Lead Generation vs. Lead Nurturing: The Best Marketing Automation Tool

‘Lead Generation’ and ‘Lead Nurturing’ are the most widely and constantly used terms when it comes to business development and marketing. Many people believe that both the two terms are synonymous in nature. But that is not exactly true!

So what’s the difference?

Lead Generation is the process of generating new leads for the business through an online marketing process such as Content Marketing, Social Media, Emails, Website Design, SEO and Pay-Per-Click. On the other hand, Lead Nurturing is actually the process of building better and strong relationships with customers with the intent of turning them into reliable, loyal & recurring paying customers. It focuses more on qualified leads and targets the person who has already shown an interest in your product or service. Lead generation and lead nurturing is an essential part of every inbound marketing campaign and without a proper strategy, the business won’t be able to survive in today’s competitive market.

A person who has shown interest in your business is your potential Lead. And the process of capturing his attention and pushing him into the sales funnel is lead generation. There are 2 ways to generate leads; inbound and outbound. Inbound strategies rely on things like your blog, website, SEO, and social media, whereas outbound strategies include email marketing and advertising. Both strategies should be employed and used together in order to target leads.

Building relationships with the audience and potential customers at every stage of the sales funnel is very important. Lead nurturing is the right way to build a strong relationship with customers converting them into potential buyers. After generating a lead, a business should nurture those leads to turn them into customers who make purchases. Lead nurturing should involve exploring what exactly the consumer is looking for and then addressing those needs through digital communication and other marketing efforts.

So what’s the most important marketing automation goal: Lead Generation or Lead Nurturing?

As you are familiar with both the terms now, you can expect that one is not more important than the other, and they work together. Remember, there’s no point in generating leads only to dump them. All the leads need to be nurtured in order to develop into strong customer relationships that impel purchases. Lead nurturing is what makes the lead generation worthy.

The end goal for both the strategies is the same — to produce revenue for your company. So from all these statements, we can conclude that businesses have to invest time and effort on both the elements to convert leads into sales. A proper balance of both elements is the key to success.


Generally, lead generation and lead nurturing go hand-in-hand. One might say that lead nurturing holds greater weight as this is the moment that you really work on clients of genuine prospects, instead of attempting to approach someone who isn’t even involved.

Digital marketing agency specializes in inbound marketing services and can help boost your business’ ROI through different lead generation tactics!