As marketers who are already fans of marketing automation, you’re unlikely to need convincing that lead nurturing is a good idea. But you ARE likely to have colleagues and management that aren’t as aware as you are of the impact lead nurturing can have on the buying cycle and ultimately revenue. For those folks in your firm who need some convincing metrics to become believers, here are some helpful stats from the trusted benchmarking firms:
- Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead (Forrester Research)
- Nurtured leads produce a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities over non-nurtured leads (DemandGen Report)
- 60% of marketers believe that technology can help them develop more high-quality leads (Forrester Research)
- Sales reps dedicate 14% of their time to lead development, but only 6.3% of leads are utilized (Sirius Decisions)
- 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance (MarketingSherpa)
- 84% of qualified leads are not ready to buy (Aberdeen Research)
As you look toward 2012, why not make a resolution to add a few key lead nurturing programs in the coming year? To help you achieve that goal, here are the key tactics:
- Internalize the Demand Funnel
- Decide which types of nurture to build
- Develop clear nurture objectives
- Inventory existing content
- Map existing and future content to stages
- Build out workflow process
- Measure effectiveness and optimize
Happy New Year! We’ll be back next week to look at some other ways to make your marketing automation system work better for you.
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