Content is becoming a key activity for B2B marketers, with more of them seeing it as a valuable investment and a way to boost their lead generation efforts. These are the key insights from B2B Marketing’s Lead Generation & Nurturing Benchmarking Report.
The freshly released industry-leading study involved interviews with 291 B2B client-side marketers who shared information about their lead generation pain points, priorities and performance.
Here are the key takeaways from B2B Marketing’s report…
1. Leads are the primary focus of B2B marketers.
68% of respondents give their company a grade of six out of 10 for effective lead-oriented performance.
2. Lead quality more important than lead quantity.
Increasing the number and the quality of leads is considered a top priority by the B2B marketing respondents. 53% identify the generation of quality leads as their main objective, compared to 50% whose main efforts are focused on generating a greater number of leads.
3. Considerable boost in company spend on lead generation and nurturing activities.
A whopping 70% of the survey participants expect to increase investment in lead activity in the next year or so.
4. Live events – best for quality, email – number 1 for quantity of leads.
43% of respondents identify industry shows as the number 1 channel for quality of leads, while email is cited as the best channel in terms of quantity of attracted leads.
5. The biggest challenge – aligning content with lead generation.
24% of the study participants identified the production of content for lead activity as their major issue.
6. Email – top channel for the top of the funnel.
When it comes to targeting new clients, email rules the roost. An impressive 42% of the B2B marketers interviewed say email is the best channel when it comes to the first touch point with a prospective client.
How can we interpret these B2B stats? The report clearly demonstrates that B2B marketers are moving towards realising the potential of content for activities that are past the ‘Attract’ stage. No longer is content simply about raising brand awareness and being found.
B2B companies are increasingly viewing it in the context of the sales funnel and trying to figure out ways to generate and nurture leads by offering different types of content. And this is where B2B marketers can get really creative… while being relevant to their target audience.
So have you got your thinking caps on?
Download our Essential Guide to Online Lead Generation to learn more about how to incorporate content into your sales pipe.
