How to build genuine trust with lead nurturing

In the rush to seal the deal and bring in leads, it is all too easy to forget what an important role trust plays in the process. Without trust, however, even the warmest leads will end up going cold before you have had a chance to convert them into actual sales.

Trust is hard to win and easy to break. The good news is that when trust is there, reputation, engagement, conversion, and loyalty quickly follow.

How do you go about increasing trust with your lead nurturing efforts? For starters, you could try the following simple steps.

Know your audience

Before you can solve your customers’ problems, you first need to have a comprehensive understanding of what your customers need. Segmenting according to behaviour, demographics and even typical customer challenges is one of the most effective ways to be sure that your audience will want what you are offering.

When you send out mass marketing messages blindly, hoping for the best, you often end up with minimal engagement and even less trust. While this sounds obvious, there is huge value in both segmentation and lead scoring. Once you have targeted your audience, it will be a lot easier to start delivering highly relevant content.

Focus on helping

That brings us to our next point. There is a good reason that engagement rates are typically low across just about every industry.

In today’s digital era, the average human receives a large number of emails and text messages every day. They also see endless sponsored posts on social media, and many receive a fair-sized chunk of junk mail in their real life postbox daily as well. Even those who have signed up for messages are wary of sales pitches.

Trust is not built by sales pitches, however. Neither is engagement.

These are both fostered by messages that add real value.

This could come in the form of a product or service that customers are already interested in trying, helpful industry tips, how-to videos or guides, limited time discounts or specials, expert advice, and other interactions that are based on helping people.

Be authoritative

Why do people respond well to how-to guides and similar content? For starters, people listen to authority. No one knows your products, service and industry as well as you do. When you are an expert, your audience soon knows who to turn to when they need assistance.

They are far more likely to listen to someone who is passionate and authoritative than they are to someone who seems to only care about selling to the masses.

Question and answer features, industry insights, informative, detailed guides, ebooks, and anything else that helps you establish your authority will all go a long way in encouraging trust.

Perfect your funnel

Once you have segmented and scored your list, thought about how you can add value, and began to establish your authority, you can begin to fine-tune your lead funnel. This is by far one of the most effective ways to build trust. Lead nurturing is, by its nature, a process.

Rather than doing whatever it takes to bring in leads, you are slowly and carefully nurturing the right leads. A good funnel will not try to rush the process. Instead, it will take leads on a journey, giving them time to get to know you better each time.

Permission based marketing, A/B testing to determine the best frequency and send dates for your audience, lead scoring, personalisation and well-written content will all help you create a funnel that is designed to grow relationships.

Get these steps right, and you should start seeing a difference. Sometimes, it really is that simple.

Feature image: wndj via Pixabay (CC0)