Whether you're a beginner to internet marketing or have been immersed in this cultural shift for some time now, you may still be scratching your head when it comes lead nurturing.  Nurturing your internet leads is a strategy on its own and takes considerable time and effort.  

Let me walk you through the key steps to lead nurturing so that your inbound marketing strategy can be as effective as possible.  

1. Identify your sales process.  There are three or four sections to your sales process regardless of your industry.  Different labels are often used but for the purpose of this article we'll identify them as Top of the Funnel, Middle of the Funnel and Customer.  One of my clients calls the segments of his process Researchers, Testers, Buyers.  Whatever you like you get my point.  First you must identify the process.  
2. Create Content For Each Step.  Content can come in many forms and be displayed in many fashions.  For lead nurturing I recommend identifying the pain points your leads have at each step of the process.  Your Top of the Funnel or "Researchers" obviously have different questions than your Middle of the Funnel or "Testers."  For myself, my Top of the Funnel is usually looking for easy-to-read answers on how to get more traffic to their website.  Thus, I have many blog articles, an eBook, a tip sheet and more addressing those questions.  
3. Create simple emails to share content.  Let me be clear here - there's a definite science to the way your email should speak to your potential lead.  If it is someone that is at the top of the funnel, then you would not start immediately trying to sell them something would you?  You would be wasting everyone's time if you did.  For the top of the funnel, make your emails easy to read and genuinely helpful.  Offer your assistance if they need it and share a piece of content that they might also feel is helpful in their time of gathering information.  For the middle of the funnel you'll get a tad bit more aggressive.  These are people who already have some answers, but are looking for more answers.  Maybe offer an eBook about a more in-depth topic or offer a free analysis if it applies.  You know your sales funnel, so fit the next couple of emails to address your warm leads.  They are looking into your services, you have answers.  Continue giving them but let them know that you are for hire!
4. Automate your emails.  Once you have 2-3 emails that address each step of your sales process organize them from A to Z in the right order and set up them up to automatically be sent to your lead.  The Hubspot Software allows you to set up a workflow that will break it down to steps like Day 3 Send This Email, Day 7 Send This Email, etc.  This is a fantastic way to automatically begin walking your leads through the sales process.  Make sure you have connected your CRM to appropriately keep track of your lead and that your sales team is watching their progress to understand if they are truly approaching time for a phone call or if they are ignoring you altogether!
5. Assign the lead.  As your inbound marketing strategy begins to work together seamlessly and you have begun the process of nurturing your internet leads, make certain that you have assigned these leads so that someone is following up with them when the timing is right.  What is the point of getting more traffic to your website and converting those visitors to leads if no one is following the process and converting those leads to customers.