Definitive Guide to B2B Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing strives to form a relationship and build trust. A key element of this process is ensuring that lead nurturing strategies effectively address concerns and provide useful information.

Therefore, before you start developing your lead nurturing content and channel mix, begin by sourcing direct feedback from your audience. For best results, implement this approach across multiple channels and audiences. For example, book meetings with loyal clients, comment on LinkedIn posts, or conduct incentivised surveys.

Another data source to leverage is search intent. Whilst not guaranteed to be an indicator of buyer intent, understanding what prospective buyers are searching for can help you identify the most common pain points your audience is facing. These can later be addressed in your lead nurturing campaigns.

Direct feedback from potential leads and existing clients can allow you to glean invaluable insights to help build your lead nurturing strategies with greater accuracy. Any findings you gain from this process can also feed into your overall lead engagement strategy to promote better pipeline velocity.

Collect lead intelligence on your accounts

Data-driven marketing strategies are essential for achieving better performance, given the greater accuracy that they allow marketing teams. Data insights such as lead pain points and their likelihood to convert are crucial for crafting B2B lead nurturing strategies that connect with their target audience. However, acquiring actionable, clean data requires the correct approach.

Start by leveraging the data insights already at your disposal, such as account details from previously closed deals. These can help to update or formulate your Ideal Client Profiles (ICP) and buyer personas accordingly to act as a foundation against new findings that can be measured.

Compare this data with leads currently in your sales funnel to improve accuracy and determine the leads that are most likely to convert. Remember to constantly reassess these assets to keep them up to date with your market as it evolves.

Once you have identified the key goals and pain points of your leads, you can develop content specific to their interests that enables them to address these challenges.

Your messaging in this content should be tailored to showcase the unique value your company is able to provide as relevant to the interests of each buyer persona (and account in the case of ABM). This should include the expertise and experience your company has in solving the problems being faced by leads.

When it comes to content creation, produce materials that can help your leads overcome challenges, with actionable advice and data specific to their needs. If, for example, your lead is looking to engage decision makers at priority accounts, provide a guide to developing account based marketing (ABM) strategies. This boosts your lead nurturing campaign by demonstrating your investment in spending time getting to know them and their pain points, as well as presenting your brand as a valuable source of expertise.

Keep in mind that content that successfully addresses needs and pain points has the potential to be shared by leads with other decision makers in their buying committee. Quality content, therefore, has the potential to greatly increase your chances of a successful deal later on.

As previously discussed, helping leads overcome challenges is a key goal of B2B lead nurturing, which guides prospects toward a sale. However, on this path, leads may reveal knowledge gaps. These are signals that a lead is aware of the symptoms of an issue, but not of its origin or how to solve it.

Whilst prospects may be eager to indicate what they need or want to learn, their uncertainty may result in this being vague, making it more challenging to identify knowledge gaps yourself.

Industry-wide surveys are an option to assess knowledge, but it is important to consider the bias of respondents to scrutinise these insights and leverage such information carefully. However, SEO audits and buyer intent analysis can reveal the most common queries and visited web pages, which can also signal the kind of information your leads are looking for.

Use these inputs to tailor a strategy that fills in these gaps on a one-to-one or on a one-to-many level (if you are following an ABM strategy). This enables your marketing team to craft broader campaigns that span various channels, employing strategies such as email nurturing, social media, and programmatic display.

Providing your leads with valuable educational opportunities targeted at their needs over an extended period positions your brand as an industry expert. This boosts your brand image and the outcomes of your lead nurturing campaign, as well as empowers prospects to make a well-informed purchasing decision in the next step.

Although the objective of B2B lead nurturing is to curate a meaningful relationship rather than pushing for a sale, it is important to seize the opportunity when your leads demonstrate being ready for a purchase. At this stage, mobilise your sales team and make the most of the interest you have curated. Marketing teams should develop and arm your sales development representatives (SDRs) with assets and copy to make the pitch to the buying committee memorable.

Do a deep dive and consider the knowledge gaps they filled with your content and any obstacles that remain. Based upon that, pick one insight as an ice-breaker for your lead nurturing emails.

Here are some examples:

Done correctly, this type of outreach can spark curiosity by creating an open loop. Your SDR team can then determine who is interested in your solutions from those who need to be nurtured longer based on their response.

Lead nurturing should not end with a sale, especially in B2B.

To avoid churn and ensure client success, the first step is to ensure a seamless and comprehensive onboarding process. Make yourself available and top-of-mind with regular, relevant content drips. This can be achieved with lead nurturing emails or communication that clients can opt into, such as newsletters. These can act as another platform for sharing new and existing content of interest to leads and clients alike, as well as regular updates, news, and promotions.

Continuing to provide your clients with value well after a sale will help your brand maintain relevance and gain recurrent revenue. This will also contribute to higher client satisfaction and better social proof. Depending on your success, this can also have the potential to create a virtuous word-of-mouth marketing cycle with earned media. This boosts brand awareness and adds credibility that can facilitate demand generation and lead generation processes.

The middle of funnel stage is also known as the consideration stage. Prospects in this step are considering and comparing different options available, but are still not ready for a purchase.

Usually, these leads will be already registered into your system and can be directed to different nurturing tracks, according to their segmentation data. These leads must be nurtured with longer-form resources that showcase the unique value of your brand, such as:

In what is also known as the decision stage, leads are usually considered 'ready to buy'. However, although this tends to be the case in B2C, B2B BOFU leads are more cautious and discerning, and therefore should not be rushed into purchasing.

Instead of directing these leads to SDRs, keep them engaged with nurturing that focuses on highlighting the unique benefits of your products and solutions, whilst also providing social proof, with content such as:

In the first month, it is important to focus your efforts on crafting cadences and scripts for the entire sales cycle. This includes cadences via channels such as email and social media (for instance, LinkedIn is a key channel for B2B).

Write messages for at least the first, second, and third touch. You can add more later as you get to know the buying committee at target accounts and their challenges.

Your scripts should cater to social messaging and voicemail. If you are going to cold call, create a separate script and cadence just for that, as the messaging must be crisp to resonate on the phone. Whilst creating a script is important, sales reps must also practice improvisation and objection handling. Calls should strike the balance between hitting the marks and sounding natural.

In this step, you should also decide which parts of your cadences may be automated and which must be completed manually, depending on triggers uncovered with your lead nurturing strategies and the research you have performed to date. Manual cadences can be more effective, yet require more time on your end for personalisation, so choose wisely.

After this preparation period, it is time to launch your cadences and test your scripts with your leads.

In the second month, you need to measure the engagement from the cadences and scripts. If engagement is low across the board, this may be an indicator that you are targeting the wrong audience or that your content is irrelevant. In this case, return to the previous step and adjust your content and/or targeting.

If, however, only some leads are not engaged, consider adding them to a separate lead nurturing stream (based on commonalities) with content that is more to their liking. Evaluate the scale of the edits necessary based on the knowledge of your leads gathered with market segmentation.

Once you have done your edits, continue cadences and follow your scripts as usual for the second month. After all, lead nurturing emails and calls can take time to perfect so that they resonate with their target audience—highlighting the importance of continuous adjustment and iterative testing.

If your lead nurturing continues to progress well by the end of the second month, consider expanding your channel or content reach with further segmentation, A/B testing, channel diversity, etc.

When approaching the third month, it is important to remember that the buyer’s journey is not linear—and you should evaluate each lead’s content consumption and web searches to check how far they are in their brand discovery.

Lead scoring can help determine this automatically with a points system. Although following lead scoring best practices is a must, interactions with the lead are the prime source of information for signalling if they are ready for a more sales-focused conversation. If possible, evaluating engagement across the buying committee makes for a clearer picture of the buyer’s journey throughout the target organisation.

You can evaluate lead readiness by sending a message with BOFU content that features the benefits of your solution, or even case studies with proof of the results you deliver. If the lead is receptive, this is indicative of their progression further down in the sales funnel, signalling that they may soon be ready for your sales team.

In the fourth month, you will most likely be able to categorise which leads are sales-ready, and which, according to the sales funnel methodology, are stuck in the middle stage of the nurturing process. Although a lack of progress can be frustrating, it is normal for leads to stay idle in this stage and you should not force them to advance quicker than they can (there is, however, a tactful way to streamline nurturing at the bottom of the funnel).

Deploy lead nurturing for those in the consideration phase with content that demonstrates expertise, and by extension, value. This can take the form of content such as analyst reports, in-depth guides, comparison charts, and testimonials.

Identify the buying committee of accounts that are more prone to making a purchase and conduct B2B psychographic research on its members. This will provide data to personalise your pitch and make a more convincing deal that resonates with their emotional triggers.

If you are still not close to a sales conversation, then continue building a productive relationship with the lead. It is common for prospects close to the end of the sales cycle to still not be prepared for a purchase, which is why you can assess their interest by encouraging them to introduce you to their buying committee in a no-obligation call to talk about their challenges.

Continue to drip content to these leads, such as thought leadership, product updates, and even industry-wide news in email newsletters that you believe could be useful for them. By making yourself available, you’ll remain top-of-mind and ready for sales when the time is right.

Remember that even this late into the nurture, you still need to be conversational and avoid sounding too incisive. Therefore, even when booking meetings and showcasing your solutions, think of yourself as a guide helping your prospective clients on their path, rather than a salesperson or a business development representative (BDR).

For the leads that are idle in the middle phase, you can split them into two separate cadences depending on their engagement levels:

As the end of the nurturing cycle looms, despite the pressure to close the deal, timing—especially in the last month—is of the essence to make sure the deal works in your favour.

As buying committees in B2B consist of members with different schedules and priorities, catering to all of them can be challenging. Do your best to abide by their preferences based on the data you have gathered from previous interactions.

In the last month of your cadence, you should also re-evaluate all the data you compiled on engagement and make final adjustments to the content, your overall nurturing stream, and your target audience. Remember to also update your ICPs and buyer personas with actual, up-to-date data collected along this process. This is crucial so you can reboot this six-month sales cycle with new leads and obtain better results.

To summarise, at the end of the cadence you should facilitate sales by making yourself available and catering to the preferences of your leads.

Remarketing has a bad reputation with B2C audiences for a good reason, and that malaise is felt by B2B leads, too—the feeling of being 'followed' with display ads wherever you go.

Evaluate if you should pick contextual or audience targeting for your remarketing campaigns and strive to provide value. Promoting tools, reports, and educational content works better than straight-out product ads for remarketing.

Lead nurturing must be conversational, not salesy, and you must always focus on developing relationships rather than closing deals. With this approach, you will gain trust and be of higher value to your prospective clients as an expert and solution provider.