A lead is someone who has in some way expressed interest in something you have to offer to sale. If you put everything in a funnel with the wide side up, it would look like this: Leads > Prospects > Customers. You’re going to have many more leads than prospects, and many more prospects than customers. When you get a lead your goal is to qualify them, turning them into a real prospect and then converting the prospect into a customer.

In order to do that, you need to nurture your leads from day one. There are many ways to do this. You can start with these ten most important ways to nurture leads and work from there.

1. Start with a Goal – Do you want to increase sales, educate prospects, get people to download your free trial, or do you want to accomplish something else? It’s important to know what your intentions are from the start so that you can design your lead nurturing campaign to fit in with the goal.

2. Edit, Edit, Edit – Every bit of content that you want to be consumed by your leads needs to be edited for grammar, clarity, and format. You want the information you send them free to represent the type of products and services you offer. If you make silly mistakes, they will notice and yes, they will judge you for it.

3. Outsource – If you are unsure about how to set up a lead nurturing campaign, seek out the help of a professional. There are many professionals that can take a look at your goals and help guide you through the process of what type of information you should push out to your leads.

4. Remember the Drip – Don’t send everything all at once to your leads. Instead, practice the drip system of sending just a little bit of information at a time. Tease them, heighten their desires, and make them want what you have to offer before you give it to them.

5. Consistency Wins the Day – Like with the drip, you need to send out messages and information to your leads on a regular and consistent basis. If someone signs up for your email list, they are expecting to get regular, if not daily messages from you. If you make them short, to the point, and informative, they’ll be happy to get the messages.

6. Use Your Blog – Don’t forget about your blog, too. While you will use your email list to send information out to leads, you can also use your blog, and use the blog update feature within your email marketing system to notify leads of new blog posts. Write some of your blog posts directly to leads as the audience.

7. Know the Buy Cycle – Every audience has a buy cycle according to the products and/or services that a seller is promoting. You should have information going out to leads at every stage of the buying cycle in order to qualify them and ultimately convert them.

8. Understand Your Audience – Nurturing a lead is different from talking to someone who has already purchased from you. Ensure that you separate leads from interested parties and from actual prospects or customers. In this way, you’ll be able to target your messages correctly for the audience.

9. Know Your Products – It should go without saying that you need to know your products and services backwards and forwards. Know how a product or service impacts your audience. Also, remember if you outsource some of this work you’ll need to help your contractors understand your products and services too.

10. Study Your Metrics – As they say, nothing is done without the paperwork. It’s very true about lead nurturing. If you want to be certain that what you’re doing is working, go by the numbers. Before you even start, determine what metrics you’ll study to determine success or failure.

When you embark on a lead nurturing campaign, slow and steady wins the race. Deliver informative and engaging information to your leads on a regular and consistent basis and over time you will convert very happy buyers.