate to satisfy their needs? When are you going to offer it to them?
It will depend on the stage and the moment they are in. It is time to start the process of lead scoring and lead nurturing to classify your contacts
- TOFU (Top Of The Funnel): You are at the beginning of the funnel. You are looking to attract as many visitors as possible. So, the ideal is to create a blog in which you offer valuable content that responds to the needs-concerns-objectives-goals of your buyer personas. Do not offer them any offer yet because their needs are not yet clear.
Better offer them a post like '10 reasons why to do email marketing'. Remember to use keywords, because organic traffic is going to be your long-term strategy from now on. If you manage to position your website in Google's results, VOILÁ! You will multiply your traffic. - MOFU (Middle Of The Funnel).
This is what we call the second stage of the sales funnel, where users already know what they need. They have taken a step further and it is the ideal moment to offer them more difficult content in exchange for information (lead generation).
how are you going to convince them to consider you for a possible purchase? Raise the level of content. How about an 'Ultimate guide to email marketing'? Give them success stories, give them video, give them statistics, but don't go overboard. It's not yet time to conquer their heart. - BOFU (Bottom Of The Funnel): You are in the narrowest part of thefunnel = those who are really interested in you have arrived. Be patient, they are evaluating your proposal, so you can now offer them personalised content (an audit, a product demo, a free email marketing advice microservice, a guided demo...). You choose.
TOFU, MOFU and BOFU. Three little words that constitute the essence of lead nurturing. And although they are the classic parts of the conversion funnel and are very useful to design the content creation plan with strategic sense, the funnel has evolved towards the flywheel. Because it is alive. And things with life, flow. Without forcing.
check out this video, which our marketing director, Javier Gutiérrez, sums it up in a short 2-minute pill.
are you doing Inbound? Look where your customers are
They are the protagonists of your love story. Some conquer (brands) and others fall in love (customers), because that's what happens with things that are meant to happen. Today's customer is much more proactive, it's hard to excite them, to stir them up, to awaken their interest. This means that, when you manage to attract them, you value them like never before. And you make them fall in love with offers and interactions that lead to loyalty.
The user of today has little to do with the consumer of 20 years ago. Today's customer has a lot of information to process, data and information available when they are going to make a decision. Remember when the salesperson was the one who sold the product if we needed to buy something? Now it is not so easy to do so, because the user comes to you having done some research. Realistically, we are less gullible.
don't you believe us? Listen to this short talk about the role of your customers in the strategy you have in place:
'In Inbound, things change, because before the contact with the sales team takes place, we educate users with content adapted to them. Because we neither want nor expect them to come knocking on our door, or even to come already educated, because we don't know what they have already been told. And if we can know what kind of information they are consuming and educate them in favour of our product, so much the better.
Beyond Inbound: Be the ideal companion
From intuitions to realities. Managing your relationship with customers is essential, I'm sure you know that. Is the content you are creating worth anything? Be different in each of the phases of the purchase funnel to accompany the user (from the moment he detects his need until he satisfies it by making a purchase). Be his witness. His travelling companion. Take care of him (and nurture him) until he is qualified. The result? Your content will fall naturally according to the search or depending on how the user has arrived.
You're already guiding him. Push him. Tell him he has this open door and let him decide to enter. Something's not flowing in your Inbound strategy? HubSpot' s CRM tells you where to focus, what's working and what's not.
