subject: New Trends In B2b Lead Generation [print this page] Lead generation is an intrinsic part of every B2B organization. There are many interesting trends in the space of B2B online Marketing and Lead generation, some which are presented in this article.
According to an eMarketer report, in 2010 marketers put more money into online advertising than newspapers, with online marketing budgets touching a whooping $26 billion. The year also saw, B2B marketers taking to social media with a vengeance, according to a research by Biz Reposrt, 86% of B2B firms today are using social media, compared to 82% of B2C outfits. This is in line with Outsells Annual Advertising and Marketing Study 2010, where it stated that B2B Marketing spending on social networking sites would rise 43.3% in 2010.
The most significant development of 2010 was definitely the remarkable growth experienced by the marketing automation industry. According to Demandgen Report, approximately 1,500 new customers adopted marketing automation systems in 2010, double the number last year. All the leading marketing automation solution providers reported exponential growth.
Entry of giants like Oracle and IBM into this space further validated the value that marketing automation solutions offer B2B organizations and hopefully will act as a catalyst in further consolidating the marketing automation industry in the coming year.
According to various analysts in 2011, marketing automation software industry will see more growth, particularly among a broader range of business verticals and newer markets like, UK, Asia etc.
It is possible for some to wrongly conclude that marketing automation does not work but will eventually realize that Marketing Automation should be a complete solution with people, processes, and integration with other tools becoming an integral component of the solution to ensure success.
The importance of having a large number of high quality, up-to-date pieces of content to engage prospects in the research and buying process has become imperative now. Buying guides, ROI analyses, success kits, rich-media content and games that engage prospects, Q&A communities will gain importance and marketers that invest in content will start seeing the ROI.
Hosting content with Marketing Automation players rather than relying on IT department bureaucracy to manage their content on the corporate website has now become possible.
Marketing Automation and other marketing technology companies now experiment with pay-for-performance or freemium models as current models will not give them the necessary scale.
Email marketing solutions available on Marketing Automation platforms have now gone beyond the measurement of open and click rate and increasingly cover more website activities by a prospect in response to a marketing email.
Marketing Qualified lead Rate has now become a relevant measure for marketing efficiency and success both from a marketing initiative perspective and from the marketings ability to efficiently screen out low potential contacts.
Increased awareness and interest in digital media space has made it harder for marketers to pin down their prospects and convert them into leads, but then the more the challenges in lead management the better the chances of finding innovative solutions, which help improve our communication channels and also provide us with better insight into the minds of our prospects.
