How to Build a Lead Engagement Strategy

Your business is nothing without customers, and for most companies, a steady, ongoing stream of customers is necessary to generate revenue and operate in the black. Lead engagement is the process of connecting with potential customers, making them aware of your offerings, and then nurturing them until they decide to buy. It can be challenging, costly, and frustrating. 

The right lead engagement strategy can smooth that process, reduce costs, and encourage more leads to convert. 

What is lead engagement?

Lead engagement involves connecting with people who are likely to buy from you—leads—and keeping them involved with and interested in what you have to offer. The process can include multiple touchpoints and communication methods, including email, social media, content marketing, etc. 

What is a lead engagement strategy?

A lead engagement strategy is precisely what it sounds like — a plan developed specifically to help you engage leads and encourage them to convert into paying customers. Why is such a strategy necessary, however?

According to HubSpot:

• Lead generation is the third most crucial metric used when measuring the effectiveness of content marketing strategies. 

• Generating leads is the top priority for most marketers.

A second report from HubSpot highlights that:

• 54% of businesses say it’s been harder to sell due to a lack of high-quality leads.
• 28% of the average company’s revenue is generated by new customers (converted leads).

Given the importance and difficulty of converting leads into customers, creating an effective lead engagement strategy is crucial.

Building an effective lead engagement strategy

A lead engagement strategy aims to keep potential customers engaged with and interested in your brand, products, or services. It’s not necessarily about selling. It’s about creating connections and offering value to keep your business top of mind. In a sense, it’s just the process of weighing the odds so that when the lead decides to solve their problem, they choose your product or service. How do you create a strategy that achieves that goal?

1. Know your audience

The foundation of any effective lead engagement strategy is knowledge of your audience. What is it that they want or need? What’s driving them to seek products or services like those you offer? By understanding their needs, you can craft content and interactions that address them rather than simply extolling the value of your offering. Remember, this is not about selling. It’s about engaging, informing, and even entertaining.

2. Create content that resonates

The next step is to craft content that resonates with your audience based on their needs. Your offerings are secondary here. For instance, you sell a lawn “weed and feed” product. Rather than telling potential leads how effective your product is, you’d create content that educates them about common threats to their lawn and how to spot the signs. Infographics, blog posts, emails, and social media posts that educate and entertain help create the strong connection necessary to encourage conversion.

3. Use the proper channels

Don’t limit your lead engagement to just one or two channels. Different people have varying preferences when it comes to brand communication. Some love to engage on social media, others like the intimacy of email communications, and yet others would prefer to go to you and read blog posts or download detailed reports. Use all the available channels and produce valuable content suited for each. Make sure to cross-promote your content and channels, too.

4. Segment your audience

Audience segmentation is an essential step in successful marketing, and it begins long before someone buys from you. Segmentation should ideally start at the lead stage so that you can deliver the most valuable, impactful content to each potential lead and move them through the sales funnel. Consider your different customer types (or personas), what their pain points are, and what type of content would be most meaningful to each of them.

5. Personalize, personalize, personalize

Generic marketing is so 20th-century. If you’re still sending the same content to all your leads, failing to address them by their name, or not building content based on their interests and needs, you’re going to struggle with lead conversion. Personalization is the rule today. Gather information about leads, add it to your CRM, and then use it at each touchpoint so they feel you’re communicating directly with them.

6. Have a plan for communication

One of the reasons that lead engagement strategies fail is that businesses forget to account for how they’ll handle the influx of communication. You must know how to handle web chat requests, emails, and phone calls. It can quickly overwhelm your in-house staff. Partnering with a virtual receptionist firm can help offset the influx of communications and ensure that every call, email, and web chat is answered promptly. Understand and document the different channels where prospects can interact with you, who is responsible for engaging those leads, what the qualification process looks like, and what actions you will take to pass that lead through to the next stage in the funnel.

Choose the right virtual receptionist firm.

At Smith.ai, our goal is simple — to support you in generating meaningful, measurable success. We do that by providing critical services, including 24/7 call answering, AI and human-powered web chat, call intelligence and metadata added right to your CRM, lead screening and intake, and appointment booking, to name just a few. 

With Smith.ai’s virtual receptionists, your lead engagement strategy will deliver better, more consistent results. We can help make sure that every lead is engaged, 24/7, so you never miss a viable opportunity. That ensures you can compete better within your niche and build stronger customer relationships as they convert. To learn more, schedule a consultation or reach out to hello@smith.a