Lead Nurturing VA

Simply put, lead nurturing is the process of guiding a consumer successfully through your sales funnel — from awareness all the way down to purchase. A good lead nurturing plan can even encourage loyalty and repeat purchase. All online businesses strive to gain revenue, and for most, this comes in the form of a sale. Whether this sale is for a service or a physical product, talking to the business’ potential consumer base is very important. This is because most of the time, when a prospect first interacts with a brand, they are still looking for information and are not yet ready to buy anything.

The initial interest is the job of the marketing team and their marketing strategy, but converting that interest is the job of the lead nurturing team. However, lead nurturing is not as easy a task as it may seem. In a physical setting, it is easy to make snap judgements of a customer and test the waters, because a salesperson can easily change tactics based on minute reactions made by the customer. Online businesses have no such luxury. Without this instant feedback, a mistake in strategy can quickly close an open channel to a potential customer. Thus, digital lead nurturing tactics must be made and considered carefully, and hiring a lead nurturing expert is a must.

A lead nurturing virtual assistant (VA) is an expert not just in looking for potential customers, but also in guiding them through the sales funnel into a purchase. Lead nurturing can be a lengthy and time consuming process. In fact, according to a study by Demand Gen Report, about half of businesses need to touch base with their customers at least five times before they close a sale. This means that hiring a lead nurturing assistant can free up a lot of time for an entrepreneur to focus on higher level strategy.

Customers enjoy the feeling of being heard, and an effective lead nurturing strategy takes that into account. A lead nurturing virtual assistant can study a brand’s market and their buyer’s journey closely, so that they can better relate to prospects and create more targeted content, thereby increasing the effectiveness of lead nurturing materials put out by the business.

Creating good lead nurture campaigns involves integrating many channels and tactics together into one cohesive plan. In order to create a truly effective lead nurturing strategy, lead nurturing virtual assistants must be able to do a large variety of tasks, such as the following:

• Generating qualified leads. Selling a product to a customer who is not a good fit can do more harm than good. The goal of any good lead nurture campaign is to increase the effectiveness of each customer touchpoint, so that there is better ROI from lead generation to purchase, and not waste time and money in generic marketing efforts. Not choosing prospects carefully can also make ill-fitting customers feel that a brand is needlessly pushy, and even anger them to the point of creating spontaneous negative feedback about the brand. This is why it is important for a good lead nurturing virtual assistant to be able to do effective prospecting.
• Lead scoring. Lead scoring is the act of classifying different leads into buckets, based on their level of readiness to purchase. Lead nurturing VAs take into consideration demographics, firmographics, and different behaviour markers such as site visits and length of stay in site, to classify different leads. The classification system can vary from company to company, what’s important is that lead scoring takes into consideration these different factors to create a sensible grouping for different prospects, so that the lead nurturing team can take appropriate action.
• Email marketing. While lead nurturing should span many different channels, including blog posts and social media whenever available, lead nurturing tends to focus more on email marketing. This is because email marketing is a very cost-effective channel for lead nurturing.
• Content marketing. It’s not enough to know where and how to contact customers, those who excel at lead nurturing must be able to craft relevant, engaging and valuable content. Otherwise, potential customers may get bored or irritated and drop off of your sales cycle. Lead nurturing VAs can create coordinated content across different channels that can truly catch the interest of your customers.

Lead nurturing virtual assistants are in charge of a vital part of business sales and marketing. In order to execute their responsibilities well, they must be skilled in many fields, as lead nurturing touch on multiple interconnected parts of businesses. For example, they must have some skill in content creation, from keyword research to vetting qualified content for your marketing and emails. They must also be able to use marketing automation systems like Marketo and ActiveCampaign, in order to be able to execute nurturing campaigns at scale. Lead nurturing VAs must understand at least the basics of SEO, Advertising, and PPC, as part of lead nurturing is helping increase a brand’s visibility to potential customers. They must also be organized, and be able to clearly monitor the return on investment (ROI) of the different campaigns they have executed, in order to be able to create effective and tailor-fit lead nurturing strategies for your business.

Considering the very direct impact lead nurturing VAs have on business sales, it’s important to find qualified and reputable partners when hiring your virtual assistant. Using a platform like 20four7VA, which has a long history and good reputation, can provide you with the hiring expertise necessary for getting a good lead nurturing virtual assistant. Platforms like 20four7VA can help you identify your needs and recommend the appropriate kind and level of VA you need.

Since your lead nurturing virtual assistant communicates multiple times with your potential market, make sure you interview the qualified candidates personally, and choose one with a vision that aligns with your brand. When hiring your lead nurturing VA, it is important to remember that the VA’s tone and ability to communicate will represent your brand to the people you want to convert into customers. Most importantly, you must make sure your virtual assistant is someone you can work closely with, and that your VA is able to evaluate their own work with a clear and logical mind, so that they can continuously improve on your lead nurturing strategy without stagnating.

At 20four7VA, hiring a lead nurturing VA can cost from anywhere between $88 weekly to over $143 a week, depending on the time commitment and level of expertise your business needs. 20four7VA has a very flexible hiring system, and you can always schedule an appointment to help you identify exactly what you need. This price doesn’t just include your VA, but also the services of a top-notch hiring and VA management team, who will do their utmost to ensure a smooth onboarding for you and your VA, and also help monitor your VA’s performance so that you can rest easy about your choice.