A Lead Nurturing Campaign is the process of guiding potential customers toward buying your products or services by simply trying to overcome all obstacles and show the need for your product.
Not every prospect is ready to buy now. In fact, according to research firm SiriusDecisions, of the 20% of leads that sales reps follow up on, 70% are not qualified. But it’s a mistake to ignore those leads. After all, 80% of prospects that don’t make the grade today will go on to buy from someone within the next 24 months. And when they do, you want your company to be at the top of their short list.
Once prospects are in the funnel, nurturing them with helpful, relevant content moves potential buyers through each stage of consideration at a natural pace until they’re ready to be passed on to sales. Nurturing is the safety net for every stage of the buying cycle, helping ensure that no revenue opportunity is missed.
Lead nurturing typically focuses on converting contacts that are already scored well within your marketing database, not generating new inquiries. This improves the results of leads already gathered. Demand Gen Report found that nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.
Without lead nurturing, inquiries in your system are nothing more than hand-raisers—they’ve demonstrated interest, but require further profiling and cultivation before they get passed to sales. Lead nurturing is the process that makes that happen.
