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Apr 27, 2010
Article

New Chart: Marketers Rank B2B Challenges

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SUMMARY: What are the greatest challenges that B2B marketers are facing? From generating high-quality leads and a high volume of leads to generating public relations buzz, see which challenges topped the list.
By Jen Doyle, Research Analyst

Today's Most Significant Challenges for B2B Marketers to Overcome

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The call from the sales force is not "Give us more leads" -- it’s "Give us better leads." As you can see in the chart, marketing teams are aware of this issue and are responding to the challenge.

Depending on your lead generation process, lead quality may be the result of either the original state of the lead or of a nurturing process to determine if and when the lead is sales-ready. The latter case -- a nurturing process -- also addresses the second most significant challenge shown in the chart above: marketing to a lengthening sales cycle.

A strategic nurturing process not only identifies when a lead is sales-ready, but can pinpoint at which stage of the buying cycle the prospect is in, to forecast timely opportunities.

When the quality of a lead is dependent on its original state, it usually means that all but the most obviously disqualified leads are handed off to the sales force as they are generated. Surprisingly, this practice is still very common in B2B marketing.

For additional research data and insights about B2B marketing, download and read the free Executive Summary from MarketingSherpa’s 2009-2010 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report.

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Comments about this Chart

Apr 27, 2010 - Ed Borasky of Borasky Research Journal says:
This isn't a great surprise to me. I'm guessing if you took this poll 20 years ago you would have gotten the same numbers. What does surprise me, though, is that my impression was that the tools we have today - web analytics, lead scoring, social media, CRM systems - are vastly better than they were 20 years ago. So what's wrong? Are we dealing with a constant "numbers game?"


Apr 27, 2010 - Don Marzetta of CBS Interactive Direct Marketing Services says:
I feel the pain, coming from B2B demand generation. That is why our services focus on matching the right content to the different decision makers in today's long sales cycle. CBS Interactive Direct Marketing tracks billions of historical behavior activities across its business and tech sites, then matches clients' offers to the user -- if known. If not, we look for similar patterns that led other users to a content page for example, and recommend the most relevant based on that. It's also important for service providers to recommend and/or develop content that matches these different users, and the different stages of the decision making funnel. That's how you start to deliver higher quality leads to clients.


Apr 27, 2010 - Gene Gerwin of CCI Marketing says:
By narrowing the funnel, using drip marketing, and using telemarketing, marketers can find the right balance between volume of leads and quality of leads.



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