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How to set scalable lead nurture workflows in HubSpot

How to Set Scalable Lead Nurture Workflows in HubSpot

November 16, 2020


By Alison Lillie

Lead nurturing is a powerful tool you can use to ensure your brand stays top of mind with prospects. It allows you to enroll contacts into a series of drip emails and nurture them further along the Buyer’s Journey. But did you know that 65 percent of B2B marketers have not established any lead nurturing?

In this blog post, we’ll talk about four steps to take to set scalable lead nurture workflows in HubSpot, so that all of your contacts are being touched with relevant content that moves them closer toward a purchase.

Know Your Personas

Before you can create scalable lead nurture workflows, it’s important to identify your buyer personas. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. If you have not done so already, create 3-5 buyer personas for your brand and understand the following information about each:

  • Role: What job is this person responsible for doing?
  • Responsibilities: What are the requirements of this person’s role? How are they evaluated?
  • Triggers: What causes this person to look for a solution?
  • Results: What are the expected outcomes of purchasing a solution?
  • Objections and Challenges: What barriers might keep the buyer from purchasing a solution?
  • Buying Process: What steps does this person take before purchasing a solution?

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Understand the Buyer’s Journey

The purpose of setting a lead nurture workflow in HubSpot is to deliver content that helps prospects progress through the various stages of the Buyer’s Journey. In order to create scalable lead nurture workflows that do this, you need to understand the various stages of the Buyer’s Journey.

Below is a graphic that explains what a prospect is thinking about at each stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Buyer's Journey Graphic

 

Understanding each of these stages sets the foundation for creating scalable lead nurture workflows in HubSpot.

Audit Your Content

Before you can nurture leads with content, you need to know where all of your content falls in the Buyer’s Journey. Make a list of all of the content you’ve created, and identify which persona and stage in the Buyer’s Journey it corresponds with.

Here are some guidelines on how to identify the appropriate Buyer’s Journey stage for your content:

  • Awareness: Content that focuses on educating the prospect that they have a problem that needs to be addressed.
  • Consideration: Content that focuses on offering solutions for a prospect’s specific problem.
  • Decision: Content that persuades a prospect that your product or service is the best solution to their problem.

Once you’ve labeled your content by buyer persona and stage in the Buyer’s Journey, you’ll be able to create clear content paths to move prospects from awareness, to consideration, to decision. These paths will be what power your lead nurture workflows in HubSpot.

Create Lead Nurture Workflows for Each Persona at Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Let’s say that you work for a company that sells IT services to small businesses. You want to focus on nurturing contacts within your core buyer persona, “Overloaded IT Ian.” Ian is a one-man IT department. He spends all of his time fixing employee technical issues and has no time to get ahead on larger security initiatives.

Some “Overloaded IT Ian” contacts in your database may realize that this situation is a problem—these contacts fall under the consideration stage. They are actively looking for solutions to help them with security. Your goal is to present multiple solutions to them and then convince them that your IT company is the best solution within a lead nurture workflow.

Other “Overloaded IT Ian” contacts in your database do not realize there is a problem—these contacts fall under the awareness stage. Your lead nurture goal is to make them realize that not focusing on larger security issues could put their business at risk. Then, present them with multiple solutions to help them fix it.

In order to nurture each type of “Overloaded IT Ian” contact, you’ll want to create workflows with the following goals:

  • Move from awareness → consideration
  • Move from consideration → decision

Workflows should contain 3-5 emails. Each email should contain a primary call to action (CTA) that features content that gives the prospect information they need to take the next step in their Buyer’s Journey.

Let’s take a look at an example of how to set up each workflow.

Awareness → Consideration

The enrollment criteria for an awareness→ consideration workflow should be a behavior that indicates that the prospect is still working on identifying their problem. Common criteria that indicate contacts have low awareness include:

  • Contacts uploaded from a conference list
  • Blog subscribers
  • Content downloads in the form of e-books, white papers, and webinars that focus on a pain point

Your goal within this workflow is to get contacts to download a piece of content that offers solutions, such as “Monthly IT Security Checklist for Your Small Business.”

Here’s an example of three lead nurture emails that could move Ian from awareness to consideration:

  • Enrollment: White paper—Top 10 Challenges IT Small Businesses Face
  • Emails:
    • Email 1: Blog Post—“Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Network Security”
    • Email 2: Blog Post—“How to Balance Break-Fix and Proactive IT”
    • Email 3: E-book—Monthly IT Security Checklist for Your Small Business

Consideration → Decision

The enrollment criteria for a consideration → decision workflow should be a behavior that indicates that the prospect is looking for solutions. Common criteria that indicate contacts are evaluating include content downloads from checklists, guides, or e-books that focus on offering solutions to a particular problem.

Your goal within this workflow is to get contacts to download a piece of content that allows them to compare your solution to others or talk to a sales rep about your solution. Examples of decision stage content include:

  • “A Buyer’s Guide to Outsourcing IT Security: What to Look for in a Vendor”
  • “Vendor Comparison Guide: Our IT Company’s Offerings vs. Our Competition”
  • Free 30-Minute IT Security Consultation

Here’s an example of three lead nurture emails that could move Ian from consideration to decision:

  • Enrollment: E-book—Monthly IT Security Checklist for Your Small Business
  • Emails:
    • Email 1: “A Buyer’s Guide to Outsourcing IT Security: What to Look for in a Vendor”
    • Email 2: “Vendor Comparison Guide: Our IT Company’s Offerings vs. Our Competition”
    • Email 3: Free 30-Minute IT Security Consultation

Want to learn more about how to create advanced workflows in HubSpot? Sign up for our webinar.

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Are you making the best use of HubSpot's powerful workflow tool? If not, this webinar is for you:

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Topics: Inbound Marketing, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Automation