27 Benefits from B2B Lead Nurturing

Many B2B marketers will tell you they have a nurturing program. If you ask them what benefits they hope to gain, they'll likely talk about the goals for the program in relation to the number of sales opportunity conversions or revenues produced from marketing-driven customer acquisition.

Those are great goals, of course, and ones we need to realize for our companies, but we also need to think about the other benefits our companies can derive from consistent and relevant nurturing programs that help to produce those big payoffs.

In no particular order, here are 27 benefits that came to me off the top:

1. Interest/Pain identification
2. Increased credibility (propensity to opt in)
3. Thought leadership recognition (higher trust)
4. Buying path (stage) definition
5. Segmentation opportunities
6. Market awareness
7. Strengthened company positioning
8. Interactive online dialogues
9. Conversation generation (online and off)
10. Idea transference
11. Ongoing storyline engagement
12. Prospect intelligence beyond demographics
13. Identification of industry trends
14. Peer-to-peer referrals (here's a link to...)
15. Longer reach (unlimited distribution potential)
16. Greater depth (reach influencers beyond decision makers)
17. Marketing and sales alignment
18. Seamless sales enablement
19. Customer retention
20. Increased customer lifetime value
21. Cross-sell and Up-sell potential
22. Increased customer satisfaction
23. Inclusion in closed-door conversations (when you're not there)
24. Agile response to market shifts
25. Consistency in relevance and value delivery
26. Acceleration in growth of pipeline
27. Shorter time to revenue

You may be looking at this list and wondering just how you'd realize and capitalize on all these benefits to get those big payoffs mentioned at the beginning. This is where marketing automation comes into play. Companies like Genius.com, Marketo, Manticore Technology, Silverpop, Eloqua — and others — are the engines behind nurturing programs.

Lead nurturing is as much an exercise in content strategy execution as it is in syncing the people and processes that drive your business' success. Technology is the enabler that pulls it all together.

Marketing is not just a stand-alone department within our companies. At least it shouldn't be.

Just in case you think you can get all of this by executing the same old marketing campaigns the way you've always done them, think again. Your buyers have changed. If you want to reap all of these benefits (and I'm sure I've forgotten some), you must focus first on getting to know your buyers and customers as well as you know your products and base your nurturing programs on that intelligence.

Because, after all, it's truly all about them.

Never forget that many of these benefits are based on how well you can learn to read your prospects' behavior over time and how prepared you are to respond when they ask you to. That's one reason why marketing will always be a combination of art and science — that human factor.

Feel free to contribute any benefits you see that I've forgotten and I'll add them to the list.

Comments

[Christopher Ryan]

Ardath, thanks for the comprehensive list and the reminder of the benefits of lead nuturing programs. I have been a practitioner of these types of programs for many years and can assure everyone that the benefits are real as long as you don't treat every suspect as if they are a prospect ready to be closed. The right marketing automation program can make it much easier for you to achieve success.

Christopher Ryan - www.fusionmarketingpartners.com

[Annie Cooley]

Thank you for mentioning the importance of marketing automation in lead nurturing. Marketing automation ultimately serves as the process to which you can acheive those 27+ benefits.

Christopher you are right as you say not to treat every suspect as if they are ready to close. This is where marketing automation gets fun. You now have the ability to work with your sales and marketing teams to strategically meet your prospects where they are at rather then force them in to a closed deal. And if you do this succesfully you will still acheive a shorter time to revenue.

[David Juris]

Ardath,

You might be interested in a collection of telephone Lead Generation and Appointment Setting Tips for B2B sales professionals on the Cold Calling Blog located at www.GenerationSalesGroup.com.

Best regards,
David Juris
Generation Sales Group

[Ricky]

Hey thanks for mentioning the significance of the marketing interactions. I have been a practitioner of these types of programs for many years and can assure everyone that the benefits are real as long as you don't treat every suspect as if they are a prospect ready to be closed.

[social bookmarking]

good work

keep it coming

[monitoring http]

Wow nice...Thanks for the info.. Hmm this is great..Very interesting 27 Benefits from B2B Lead Nurturing...

[Revenue Generation Software]

Ardath, thanks for the post and summary of additional benefits of lead nurturing programs. I agree with your 27 benefits; however, I think it's important marketers don't lose site of the end goal; which is revenue generation. When companies implement lead nurturing they effectively seal up holes in their lead generation process. We gathered some alarming data from analysts:

- 80% of leads are typically lost, ignored or discarded
- 73% of companies have no process for revisiting leads
- 80% of marketers send unqualified leads on to sales

Having done sales many times in my life, I can say I've opened up a database and make some calls to contacts who haven't been touched in a while. I'm amazed when a contact expresses interest. This approach is not systematic, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Sometimes it's a hit and sometimes it's not. Imagine the number of new leads that could be created if marketers implemented lead nurturing in a systematic way. They'd see their revenue generation spike!