Statistics help find insights and insights help find leads. A probable way that big corporations have employed over decades is mapping the journey from visitor to consumer. With the implode of technology marketers are easily able to track and map the consumer journey. The idea is to help your clients to buy your products/services when they are ready to buy it.
WHAT IS LEAD NURTURING?
Lead Nurturing is the process of providing information / offers to prospects who are not ready to buy yet but are exploring the options available. Lead Nurturing, also referred to as Drip Marketing lets you stay at the top of the prospect’s mind and increases your brand presence. These are a key to build long-term relationship with your prospects.
IT IS JUST LIKE DATING YOUR PERFECT MATCH
When you know back of your mind that this particular client is not in the mood of buying today, but a few weeks from now when they, they do that from you. That is, building and nurturing the relationships with probable to be clients right now so that they turn into customers in future. And, that is how you generate a lead. The short-term goals often obscure the long-term plans.
And, without a doubt, lead nurturing is a long-term thing.
Also read: Are You Letting ‘Happy Ears’ Think That You Are About To Close A Deal?
GETTING BACK TO STATISTICS FOR THE RIGHT INSIGHTS
So, we mentioned that the numbers were important. 65% of businesses agree that generating traffic and leads is possibly the biggest marketing challenge (HubSpot), and about the same, that is, 67% of B2B find at least an increase by 10% in sales through lead nurturing alone (Demand Gen Report, 2014).
This is evident from the impact changing your ways can have. While, 93%, a whopping figure, of B2B companies, have also found that content marketing is more useful than traditional ways for generating better leads (Marketo, Forbes). They both point towards our previous claim that changes are obvious. In the same Demand Gen Report of 2014, they state their findings that nurtured leads convey a 20% jump in sales with respect to non-nurtured ones. So, putting resources is not going to be a folly. Still wondering if you need to invest?
A figure from Hubspot, 2017 that states that a mere 8 % of salespeople said that the leads they received were of high quality. If this was not because of lack of content-driven marketing, then we would all be lost. Now, admittedly of those, 25% of salespeople said that their primary source of leads was non-nurtured marketing. So, the rest 75% came from nurtured ones.
The statistics from Marketo claims that as much as 96% of visitors that come to your website, irrespective of how flashy it is and how well-built it stands, are not ready to buy yet. This “yet” is of importance because nurturing those leads can get you the right insight, and when the time comes, they are sure to choose you over others. In the same context, Gleanster showed their findings that up to 15-20% of “these not yet ready to buy” crowd, gets converted sooner or later into customers. Although the exact trailing time is unknown, the figures do count.
Yet, we are in a constant debate on the investments and the kind of investment we need. It was reported by MarketingSherpa that 65% of B2B companies have not done anything about lead nurturing. While in order to combat this, they agree to use their landing pages to provide specific and user-targeted messages. The end of the homepage is their strategy. But, as the age of dynamic content with tools is becoming more of a mainstream with Optimizely and Google Content Experiments, it is not far that such use could be really beneficial too.
Getting into the ways of nurturing, whether, through custom messages at the end of the homepage or emails, DemandGen Report makes a substantial contribution. It found that lead nurtured emails received 4 to 10 times more responses than using templated standalone emails. And, the same report also goes as far as to put forth Forrester Research’s findings that praise companies that do lead nurturing. It found that such companies generate up to 50% more leads with 33% lesser expense than the others. Going with the same context on ways of nurturing the Statista, 2015 study found that 86% of customers were comfortable with receiving promotional emails from companies they do business with, at least monthly. This frequency is of great interest here. Though, Gelanster found that 74% of the top companies rely on automated lead nurturing.
Thus, going through the importance, results, and ways that yield those results, it is obvious that building those relationships are far more giving. It is good for the company, at any stage of its maturity.
