The Difference: Nurture Leads VS Generate Leads

When it comes to growing your business, these two things should come into your mind: to generate a lead or nurture a lead. We all know that the only way that you can expand your business and increase your revenues is to either attract new prospective customers or to take care of the old ones.

Which is why business owners invest in Marketing Automation softwares such as Infusionsoft with hopes of being able to connect with their customers. So that owners will be able to gain their customer’s trust and for these people to love their brand. Business owners come up with different strategies with hopes of attracting new leads and to get their customers to keep on buying from them. And one of these strategies is to create an email campaign. This is where things get tricky.

Discovering Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing

Email Campaign could mean two things: Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing. Most businessman (like you) tend to confuse one with the other option. If you’re one of them, rest assured that by the end of this article, you will be able to differentiate Lead Generation with Lead Nurturing.

To start, let us first define the two.

Lead Generation

This is where you identify your prospective customers, attract them then get them to love your products and services.

Lead Nurturing

This is the process where you deepen your relationship with your customers by guiding them step by step down the sales funnel.

However, the definitions alone don’t actually help a lot, which is why we listed down two crucial points that can help you clear things up between lead generation and lead nurturing.

1. Goal

Goals are the first thing that you want to create when it comes to creating lead tactics. This is what you want your lead to achieve at the end of your email marketing campaign. And although both lead generation and lead nurturing strategies aim to help you get connected with your customers. The end goal of the two is far from each other.

Lead Generation

The goal for lead generation is to attract prospective customers and to get to know then in the process of drawing them in.

Think of it as trying to befriend someone during your first day of school. You look for prospective people who may be open to new friendships.  Now, if you are able to find that someone, you proceed to talk with them. After speaking with them, do you stop communicating with them in the future? No. You continue to have a chat with them to get to know them more.

Lead Nurturing

Lead Nurturing, on the other hand, is the process of earning your customer’s trust by giving them contents that they will find relevant. This comes after lead generation. If you’re able to establish your relationship with your customer success and is able to gain their trust. You don’t stop building trust. Instead, you continue to develop it.

Let’s go back to the friendship scenario. Now that you are able to gain the attention of your potential friends, you start hanging out with them. Both of you engage in an exchange of information to help you strengthen your friendship. You hang out with them and talk with them until you become very good friends.

Lead nurturing the process of knowing your lead better. It is you guiding your leads down the customer’s journey until your leads turn into loyal customers.

2. Process

Another aspect where lead generation and lead nurturing differs is the process. Although both processes are being done through email marketing, there’s still a wall that separates the two.

Lead Generation

With lead generation, you’re still getting to know your customer which means you’re getting as much information as you can. At this point, the only information you have with them is the ones that they have provided. Which means you’re sending emails to them that are somehow generic until you’re able to find out which topics are they interested with.

You can use drip email marketing during lead generation. This is to filter which leads are the good ones and are willing to create a deeper relationship with you. As well as to filter out which ones are not worth investing time. It’s not all about getting as many leads as possible. It’s about gaining a lot of leads and filtering them on the process.

We go back to your example earlier. You found your potential friend, and you start hanging out with them. As you hang out with them more, you find out that they weren’t a good influence for you. So you stop hanging out with them.

With lead generation, you focus on knowing the customer to find out on whether or not they’re a good lead. Whether they’re worth your time and effort.

Lead Nurturing

Lead Nurturing on the other side, are the already filtered out leads. These are the leads whom you think are willing to buy from you. With the right nurturing, these people can become loyal customers. These are the leads may have already bought one of your product or may have availed your service once and are open for more to come. You have to take good care of these leads. And through giving them emails that are personalised and are relevant to them is one good lead nurturing strategy.

This is where you find out that your prospective friends are indeed someone that you can bond with. These are the people who understand you and are willing to be with you. So, you continue with spending time and strengthening your bond.

Lead nurturing means you’re building a stronger connection with your lead and establishing a good relationship with them through guiding them down the buyer’s journey successfully.

Final Thoughts

To simply say it, lead generation is the getting-to-know-each-other process and lead nurturing comes after lead generation.  If you want to expand your business, now is the right time to start planning for your lead nurturing and lead generation strategies. Just remember, start with generating new leads, after that, you can nurture them.