Don't confuse the automation of lead nurturing with the fact of nurturing leads. You absolutely need to ease prospects along, encourage discovery and maintain contact - full stop. But there are a lot of different ways to do it. Hubspot, Marketo et al are good tools - but they might not be what you need. Many people confuse tools with tasks or activities. Don't do that.

I would answer with a definitive "yes".

I've worked with a lot of companies that used to burn through their marketing budgets without turning many of their hard earned inbound leads into revenue. So much of their focus was on capturing the leads initially, but they had nothing in place to properly nurture the leads that did not close upon first or second contact from their sales teams.

The differentiator for these companies, when they did turn things around, was consistently a strategic lead nurturing campaign, primarily through email marketing and social media. These nurturing campaigns can be very time / resource intensive as they require a lot of planning, content creation and follow through. These reasons continue to be some of the main barriers for companies that don't currently do lead nurturing.

Hubspot, as with a few other tools, only helps to make the nurturing process more manageable and less overwhelming. If the more sophisticated software is too expensive, which it can be for many small businesses, then I would highly recommend starting with (at the very least) an email marketing campaign through a service like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp. A few well-crafted and properly timed email messages can turn a cold prospect into a hot lead as it keeps the prospect informed and your company at the top of their mind.