You’ve optimized your profile on LinkedIn and shared great insight-driven content. People have liked what you shared, gone to your website, and signed up for emails. Your sales team has also expanded your prospect list. You’ve built your audience and captured their emails. Now you need to follow up in order to stay top of mind. You need to send them a nurturing campaign.

The hardest part of the follow up is to maintain your consistency and continue to take that top of mind approach to these leads. A nurturing campaign allows you to follow up on those leads – whether they come from the website or your sales team. And that nurturing campaign needs to be automated in order to help maintain consistency.

Nurturing emails are all about creating relationships. People don’t buy from businesses or websites. People buy from people. I’m a huge fan of Simon Synek’s quote:

People buy WHY you do what you do. Not what you do.

The nurturing campaign is the perfect opportunity for you to share why you do what you do.

What is a nurturing campaign

A nurturing campaign is a series of emails that allows you to tell your story over time.

It provides you with the ability to put a face on your business and show your audience that you are a real person running a business that exists to help them. It lets you share your processes and answer concerns that your prospects may have. It helps build a relationship while at the same time minimizing risk for the prospect.

It’s a great way to bring a prospect up to speed on who you are, what you do, and why you’re passionate about it.

The key parts of a nurturing campaign:

  • Reward
    The reward article is the ethical bribe that you’re giving a prospect in exchange for their very valuable information – their email address. It is often about reframing a problem or issue they’re facing in their industry. What we recommend is a really valuable insightful perspective-driven piece of content, and we often use the best performing content we’ve come up with over time. Whatever you don’t want to give away for free is exactly what you should give away as your reward.
  • Introduction
    The intro email is where you put a face on your business. It’s where you get to say who you are, but more importantly WHY you do what you do. People don’t want to work with a faceless corporation. They want to work with people. The intro email helps communicate that and starts the conversation – just like you would if you were meeting someone at a networking event.

    It should come from the CEO – the face of your business. You really want to take advantage of one of the benefits you have as a smaller company. Showing that you’re a real person, sharing who you are and why you’re passionate about what you do.

  • Transparency
    Your prospects want to know what it will be like to do business with you. The transparency email is where you lay out WHAT you do and HOW you do it in a very straightforward upfront way. It discusses what it will be like to work with you, and describes the commitments you make to your clients and how you will meet them.

    It’s really about treating your clients the way that you would like to be treated. That is what lies at the heart of the transparency email.

  • Authority
    The next step in nurturing the relationship is to establish authority. The authority email helps do this by laying out objective standards and things to consider when looking for a similar product or service. This could be industry standards and certifications. Or best practices that demonstrate things to look for. These are outside sources and information that helps establish credibility for your business. It leverages third party information and resources to help establish that you are good at what you do within your industry as a whole.
  • FAQ
    Next up is an FAQ and it’s exactly what it sounds like – an email with the frequently asked questions. This is where you put yourself into your clients’ and prospects’ shoes to really understand what their typical barriers and concerns are – and then address them. It’s another step in building trust and establishing authority and expertise at what you do.

    A good FAQ can also be a good way to further qualify leads. On the one hand, we want to pull people deeper into the funnel. On the other hand, we don’t want prospects in the funnel that aren’t a good fit. There is a lot of value in helping people self-select that they aren’t a great client for your business. A good FAQ can do that, by answering the questions or concerns that prospects have.

  • Testimonials
    We’re all about word of mouth and using it to grow your business. There is no better word of mouth than a great client testimonial. So ask for those testimonials from happy clients and then SHARE them. If you can get a video testimonial up on your site and then link to that from an email, even better.
  • Case Studies
    Case studies take a similar approach to testimonials in that they are a great way to further build on your word of mouth by sharing positive experiences that clients have had with your company. Leverage the real value you brought to a client through sharing their experience as a case study.

Focus on Building The Relationship First

In the end, the nurturing campaign is really all about building trust. We gave you a reward for your email address. We’re putting a face on the business so you know who we are and why we do what we do. We’ve told you what doing business with us will be like. Every email is another micro-step that is eliminating risk for the prospect and further strengthening your relationship with them. Focus on what you need to share in the nurturing campaign to further build that relationship.

Learn more by listening to our B2B Word of Mouth Marketing podcast episode 22, Nurturing Campaigns.

All the best,

Bill Bice
CEO

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