No funnel cakes in this one…just hard core, straightforward sales funnel talk. Get excited. Now that you understand the sales funnel, you’re probably wondering why it is important to you and your business and how you can automate your lead nurturing efforts. Just as many B2B organizations have not identified their sales funnel, MarketingSherpa also found that 65% of B2B marketers have also not established lead nurturing. With so many marketers not setting up this key feature, you may be asking yourself why it is so important. Try not to drown in all the statistics we are about to throw at you but they will prove why lead nurturing is so crucial to increasing sales. The facts are that 62% of B2B marketers send all of their leads directly to their sales team; however, only 27% of these leads are actually qualified and could realistically convert to a sale. In addition, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales and the lack of lead nurturing is a commonly associated with this high drop off. But is lead nurturing proven to increase qualified leads and decreased lead drop off? You bet! In fact, Gleanster Research found that using lead nurturing to bring leads through your sales funnel has 4-10 times the response rate of a regular email blast.
Okay, now take a minute to recover from the statistics overload you’ve just endured. We apologize, but nothing quite proves a point like solid facts.
One of the best ways to begin lead nurturing is to develop a process to slowly build the lead’s knowledge base and engagement. A great way to do this is through the development and implementation of workflows. Workflows are a series of automated actions that you can trigger to occur based on a lead's behavior or contact information. Yes, this does require a marketing automation tool such as the workflow tool in HubSpot. But don’t get scared away by another piece of technology and another added marketing expense because it more than pays off with its capabilities! The marketing functions and implications of workflows are quite extensive but suffice it to say that they allow you to create an automatic process to nurture your leads which can be triggered by any number of specified conditions. Some common ways to trigger a workflow for lead nurturing include:
- When a visitor becomes a subscriber (e.g. subscribes to your blog or newsletter)
- When someone fills out a form on a landing page, email, blog, etc.
- When a lead downloads a piece of content (e.g. ebooks, webinars, case studies)
- The lifecycle stage of your lead
- Visits to website
- Clicks on emails
- Engagement on your company’s social media
Once one of these conditions is met, the workflow is triggered. From there, the workflow would automatically send an email a specified amount of time after the trigger. This email would contain more information coinciding with the lead’s position in the sales funnel and a call to action asking them to further engage with your company through downloading a piece of content. The download of that piece of content in the email would then serve as the second trigger to send another email which further nurtures them through the sales funnel. This process continues until they convert to a customer. If you didn’t quite follow that, no worries, we know it can be a little confusing! So, let’s take a look at a real life example and use the Sunshine Salmon Dog Nuggets from our last sales funnel post.
Workflow Trigger: Someone downloads the “Reasons Why Salmon is the New Chicken” whitepaper that is serving as the top of the funnel (TOFU) offer
A suitable period of time after this download (this usually varies by personal preference but it could be anywhere from a few days to a few weeks), an automated email is sent to your lead. This email offers a free sample of the Salmon Nuggets, your middle of the funnel (MOFU) offer, if you fill out a form with a bit more information.
Secondary Trigger: Someone fills out the form in the email to receive a free sample of the Salmon Nuggets
After another suitable period of time, another automated email will be sent with your bottom of the funnel offer (BOFU) which offers an in-store demonstration and dog tasting if they provide just a few more pieces of information.
If they show up for the in-store demonstration, they have completed the workflow and have been converted to a customer!
In a perfect world, your lead would download every content offer and fill out every form and breeze through the workflow until they became a customer. But, let’s be honest, this is certainly not a perfect world and you could lose a lead anywhere along the way. Workflows can constantly be changed and updated with various conditions to help salvage potentially lost leads. For example, you could have a condition that states if your lead does not fill out the form in the MOFU offer email in 2 weeks, another automated email will be sent with a different offer that may appeal to them more. If they fail to convert at any stage of the funnel, they can be placed in other workflows to attempt to be nurtured down the funnel in the future.
See how the sales funnel and automated workflows can continue to keep your pipeline of leads continuously active and engaged? That wasn’t so hard was it!? We sincerely hope you aren’t sleeping on your computer right now… the sales funnel may be a little dry but its possibilities are endless!
If you just can’t get enough, keep an eye out for even more sales funnel info!!