Think about how your advertising spend has been allocated since the conception of your company. Now, ask yourself what percentage of the net advertising spend was allocated to demand generation. The vast amount of companies out there know how expensive, time-consuming, and difficult it is to acquire new leads - spending thousands to attract customers to buying lists and trade shows. In other words, they exhaust their resources on getting in front of customers who aren’t ready to buy... yet.
A lot of the leads that fall into your sales funnel are not ready to buy because they’re only aware that your product or service exists; you must convince them that you can solve their problem. Companies treat new leads poorly, ultimately leading to lead loss and ignorance. All of this can be prevented when proper lead nurturing techniques are implemented.
You can think of lead nurturing as customer service on offense. It’s the process of building relationships with qualified, potential customers regardless of their spot in the sales funnel or buying cycle or what have you. You must earn their business when they’re ready. This can all be related to the long-term relationships that you’ve established with people during your lifetime: friends, family, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever. In all of these cases, you can’t force someone to do something they don’t want to do, or you might sacrifice the relationship you have with that person.
Most non-sales (new) leads will eventually be ready to buy, and that’s why it’s so important to nurture them at every stage of the buying cycle, no matter how long it may be. It’s up to you to be constantly within reach of that person, providing them with relevant, timely information and being there when they’re ready to buy. According to Brain Carroll, CEO of InTouch, up to 95% of qualified prospects on your website are there to research and are not ready to buy.
To make things ever more complex, the buying process has changed to potential customers spending more time doing independent research on the web, obtaining information from online review sites and other third parties. That’s one of the reasons why companies are meeting potential clients as early as possible, and its a clear indication as to why its improper to engage every new lead as they come to you.
We encourage you to nurture every lead in your sales funnel, regardless of where they are in the buying process. You never know when one of your most qualified leads will turn into your next biggest client.