Today we released the results from our latest research on B2B lead generation.

The goal of our survey of close to 250 B2B marketers was to address two pivotal and practical questions specific to lead generation:

1. What online marketing tools are B2B marketers using for lead generation?
2. How are online inquiries converted into offline, sales-ready leads?

I would like to share our first chart from the research. We asked the B2B marketers if a select number of online media tools were being deployed in lead generation programs.


Chart: Lead Generation Tool Adoption


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Three tiers of tools can be identified:

• Tier 1 - These web tools are well-adopted (75%+) for lead generation and include Email, Webinars/Webcasting, PPC and Web Analytics. These tools are primarily Web 1.0 type tools.
• Tier 2 - In this tier, we can see the emergence of blogging and RSS as the up and coming tools for lead generation, with adoption close to or at 50%.
• Tier 3 - Podcast and pinging tools make up the third tier.

It is interesting to observe that although some of the Web 2.0 tools are not as popular for lead generation as Web 1.0 tools, their use by B2B marketers is significant. This is especially true given the relatively brief time that these tools have been available on the market.
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