In good economic times and bad, there is always pressure on marketing to increase demand for opportunities and prospects.
The goal of demand generation is usually to create marketing strategies that raise awareness, interest, and urgency in a company’s products or services.
But the pressures to accomplish this often force marketing to focus on immediate tactics over carefully planned strategies-strategies meant to filter out the quality, seriously interested prospects from the not-yet-ready-to-be-contacted suspects.
Just like marketers shouldn’t rely on a single marketing medium for demand generation, nor should they just generate demand and then call it good. But that is precisely what many marketing departments do-and with dire consequences.
There is little question that demand generation is important. But by itself, it is simply not enough to produce effective results and noteworthy ROI. This is where “lead” or “prospect” nurturing comes in. Since not all demand generation activities have lead generation as the goal, we’ll refer to it as “relationship nurturing.”
Relationship nurturing takes over once demand generation efforts have produced a response. If demand generation initiates dialogue with a target audience to drive awareness and interest in a company’s products and services, relationship nurturing keeps that conversation going.
Nurturing requires multiple touch points throughout the first 60 days, and then less frequent, but still consistent, content touch points going forward. This helps increase brand recollection and the likelihood of engaging with prospects early in their buying cycle.
Relationship nurturing activities can be very similar to demand generation tactics: Trade publication articles and ads, prospect-specific landing pages, White Papers, SEO, SEM, Webinars, direct mail, email campaigns, e-newsletters, etc.
While balanced marketing strategies for both demand generation and relationship nurturing leverage a fusion of online and offline marketing channels, it’s important to recognize that the content needs to be different for relationship nurturing…
Relationship nurturing is all about relevant content, relevant content, relevant content.
Relationship nurturing thrives on content that is focused and targeted according to where the prospect is in the buying cycle. Therefore, your content should remind prospects of the benefits of working with you-not on pitching your company, products or services. This establishes respect, and encourages relationship building.
The more effectively you implement your nurturing strategy and offer relevant, timely content, the more likely sales will shift in your favor.
Moving beyond just demand generation to long-term relationship nurturing can produce more qualified inquiries, help grow existing revenue streams, enhance relations between marketing and sales, and position a company as trusted advisor.
By Lenox Powell
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5874495