B2B Marketing: Findings from Marketing Sherpa's 2011 Report: Part 1

Marketing Sherpa's 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report is out and there are some telling findings. Its well worth the investment. I am writing a number of blogs to bring you some highlights and our thoughts on what they mean:

The general environment has got a lot more challenging for B2B Marketers across the board from 2009 to 2010, there is little sign of a let up in terms of cost focus from the CFO or the tough marketplace conditions. However, there are two standout issues:

• Generating high quality leads, 78% of B2B organisations listed this as their most pertinent issue
   
• A distant second was generating a high volume of leads at 44% of respondents

So once again, folks, quality trumps quality. We at g2m Solutions believe there are significant issues that need to be addressed for firms looking to drive quality leads...not just "any old leads". Among these are:

• Implementing a lead scoring system that recognises the quality of one lead over another based on criteria your marketing AND sales team have agreed together. This could be explicit data you have gathered from forms leads have completed or from implicit (behavioural) data you have gleaned from the lead's online behaviour.
• The need for messaging and content to focus on the buyer and the problems they face.
• The need for a sophisticated content marketing plan that deliberately maps high quality content to the stages of the buying journey.

By feeding content that resonates with buyers to them at the appropriate stage of their decision making cycle will drastically increase the quality of your leads.

By implementing a lead scoring system that allows you to define the point at which a lead is "sales ready" you will significantly improve the ROI of your sales team. Conversion rates will start to increase as they work on the right leads first and filter out the tire kickers and recycle those who, whilst they are good leads, are not ready to buy yet.     

What tecniques do you use to hunt for those elusive high quality leads?