Finding leads is difficult enough, but how do you nurture them and build engagement so that they convert into customers?
There are myriad tactics you can use to boost engagement. However, unless you have the strategy in place beforehand, it’s like throwing darts blindfolded. In short, everything you do to boost engagement and maximize conversion opportunities should be based on data.
Imagine you’ve put all that work into developing your SEO so you rank in the top 10 for specific keywords related to your business. Now imagine that 90% of your visitors are leaving your website after less than 10 seconds because it’s taking too long to load.
Your hard-earned prospects are gone. Just like that.
And this doesn’t just pertain to your SEO efforts. If your email campaigns are too spammy, you will be reported. If your “Buy now!” CTAs are broken, you’ll never convert. If your comment section is full of spam, people won’t trust you.
What metrics should I use?
Some of your most important key performance indicators or KPIs will be directly related to your lead and nurturing campaigns. Here are some examples of what that might look like:
Goal: Boost website engagement
KPI: Keep bounce rate under 18%
Metrics: Page load speed, CTA click-through rate
The main goals you aim for should be defined in your overall marketing strategy. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make sub-goals and create KPIs for them. The important thing is to not just “keep a general eye on the metrics” but to understand exactly what you want to achieve and the metrics that will give you the information you need.
Tracking campaign performance
If you’re working as a marketer, it is tempting to judge the success of your campaign based on metrics that are directly related to you. And the same is true for sales. So, marketing might be judging a lead generation campaign based on sign ups and a salesperson is tracking conversions.
This is both the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it. Or, more specifically, the individual metrics are only as important as the overall result. When launching a campaign, you need to take the entire funnel into account, regardless of the specific campaign and the different departments involved.
Assessing your campaign performance
Let’s take a nurturing campaign from a lead magnet download as an example. Yes, the marketing team should certainly track the number of downloads and where the sign ups are coming from (blog, email, landing page, etc.). And of course the sales team should track the number of conversions that come from that campaign.
But you should also periodically sit down together to compare the results of the individual campaign against other KPIs such as profitability and customer acquisition to strategic goals. You should also look at external and internal factors (such as communication!) and how they have influenced the performance of the campaign.
After that analysis, you can determine the factors that are responsible for the improvement in performance and address any issues that are also arising.
The main takeaway is for marketing and sales to do this together. We really can’t stress this enough. After all, every campaign is just one thread that ties together to boost overall business growth.
Top tips:
- Establish your sales and marketing goals.
- Plan sales and marketing campaigns together.
- Carry out the campaigns individually, according to your own KPIs.
- Meet every quarter (or whenever necessary) to assess performance and provide two-way feedback.
Increasing engagement
Drip and nurture campaigns are very similar approaches to leading your prospects down the funnel. Both are a series of messages sent out to prospects, whether email (most common) or text messages, direct mail, or other channels.
The main difference between them is that drip campaigns are time based and nurture campaigns are behavior based.
Drip campaigns
With a drip campaign, you will typically get someone to download a lead magnet and that will trigger a series of emails over the next few weeks. The campaign will end with a few push emails (directing them towards your product or service) or an offer of some sort. Ideally, the initial interest shown in downloading the lead magnet will be nurtured with value-based offerings, priming the individual to convert and make a purchase.
Nurture campaigns
Nurture campaigns, on the other hand, are based on how a lead behaves. The most obvious example of this is when you put an item in a basket and leave the website. You have shown clear intent of wanting to buy something but haven’t completed the purchase. So, a nurture campaign will kick in, reminding you of the product you have in your basket.
Other examples behavior-based triggers could be links clicked, pages viewed, forms you’ve filled out or registering for webinars.
Top tips:
- If you’ve never done a drip or nurture campaign before, begin with a drip campaign. They are easier to pull off and will provide you with the experience necessary to tackle a nurture campaign.
- For drip campaigns, make sure you time your emails properly. Analyze your results to see how many people open them and other key metrics. Adjust as necessary.
Building a community
One of the softer, more slow-burn ways to increase engagement is by building a community related to your brand. It can take time to pull this off but the reward in terms of the relationship you cultivate with your base is substantial.
The way you go about building your community will vary depending on your specific brand. Generally speaking, however, the community will exist on some sort of social media platform. The platform you choose should reflect the behavior of your target audience. For example, if they’re all active on Facebook, don’t attempt to create a community on Instagram.
What should my community be about?
For certain brands, building a community around their service or product is quite obvious. If you’re in the travel or leisure industry, you can easily tap into the passion and positive emotions that surround that.
But what about everyone else? Your product or service may not appear to have any exciting element that would merit building a community around it.
Well, that’s simply not the case.
Unless you’re one of those lucky lifestyle, food and beverage, or leisure brands that naturally attract devoted followers, the key to community building is identifying a common problem. Thankfully, you’ve already done this when creating your marketing strategy!
Whatever the core problem you identified is, that’s what you should build your community around. The goal is to facilitate knowledge-sharing while building brand awareness.
Community creation: Best practices
We mentioned that community building is a softer form of marketing and you need to remember that. This is not a place for bold CTAs, squeeze pages, or pop-ups—with the exception of maybe a newsletter sign-up as it’s directly related to the community. As a general rule of thumb, no more than 10% of your posts should be directly linked to your products or services. Even then, try to choose your moments when the context is right.
Instead of sales, you want to focus on engagement. Interact with your community to offer advice, support, and a positive experience of your brand.
If done right, the result is that you will generate a loyal following of brand ambassadors and repeat customers who will recommend your product or service to other people. It’s also a great source for generating those all-important customer reviews, which are often the deciding factor as to whether a person will make a purchase with you or not.
Top tips:
- If it isn’t obvious, create your community around a shared problem.
- Focus on building a positive experience and strong relationships rather than hard sells.
- Use your community as a source of positive reviews.
For both marketing and sales teams, engagement is crucial to gain a higher number of more loyal customers. By working together on the same CRM and employing a number of strategies and best practices, you can boost your business’s bottom line, while building a positive reputation.
Want to find out more? Let us know and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
