You know what lead nurturing is… Here’s my definition. Lead Nurturing is the process of communicating to a lead on an ongoing basis in order to educate, inform, continue to qualify and build a relationship until the lead is sales-ready. Most importantly, a sound lead nurturing marketing program has proven to increase revenues for firms. It’s why I continually promote the entire lead management cycle, from email capture to sales. Here’s some statistics:
Forrester Research Report
- Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost
Sirius Decisions
- The average sales cycle has increased 22% over the past 5 years due to more decision makers involved in the buying process. That means more intricate lead nurturing towards more stakeholders.
CSO Insights
- Companies that excel at lead nurturing have 9% more sales reps making quota
DemandGen Report
- Nurtured leads produce on average a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.
Marketing Sherpa
- 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance
Based on discussions with our marketing automation alliances, an average of 20% of leads that are nurtured will convert to sales-ready leads within 12 months.
Of course, the proper way to nurture leads is to provide interesting and relevant to content via drip campaigns towards each key stakeholder, and guiding those stakeholders throughout their purchase cycles with engaging content until they are ready to speak with a salesperson.
Go ahead and do the math. Here’s a quick scenario:
- Utilize a lead nurturing platform a la Marketing Automation. Cost per year: $15,000
- Pay for content and consultation: Assume $120,000
- Assume 85% of your leads aren’t sales-ready yet. After a year, 20% of those leads are sales-ready due to the lead nurturing/marketing automation process.
- Now apply your average sale price per customer (include lifetime value metrics) and conversation rate to the increased opportunities provided by nurtured leads.
- Compute your ROI of lead nurturing now!
Lead Nurturing works to generate revenue and increase marketing ROI. It just makes sense. Think about it.
