Un recente post di Paula Pollock mi spinge a soffermarmi sulla differenza che esiste tra il processo di Lead generation e quello di Lead nurturing.

Per inquadrare il discorso, è necessario fare un passo indietro.

Un piano per l’acquisizione di nuovi clienti (Demand generation) si compone di alcuni fondamentali processi: la generazione di clienti potenziali (Lead generation), la gestione di questi potenziali clienti (Lead management), che avviene “coltivando” questi lead (Lead nurturing), in modo da selezionare alla fine di questo processo, attraverso l’attribuzione di un punteggio (Lead scoring), i lead che possono essere  passati alla forza vendita perché sono vicini a prendere la decisione d’acquisto (Sales Conversion).

In questo quadro, possiamo definire la Demand generation, secondo le parole di Sean Hickey, come

a holistic marketing approach to the process of converting a prospective buyer into a customer, in concert with the efforts and goals of your sales force.

La Demand generation, quindi, può essere vista come il piano che comprende, come ha scritto molto bene Edwin Thompson,

the entire process from lead generation (the act od collecting the name initially) management routing, scoring, and nurturing through the entire sales/buying process.

La differenza che esiste, all’interno del Piano di Demand generation, tra il processo di Lead generation e quello di Lead nurturing, come ho detto all’inizio, è stata formulata in maniera molto efficace da Paula Polloch, utilizzando una bella analogia:

Lead generation is “leading a horse to your water”, Lead nurturing is “getting it to want to drink your water” and Sales is “getting it to actually drink your water”.

Scendendo più nei dettagli:

Lead generation challange: What if the horse just had a lot to drink? What if you only have milk and it’s lactose intollerant? What if your competition has designer horse water? You need to make sure to align your “water” and all the marketing of your “water” with the needs and desires of that particular horse even if their needs are completely insane and unrealistic to you.

Lead nurturing challange: Let’s say you offered the horse a $ 5 coupon to try your “water”. He agreed and gave you his barn address to send the coupon to, so you have in fact generated a lead. It’s not a sale yet since we don’t know if this horse really likes your “water” enough to be regularly interested. Now what? You nurture the horse using regular communication that entice it to become a customer.

You send picture of celebrity horses drinking your water, invitations to private testings, chances to win a year’s supply of water on your Facebook page … Some horses will immediately convert and others could take a long, long time. 

Anche Ardath Albee ha espresso in maniera efficace la differenza che esiste tra Lead

generation e lead nurturing:

Lead generation is a hello and a handshake.

Lead nurturing is the art of building a relationship with purpose.

The difference between those two functions is huge. The first is a welcome, but the second is strategic engagement that contributes to downstream revenues. If marketing is only focused on the first, they’re leaving the bulk of the process to sales. The problem here is that salespeople don’t want to nurture propsects – they want to sell them. This is why so much lead wastage is going on.

La Lead generation cerca di acquisire quanti più clienti potenziali è possibile, il lead nurturing cerca di qualificarli al meglio. Quindi, la Lead generation lavora di più sulla quantità, il Lead nurturing sulla qualità.

La Lead generation è come gettare una rete per cercare di raccogliere un certo numero di pesci, il Lead nurturing è un processo molto più complesso. Come ha scritto Adam Needles:

lead nurturing requires thinking in terms of a matrix of potential content offers and reactions on the part of the B2B buyer – all of which are designed to help support the buying process, accelerate decision-making and orchestrate content dialogue with that buyer. In the ideal case, you offer the buyer the ideal/right content at each stage of his/her buying process, you collect the right profiling data and everything flows forward in an efficient fashion. That’s the ideal case.

Spero di aver fornito delle utili indicazioni per comprendere come la Lead generation e il Lead nurturing siano due processi molto diversi.