Thought Leadership To Build Brands and Nurture Leads

RainToday.com's recent report "

In B2B marketing, all three serve the same purpose: to establish your company as a trusted adviser, so when a prospect is ready to buy, he or she will think of you and will want to speak with your sales reps.

I'm often asked whether

A key difference from B2C marketing: In B2B, mass advertising does not work to build the brand (the survey found that TV, radio, and print advertising were ranked 33, 31, and 29 – out of 33 – as least effective methods for B2B lead generation).

Instead, RainToday argues that B2B companies should build their brand by demand generation efforts.

Lead Nurturing

The report also has some of the best data I've seen about the importance of

The definition of "sales-ready" varies from company to company, but most said that only 10-30% of leads generated by marketing campaigns were sales-ready. The average value was 25%. Respondents also reported an average of 25% of leads should be disqualified. The remaining 50% of leads require "further nurturing".

RainToday points out that lead nurturing is not just sending a monthly email newsletter to your entire database, or calling prospects every few weeks to see if they are ready to buy yet. They argue that lead nurturing is your opportunity to demonstrate the value you can provide and to position yourself as a resource. This is similar to my post

With this definition, lead nurturing is about using thought leadership to deepen your role as a trusted adviser, which in turn further builds your brand and improves awareness. The end goal is to stay within the buyer's awareness so that when he or she is ready to speak with a sales person, your company is an obvious choice.

Note: You can download the executive summary of the report, "