Lead Generation Barriers and Challenges for B2B Marketers
MarketingSherpa LLC, a MECLABS Group Company, has released their 2012 edition of the B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. They surveyed more than 1,700 B2B marketers in what they call one of the most extensive studies in the industry. The full report looks at top challenges B2B marketers are facing, barriers preventing success and best practices to attract and convert the B2B buyer.
For B2B marketers here are three interesting topics from the survey and their top responses.
Top B2B marketing challenges
- Generating high quality leads 74%
- Generating a high volume of leads 49%
Top "Very Effective" B2B marketing tactics
- Website design, management and optimization 31%
- Search engine optimization (SEO) 29%
- Email marketing 26%
Greatest barrier to B2B marketing success
- Lack of resources in staffing, budgeting or time 62%
- Lack of ability to stop executing and think strategically 39%
- Limited ability to develop content 35%
- Lack of sufficient insight on target audience 32%
- Lack of alignment between sales and marketing 32%
To us, this last question on barriers to success is most interesting. Frankly, answer responses one and two should probably be combined, considering that if you lack resources in staffing or time, then by definition you won't have time to "stop executing and think strategically." (By the way, these two answers are very consistent with what we hear from CMOs and those chief sales officers who also own marketing.)
As to the budgeting challenge, the ROI on getting lead generation in place - and done correctly - is very attainable. Most of the companies we work with cover their entire consulting expense with just a fraction the first incremental deal they win.
The other three barriers require a combination of investment (particularly on the part of content creation and gaining insight on your targets) and internal political resolve. If the political will exists and the best interests of the company are being placed in front of departmental goals or prejudice, then sales and marketing alignment is surprisingly easy to accomplish.
The best thing CMOs can do to overcome these barriers is to educate themselves on what to expect when they formally accept the responsibility to "own" lead generation. We have a white paper on the topic called Increasing Sales Effectiveness with Marketing Automation that provides a great deal of information, lessons learned, checklists, budget considerations and do's and don'ts. We also offer a complimentary Lead Optimization Review for marketers and sales leaders that would like to have a conversation on their unique challenges and goals.