How to Follow Up with New Leads: My 5-Step Guide

5 Simple steps to follow up with new leads:

1. Email Follow-up: Make your emails personal and focused on providing value to the lead. Avoid sending numerous sales emails and instead concentrate on building relationships, providing education, and making it easy for leads to schedule with you.
2. Social Media Engagement: Use social media platforms to follow up with leads by connecting, commenting, and providing value through engagement. This approach helps you stay top of mind and can lead to building stronger relationships that may result in future business opportunities.
3. SMS/Text Message Follow-up: Utilize text messages for follow-ups, especially before and after scheduled calls. Keep messages fun and engaging for e-commerce businesses, and use them to build relationships and show empathy for B2B or B2C businesses.
4. Video Content: Create educational videos to provide value and stay top of mind with leads. This helps you remain visible in their feed and positions you as a helpful resource in your industry.
5. Retargeting Ads: Use retargeting ads to remind people of your business and ask for the sale, leveraging the warm audience you've built through other follow-up methods. These ads are cost-effective and allow you to directly prompt action from leads who are already familiar with your brand.
   

Follow-up With New Leads Using Automation

Over the past decade, I've been honing my skills in following up with leads across various industries. From my early days in the health and fitness business to my current role as the owner of AutomationLinks, I've learned that effective follow-up is crucial for business success. 

I'm Brad Smith, and today, I'm excited to share my 5-step guide to following up with new leads.

Why is follow-up so important? Well, people get busy, and they're not always ready to buy immediately. But they might be ready tomorrow, next week, or even next month. In fact, I've had clients sign up three years after my initial outreach! That's why a solid follow-up strategy is essential for any business looking to grow and thrive.

Let's dive into the five steps that have helped me turn leads into loyal customers over the years.

Step 1: Personalized Email Follow-up

Email might seem obvious, but it's all about how you use it. The key is to make your emails super personal and valuable. Here's how to make your email follow-ups effective:

1. Build relationships: Your emails should focus on nurturing a connection, not just pushing for a sale.
2. Stay top-of-inbox: Consistent, valuable communication keeps you memorable.
3. Make it about them: Provide education and value that benefits your lead.
4. Simplify scheduling: Include clear calls-to-action for booking appointments or consultations.
5. Keep it simple: Use plain text emails without distracting images or fancy formatting.
6. Personalize: I always draft my emails in Gmail before plugging them into my email marketing software. This ensures they feel like a personal note rather than a mass mailing.
7. Provide value: Focus on offering information or insights that your lead will find genuinely useful.
   
   

Remember, the goal isn't to bombard leads with sales pitches. Instead, think about what your lead would find valuable in the long run and focus on that in your communications.

Pro tip: If you haven't signed up for my newsletter yet, I encourage you to do so. It's a great example of how to provide value through email marketing.

Step 2: Social Media Engagement

This is my favorite follow-up technique, and it's often overlooked. After a lead enters your business ecosystem, connect with them on social platforms. Here's how to leverage social media for follow-ups:

1. Connect: Follow their accounts across platforms.
2. Engage: Leave thoughtful comments on their posts.
3. Provide value: Regularly interact with their content.
   
   

This approach is powerful because engagement is valued in the social media world. It helps boost their visibility due to platform algorithms, while also keeping you top of mind.

Here's a real-life example: This is exactly how I found my YouTube thumbnail editor. He first followed me, then emailed me, and started liking and commenting on my posts. We eventually chatted in DMs, and built a relationship, and he even provided some free thumbnails. Ultimately, I hired him. That's the power of social media follow-up!

Step 3: SMS/Text Message Follow-up

Text messages offer a more immediate and personal touch in your follow-up strategy. However, it's crucial to use this method judiciously. Here's how to make the most of SMS follow-ups:

For e-commerce businesses:

• Send fun and engaging abandoned cart reminders.
• Use humor and personality in your messages.
• Make your texts cool and exciting to read.

For B2B or B2C businesses:

• Send quick reminders before scheduled calls.
• Follow up with a thank-you text after calls.
• Use texts to show empathy and build relationships.

The key is to make your leads feel valued and understood, encouraging them to respond and engage with you further. By providing your number, you're also opening a direct line of communication for any questions they might have.

Step 4: Video Content

I'm actually implementing this strategy right now with this very video! Creating valuable video content is an excellent way to follow up with leads indirectly. When someone watches one of your videos, whether on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform, the algorithm is likely to suggest more of your content to them in the future.

This strategy allows you to:

• Stay top of mind with your audience.
• Provide ongoing value and education.
• Share actionable tips they can apply to their business.
• Build a stronger relationship by consistently appearing in their feed.

Focus on creating educational content that your audience can immediately use. This approach not only keeps you visible but also positions you as a helpful resource in your industry. Even if they don't watch every video, seeing your content suggested regularly keeps you in their thoughts.

Step 5: Retargeting Ads

This is my new favorite technique, thanks to advancements in AI software that have made retargeting incredibly cost-effective. Retargeting ads are one of the best ways to remind people of your business and actually ask for the sale.

Here's why retargeting ads are so powerful:

• They reach a warm audience who's already familiar with your brand.
• You can showcase your actual products or services.
• They're cost-effective, often costing just pennies per click.
• You can run them across multiple platforms (Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter).

While the previous four steps focus on providing value and building relationships, retargeting ads allow you to directly prompt action. Now that leads have seen you multiple times through your other follow-up methods, they're more likely to respond positively to an ad asking them to make a purchase.

We've found that we can effectively retarget our leads across all major platforms for less than $500 a month. This allows us to build better relationships and follow up with all our leads in a cost-effective manner.

Conclusion:

Following up with leads is an art that combines persistence, value-provision, and strategic timing. By implementing these five steps – personalized emails, social media engagement, SMS follow-ups, video content creation, and retargeting ads – you can create a comprehensive follow-up system that keeps your business top of mind for potential customers.

Remember, only some people are ready to buy immediately, but by maintaining consistent, valuable communication, you'll be the first they think of when they're ready to make a purchase. Don't be discouraged if it takes time – as I mentioned, I've had clients sign up three years after the initial contact.