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The Benefits of Automated Lead Nurturing in B2B Companies

The Benefits of Automated Lead Nurturing in B2B Companies

Why B2B Companies Need Automated Lead Nurturing?

When combing over leads, what matters more to your business, quality or quantity? In an ideal business you would have both provided through a lead nurturing program. But when having to make the choice always choose quality. The reality Online Lead Nurturingis, B2B companies often choose quantity over quality and that results with marketing departments nurturing a large group of unqualified leads who don’t buy.

So let’s take a quick quiz. Who’s to blame for a lead not converting to a buyer?

  1. Marketing for passing unqualified leads off to sales.
  2. Sales for not understanding how to close the lead.
  3. The lead because they aren’t smart enough to see the value of the service or product.

If you picked A, B, or C you’re wrong. Each one of those choices is what marketing and sales departments use to blame the other department for not closing a sale. The truth of the matter is that many B2B companies don’t have the right technology to distinguish a quality lead from a poor lead. That’s where lead nurturing in marketing automation comes in to play.

Marketing automation distinguishes the quality leads that are hidden within the large quantity of leads. This allows B2B companies to save time and money by only nurturing leads that fit into your buyer persona, which in turn will lead to a higher quantity of closed sales.

Automated Marketing Helps Lead Generation

The contributions that lead nurturing offers B2B companies are powerful and astonishing. Below is a demonstration of how large of an impact automated lead nurturing can have on your company. The research shows that:

  • “B2B marketers who implement marketing automation increase their sales-pipeline contribution by 10%,” (Forrest Research).
  • “Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost,” (Forrester Research).
  • “Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months,” (Gartner).

With results like these, it’s easy to see that lead nurturing in marketing automation makes a big difference. Marketing automation gets results by monitoring and following a business’s digital fingerprint. By watching what a business looks at online your company can deduce how interested they are and can use quantifiable data gathered on a lead to qualify and nurture them.

Automated Lead Generation Tactics

Marketing automation takes your segmented nurturing tactics and integrates them. This way each stage of the nurturing process works together seamlessly in an automated fashion designed to push a lead onto the next step of the nurturing process. This occurs when the lead’s score hits a designated value. Through the process of lead nurturing, B2B companies can guarantee that sales reps only interact with a lead after they have been qualified and properly nurtured.

Segmented lead nurturing tactics work together in order to allow B2B companies to create a dynamic lead nurturing system. Research shows that:

  • “Email marketing was reported as the #1 most-effective tactic for lead nurturing by top-performing B2B marketers,” (Forrester Research)
  • “Segmentation, personalization, recommendations, and the inclusion of custom database fields in email copy drive 360% higher conversion than a generic email message with a personalized salutation. These are exactly the types of communications that marketing automation helps make repeatable,” (Gleastner).
  • “87% of top-performing marketers say targeting campaigns to audience segments and individual consumers is the largest value driver, with 78% listing segmentation as the #1 marketing-automation capability they can’t live without,” (Gleanster).

Email has been shown to be one of the top contributing nurturing tactics for B2B companies implementing a marketing automation program. Marketing automation allows targeted emails to be automated to leads, providing them with constant personalized interaction to keep the leads engaged.

Why Should B2B Companies Adopt Online Lead Generation?

Without marketing automation to help nurture leads, B2B companies remain blind to who they’re nurturing and when a lead should be sent to sales. Research shows that:

  • “50% of leads are qualified but not ready to buy,” (Gleanster).
  • “Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales,” (Gleanster).

Marketing automation gives businesses insight into a leads intentions, actions, and interests in order to properly nurture the right prospect at the right time with targeted campaigns. High performance businesses who have implemented automated lead nurturing demonstrate how it benefits a company, with research showing that:

  • “58% of top-performing companies have adopted marketing automation,” (Forrester Research).
  • “79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for more than 2 years,” (Gleanster).
  • “Companies that have implemented a marketing automation platform report higher levels of collaboration between sales and marketing, across a number of different dimensions,” (Forrester Research).

Begin Your Automated Lead Generation Program Today

Now is the time to implement your automated nurturing process. Research shows that 47% of B2B companies only close 4% of leads generated by their marketing department, but that 46% of marketing departments that have advanced lead management systems are able to have sales teams follow up on leads 75% of the time, (Forrest Research). Marketing automation is the future of lead nurturing for B2B companies. Everyday more B2B are adopting automated lead nurturing systems to optimize their business.

Are you ready to optimize your business and imbue it with the power of marketing automation’s lead nurturing? See how ready your business is to implement an automated lead nurturing system. Take Biznet’s free “Marketing Automation Health Check” today and start your business on a path to enhanced lead generation.