Better Research Sells More In Lead Generation Campaigns

Marketing departments have a problem: Only 17.3% of companies are reaching their sales leads targets. Part of the problem is that marketing departments and sales seem to evaluate their performance in vastly different terms.

While marketing departments ranked digital marketing as 65% more effective than offline sales strategies, sales departments selected telemarketing as their most effective lead channel.

Of course, a lot has changed in digital marketing and lead generation. Hence, while telemarketing still has a place for lead generation, it’s not the go-to strategy, but let’s look at where companies ranked telemarketing in 2016.

According to companies that have successfully reached their lead targets in the last year, outbound telemarketing was their highest performing channel. Here’s how they stacked up channels by effectiveness, as reported in a study called the Black Report by 360 Leads:

• 7% ranked outbound telemarketing most effective
• 7% ranked email marketing most effective
• 9% ranked digital marketing most effective
• 8% ranked social media most effective
• 9% ranked trade shows and conferences most effective

All channels perform relatively well. However, over half of all companies quizzed, both large and small, identified budget restrictions as their number one challenge for sales and marketing campaigns.  One challenge still remains for many businesses, and that’s the commitment to marketing and lead generation budgets.

Lack of Investment

Too many companies don’t have the resources to reach their qualified sales lead targets, and many spend in the wrong places. Every year, digital marketing commands more from the budget, while direct marketing lead strategies like telesales and direct mail continue to generate more leads for less.

Maximize Lead Generation Initiatives

Any company that wants to find new customers has to maximize scarce marketing resources by focusing on what works. That’s how lead generating marketing services deliver returns.

Outreach

You may be wondering – what is outreach? Well, it’s a term defining the access to services or businesses wouldn’t ordinarily have access to, and the services are provided by outreach agencies. Improving your outreach generates more qualified sales leads and also has that marketing focus of the long tail where it keeps the lead generation process ongoing using strategies including:

• Social Media Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Native Advertising
• Search Advertising

Too many companies don’t know where to look for sales leads; more than half lack sufficient data to track down targets for sales leads.

Research

The challenges many companies face are clear – insufficient budgets to follow up on leads and insufficient data to find them.

Engaging an outreach agency to set up digital marketing initiatives that start the customer discovery process and data capture in targeted marketing campaigns for lead generation is best practices.

For example, B2B agencies bring better research to target key decision-makers and use outbound marketing to open new markets. It’s not enough for companies to wait for customers to come to them. Outbound marketing remains a more efficient tool for finding new customers.

Flying by the seat of your pants aimlessly is a waste of resources, and without a well-researched marketing plan, fewer sales leads will be forthcoming.