BtoB Online published a collection of data charts revealing a variety of input from marketers around lead generation and management. When I reviewed the charts, a couple of them pointed to what I see as a conflict in goals, or perhaps understanding of dependencies.
This chart shows how marketers rate the importance of a variety of goals:
*Note that column 5 indicates the most important.
The number one spot, according to 52%, is driving qualified leads. No real surprise there.
But look where lead nurturing came in. Dead last behind raising awareness and serving as voice of the company.
How do you drive qualified leads if you don't nurture them? Especially in a complex B2B sale.
I see two possible interpretations for this response. Either marketing has a very low threshold for what constitutes a "qualified lead" or they're focused on scraping the 20% that are sales ready off the top of the database and then searching for more new leads – letting the others languish in lead purgatory. Not the best choice considering that a majority of those leads are likely to buy in the long term.
Now take a look at the chart that measures proficiency gaps:
I find it curious that marketers assign their highest proficiency to lead management with marketing automation, yet all of the other categories impact the quality of lead management and marketers say they're less effective at each of them.
The good thing I see is that there's a desire to raise proficiency levels. But I'm still confused about how marketers will reach nearly a 9 in lead management when all the other categories that play a role the process and success of lead management are considered less important…
