Behavioural geneticists have pondered the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities versus personal experiences for years. Psychologist Donald Hebb is said to have once answered a journalist's question of, "which, nature or nurture, contributes more to personality?" by asking in response, "which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?"

In online marketing the nature versus nurture debate is also raging: which is better, to grow my traffic or get more out of what I already have? Quantity versus quality, simplistically put. But just as Professor Hebb pointed out the dangers of ignoring one over the other, so we must strike a balance.

Most of the emphasis over the last few years has been on driving more traffic to your website. SEO, organic rankings, back links, banner ads, twitter, blogs -- all these will get more people to visit your site. And better design and a well architected web site will perhaps

persuade more of them to contact you; the Holy Grail, a sales lead!

Getting a customer to register on your landing page, respond to a direct mail piece or make a return visit to a store is a wonderful thing. However, according to research by Brian Carrol, CEO of Intouch Lead Generation and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, up to 95 percent of qualified prospects on your Web site are there to research but as many as 70 percent of them will eventually buy a product from you - or your competitors.

Lead Nurturing -- the process of building relationships with qualified prospects regardless of their timing to buy -- is a critical and relatively new discipline (at least in the web world). The great joy is that most of it can be automated and hence highly efficient. So in the nature versus nurture debate the time has come to redress the balance and start nurturing your leads.