Marketers tend to be followers…a new marketing trend appears and many just follow along with the crowd hoping that a new Nirvana will open and give them the miraculous results they have been waiting for, but that is far from the best way to approach your marketing problem. Research helps…understanding your customer and how you connect with them. Understanding your markets and how to impact them. Developing strategies that can be effectively measured. Staying in tune with the every changing needs of the consumer in a very fast changing world. And so much more.
The results of this survey done by Ayaz are also very interesting in respect to my comments above. As an example: When we look at quality of leads by channel we see that the hot spend, and hot channels of Search Engine Optimization and Social Media where increased spending is taking place are in fact below the mid-line of effective quality lead generators. So more money is being funneled towards programs that have not been proven to be highly effective.
Why might this be happening? the most likely reasons are that the majority of marketing departments don’t have good analytics, and they don’t build social media that effectively connects with their core audiences wants and needs. The ability for marketing to determine who their customer is, what tools they use with companies such as yours to research and connect with them, and the experiences that they need to receive from their vendors is paramount to your long term success in social media, direct mail, email marking and related. If you truly sit with many marketers you will also find that they take a totally different approach at email marketing campaigns and the research they do before hand than they do with their social media campaigns. Thus email marketing is more effective than social media.
Undertand your consumer, know what resources they use to connect with their friends, services, and products, build campaigns that can be measured, and focus on what supports and defines customer engagement in todays competitive marketing.
The Most Effective B2B Lead Generation Tactics
B2B marketers say tradeshows, search engine marketing, and email are the best channels for generating large numbers of high-quality leads, according to a recent report from Software Advice.
The report was based on data from a survey of 200 B2B marketing professionals in the United States who have experience with demand generation channels, tactics, and metrics.
Overall, tradeshows were cited by respondents as the channel that generates both the most and the best leads: 77% of marketers say shows generate a “somewhat” or “very high” quantity of leads, and 82% say they generate leads of “good” or “excellent” quality.
Below, additional key findings from the report.
Respondents ranked email, organic search, and social media as the demand generation channels with the lowest cost per lead on average.
Tradeshows, though considered very effective in generating many high-quality leads, are also viewed as being expensive.
2015 Spend
Search engine advertising is the most commonly cited demand generation channel for additional investment in next year: 12% of respondents plan to spend “much more” on SEM in 2015, and 30% plan to spend “somewhat more.”
About the research: The report was based on data from a survey of 200 B2B marketing professionals in the United States who have experience with demand generation channels, tactics, and metrics.
TPG Social Media