We work with a variety of industries and have learned that small business lead nurturing is sometimes a very unfamiliar concept. A lot of small business owners we work with have a few hundred email contacts in their database and some of them might be buying lists of leads too. But what we have learned is that a lot of them don’t know what to do with these contacts and prospects once they have their information.
Going a step further with that idea, there’s a lot of misconception on what types of activities should follow after getting a new lead into a your database. On the one hand, some small business owners know there’s a value to staying top-of-mind with their contacts and try their hand at email marketing. Given that a lot of our customers are from the mortgage and real estate industries, they tend to rely on generic email newsletters full of boring rate information for their content approach. This is definitely better than doing nothing to nurture your clients, but sending them a bunch of industry stats that you care about isn’t exactly hitting home with someone who is just not in the market for your services. This is where the idea of content marketing comes into the mix.
With content marketing, there’s a gap to be filled between you, the small business owner, and your clients and prospects. Email and social media marketing are great mediums to use to keep in touch with past and potential clients but if you’re in a business that has a longer sales cycle, chances are they’re not looking to do business with you all that often. This means that you’ve got to be more creative with your marketing efforts. Writing good content that people want to read is the best way to be able to continue “marketing” yourself and keeping your name top-of-mind, but it also gives you the chance to help people, rather than sell to them. It’s all about building that long-term relationship so that they keep coming back to you and are willing to refer you to a friend.
Given that we have seen a disconnect on the whole process of nurturing leads through content marketing, our awesome services team put together a helpful webinar to showcase the basics. Specifically, this webinar was designed for Promotional Products Distributors, but the core concepts of lead nurturing and content marketing are applicable to many small businesses. Below, you’ll find a link to the YouTube video of the webinar recording and a copy of the slides as well.
![Better Email Etiquette Equals Better Marketing Results [16 Rules]](https://www.outboundengine.com/wp-content/uploads/shutterstock_411184843-1-400x250.jpg)
