From Awareness to Action: Mastering Audience Nurturing

Your prospects are bombarded with countless messages and offers every day. Yet, despite this constant stream of information, most of them aren’t ready to buy from you right away. 

It’s not that they don’t need what you’re offering—it’s that they aren’t in the buying phase just yet.

In fact, research shows that only 5% of your prospects are ready to make a purchase in any given quarter. Over the course of a year, that number only rises to about 20% . This means that a staggering 80% of your potential customers are not yet ready to buy!

So, how do you ensure that when they are ready, they turn to you instead of your competitors? 

The answer lies in nurturing. By consistently engaging with your audience, providing value, and staying top of mind, you can build relationships that eventually lead to sales. Nurturing isn’t about the hard sell—it’s about guiding your prospects through their journey until they’re ready to make a decision.

In this post, I’ll share how nurturing can transform your approach to sales and provide practical strategies to keep your audience engaged and eager to work with you when the time is right.

My Challenge With Selling B2B Services

When I ran sales at our web design firm, I faced a significant challenge: I never really knew who to target or where my prospects were in their buying journey. 

Web design projects are large investments, often exceeding $20,000, and they typically only happen every 3-5 years. This made it nearly impossible to time my outreach perfectly.

I couldn’t predict when a prospect would be ready to commit, but I knew I needed to stay top of mind over a long period—sometimes as long as 1-2 years. The solution? Consistent, value-driven nurturing.

To keep my firm on their radar, I launched an educational newsletter and hosted webinars focused on solving common challenges in digital marketing. These weren’t sales pitches—they were opportunities to teach and provide real value to potential clients. By consistently inviting prospects to engage with our content, I was able to nurture relationships over time and ensure I was there when they were ready to move forward.

The results spoke for themselves. Over 60% of the deals I won came from prospects who had engaged with our educational content. By investing in nurturing, I turned uncertainty into opportunity and built a pipeline of ready-to-buy customers.

The Solution - Nurturing Your Prospects

Nurturing isn’t about pushing for an immediate sale; it’s about building relationships and providing consistent value over time. 

When you nurture your prospects, you’re positioning yourself as a trusted resource, ensuring that when they’re ready to make a buying decision, you’re the first person they think of.

The key to effective nurturing lies in understanding that your prospects are on a journey. At different stages of this journey, they have different needs and challenges. Your job is to meet them where they are, offering the right kind of support and information to guide them along the way.

For example, some prospects might just be starting to explore their options and are looking for educational content that helps them understand their problems. Others might be further along, evaluating different solutions, and need more in-depth resources that demonstrate your expertise and the value you can provide.

Nurturing allows you to maintain a connection with your prospects over time, keeping your brand top of mind until they’re ready to buy. 

By consistently offering value through various touchpoints—whether it’s through social content, email campaigns, or webinars—you can guide them through the decision-making process and position yourself as the best solution to their needs.

In the next section, I’ll share five effective strategies for nurturing your prospects, helping you build those vital relationships and ultimately drive more sales.

5 Effective Ways to Nurture Your Prospects

Nurturing your prospects is all about consistently providing value and staying connected. Here are five effective tactics, each with a practical example to help you build relationships and keep your brand top of mind:

1 - Social Content - Social media is one of the most powerful tools for staying connected with your prospects. Start by connecting with them on platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter, ensuring they see your content regularly. Consistency is key—aim to post valuable content at least three times a week. Whether it’s sharing industry insights, answering common questions, or offering tips and tricks, regular social content keeps you visible and positions you as an authority in your field.

2 - Explainer Content - Your prospects are looking for answers to their problems, and explainer content is an excellent way to provide those answers. Create blog posts, videos, or infographics that break down complex issues and offer clear solutions. By teaching your audience how to solve their challenges, you become their favorite teacher—the person they trust and turn to when they’re ready to make a purchase.

3 - Email Marketing - Email remains one of the most direct ways to stay in front of your audience. Regular email newsletters keep you top of mind, while automated drip campaigns can nurture leads over time. After a prospect engages with a lead magnet or subscribes to your list, a well-designed drip campaign can provide a steady stream of valuable content, gradually guiding them closer to a buying decision.

4 - Webinars - Hosting webinars is a fantastic way to engage with your audience on a deeper level. I recommend scheduling webinars at least quarterly to provide ongoing touchpoints. These sessions should be highly valuable and focused on top-of-the-funnel content, not a hard sales pitch. Invite your “lukewarm” prospects to join, offering them insights and practical advice that keeps them engaged and moving through the sales funnel.

5 - Guides/Downloadable Resources - Offering downloadable resources is another powerful way to nurture your prospects. Create guides, checklists, or templates that help them take the first step in solving their problem. These resources should be closely aligned with the challenges your prospects face and offer tangible value. By helping them make progress, you build trust and demonstrate your expertise, making it easier for them to choose you when they’re ready to buy.

Bonus Tips: Optimizing Your Nurturing Strategy

Effective nurturing is more than just creating content and staying in touch. It requires a thoughtful and strategic approach to ensure your efforts translate into meaningful results. Here are three bonus tips to help you optimize your nurturing strategy:

1. Keep Your Lists Clean - Over time, your contact lists can become cluttered with outdated or unengaged leads. Regularly clean your lists to ensure you’re focusing your nurturing efforts on those who are still interested and likely to convert. This means removing inactive subscribers, updating contact information, and segmenting your lists based on engagement levels. A clean list not only improves your email deliverability but also ensures that your messages are reaching the right people.
   
2. Use a CRM to Track All Activity - A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is essential for tracking your interactions with prospects and managing your nurturing efforts. A good CRM allows you to log every touchpoint—whether it’s an email opened, a webinar attended, or a download completed—so you can see where each prospect is in their journey. This data-driven approach enables you to tailor your nurturing efforts to each individual, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
3. Ensure a Strategic Approach to Sales Team Follow-Up - Your nurturing efforts should seamlessly transition into your sales team’s follow-up strategy. This means your sales team needs to be well-informed about each prospect’s interactions with your content and where they are in their buying journey. By aligning your nurturing efforts with a strategic follow-up process, you ensure that your sales team engages with prospects at the right time with the right message.

For this week’s action items, I want you to work on your nurturing strategy. This includes both creating content that will help nurture prospects in your pipeline, as well as sales activities that will ensure that your nurturing strategy is reaching the right audience. 

Here are three action items:

1. Create One Piece of Nurturing Content: Write a short blog post, record a quick explainer video, or design a simple infographic that addresses a common challenge your audience faces. This content can be used to engage and nurture your prospects.
2. Clean Your Contact List: Spend 15 minutes reviewing your email list and remove inactive or outdated contacts. This will ensure your messages are reaching the right people.
3. Log Prospect Interactions in Your CRM: After any interaction with a prospect (e.g., email opened, webinar attended), log the details in your CRM. This keeps your records up to date and helps tailor future communications.