Chapter 10 - Convert Leads into Customers

[Diamond Website Conversion]

An important part of monitoring and nurturing leads is being able to grade them. The grade that a lead receives should take into account not only the amount that they have interacted with your website or your social networks in the past, but also the type of interactions that they have had. Someone who posts comments on your blog, engages on your Facebook Fan page, tweets with your regularly and takes multiple calls-to-action should obviously receive a higher grade than somebody who has only visited a couple of pages on your website. Once you have graded the leads, you will be able to see where you should direct most of your attention and energies.

If you haven’t been nurturing your leads, you could be letting go of people who would be willing to use your product or service, if they were simply reminded of it.

What have you done to nurture leads in the past? Are you in the process of nurturing any now? Would grading help you determine who to spend more time nurturing?

[Shelby]

I think the idea of grading your leads is a very helpful suggestion to help prioritize who is farther along in the conversion funnel. By focusing on higher rated leads ensures that you will make time to have conversations with relevant leads and saves you time and effort!

[Marty]

Grading leads is an interesting concept - but it's not anything I've ever done - As a stock broker I gave a lot of seminars and then sent out a newsletter to keep in touch with those people who weren't ready to start a relationship - but I really left it up to them - Some stockbrokers would continually contact these "warm leads" as opposed to giving another seminar, because it's a lot easier to keep calling people where you have a name and phone number and they "know" you because they came to your seminar - but I found that it was much more effective to focus my efforts on getting new people to come to my seminar than to keep contacting the "warm leads". So I guess I'm influenced by that experience - and in the world of web marketing - I'm much more inclined to get out there and expose my services to new people.

To me there is a fine line between nurturing a potential customer and annoying them. You don't want them to forget your name when they're finally ready to make that purchase - but you also don't want to have pushed so hard that they're turned off. Capturing their e-mail and then over e-mailing them will just relegate your e-mails to the junk mail folder.

To me the best nurturing has to be what would naturally occur - when people engage on Facebook or on your blog - keep the conversation going - Have a newsletter or e-mail system to keep in touch - But let them make the decision to take things to the next level. I know that I really hate being pushed and the minute I feel that kind of pressure I back way off -

But maybe I'm taking some "old school" thinking and applying it to "new world" realities - I could really have this all wrong.....

what's been your experience both as a customer receiving nurturing or as a business owner nurturing your potential clients?

[Hope]

I think that you’re right—it’s incredibly difficult to walk the line between amiable attention and annoying pestering. It may make better sense for you (or anyone) to allow the others to come into contact with you. Simply being available and approachable is something that appeals a lot more in general. After all, a lot of inbound marketing is all about being approachable and findable. It’s all about getting the leads to come to you, rather than hunting down the leads yourself. The idea of keeping warm leads warm seems something like this old style of marketing to me.

Personally, when I get e-mails that I didn’t directly ask for, I am more likely to send it to the trash than read it. I think that keeping to the natural flow of conversation (and letting your customers come to you) is the best plan. Make sure that you’re available on Facebook, and contactable through forms or comments on your blog.