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How to Not Haunt Your Prospects

For this post, I’ve decided to talk about a subject near and dear to me—prospect nurturing. If you are working hard to develop and increase inbound leads, the last thing you want to do is scare them away. In this blog post, I will discuss some of the best ways I have identified to make sure your prospects aren’t being tricked, but are instead, in for a treat. 

Understand Your Audience

How To Not Haunt Your Prospects Pittsburgh | ProFromGoThink of your audience like an apparition—in order to help them, you first need to know their story (well, that’s what the movies tell us…).

Taking the time to outline and understand your audience is an important first step while figuring out the correct content and cadence for them. That’s why we utilize a technique where we develop buyer personas for our clients. 

Understanding as much as you can about your audience will definitely make your communications with them less frightening. That’s why we research their job title and duties, demographics, goals and what they value most. It’s also important to understand their challenges and common objections. All of this information compiled gives us a solid foundation to know who we are communicating with and what will resonate with them. 

Have a Plan 

Did you remember to grab candy? Every Halloween, I’m one of those people at the store the night of, who ends up buying whatever is left on the shelf. Sure I plan for a lot of other things in my life, but I never get to be the guy that gives out the “good stuff” because I forget to plan. 

You’ll face the same issue if you don’t plan ahead for your lead nurturing campaigns. If you do this and develop a strategy, you will have a much more effective response rate and a better chance of creating sales-ready conversations. 

I try my best to put myself in the shoes of our prospects to understand the type of content and style of writing that will catch their attention. Then, I schedule that communication to hit them at times I think might be the best for them. Each situation and prospect will vary, but if you take the time to study your audience and craft a plan, you should have a valuable start. 

After this is done, don’t forget to set a time to review your strategy and its effectiveness. There is no silver bullet. However, if you are taking the time to learn about your strategy, it will only improve. 

Utilize Targeted Content 

Have you ever walked up on one of those nicely decorated porches to grab your candy and “boom!” a perfectly placed skeleton pops out and scares the crap out of you? 

Your content should be equally surprising (but less frightening!). Our approach is to treat our prospects by delivering information that is truly helpful. We follow HubSpot’s Inbound Methodology to attract, engage and delight. Following this approach, we take our plan and our buyer personas and craft content that is unique and helpful. That way, the prospect feels more comfortable moving further along the buyer’s journey when they are ready. 

When we create content, we always keep this in mind. If it isn’t helping our prospects, why would they read it? 

Use Multiple Channels

Using your content in a variety of places is a great strategy. You wouldn’t have five different costumes for five different Halloween parties, would you? Pick out a good one (piece of content), and share it with everyone. 

All of your prospects will likely be unique in some manner. The buyer personas will describe a lot of likeness, but we can’t forget that each person is still an individual. This uniqueness means that each person might digest content in different places and in different ways. 

We cover our bases by broadcasting our content in a variety of channels. Some of our favorites include marketing automation, email marketing, social media, paid retargeting, dynamic website content and direct sales outreach. Utilizing all of these channels provides multiple touch points, a consistent digital presence and builds confidence with your prospects that you have invested heavily in their experience. Who doesn’t appreciate that? 

Follow Up Fast 

Lastly, we can’t forget to follow up! But make sure you’re doing it in a way that doesn’t make you

seem like the villain of a horror film constantly chasing its targets.

The key to connecting all of your digital lead nurturing efforts is the human element. If you plan to invest heavily in this approach, don’t forget to plan a follow up and an outreach element from sales. This is where sales and marketing alignment are very important. Sales needs to know what marketing has been communicating, and marketing needs to see that their efforts are improving sales. 

Make sure you create a process to reach out to your prospects, and most importantly, to follow up quickly when they want to speak with you.  By following this strategy, you will provide your prospects with helpful and relevant information that moves them through your funnel to successfully become clients. 

Contact us to learn more!

John Caruso
About the Author
John is the Director of Business Development at Vendilli Digital Group. Outside of work, you can find him fishing, hunting, or canning vegetables from his garden.
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