November 20, 2015: The revenue resulting from marketing campaigns and the volume of leads generated are the two most common ways today's B2B marketers are measured for success, according to a new survey by 6Sense.
Seventy percent of marketers use these metrics to determine if marketing strategies and tactics are viable. The quality of leads (as evidenced by the number of leads that the sales teams accept) was also an essential metric named by 60 percent of the respondents.
However, providing sales-qualified leads is a challenge; a majority of marketers reported about 80 percent of their leads end up rejected by sales. To assist in the lead generation process, about one-third of the respondents were using predictive analytics tools, but most (83 percent) have only recently adopted the technology (within the last two years).
A majority of B2B marketers name increasing the overall lead quality (68 percent), increasing the volume of qualified leads (64 percent) and increasing the number of sales-qualified leads (54 percent) as the primary goals for using predictive analytics.
"It is clear from these survey results that, more than ever before, marketers are on the hook for ROI, and their needs go beyond what most predictive solutions have been offering," said Amanda Kahlow, CEO and Founder of 6sense. "Understanding timing and getting more visibility into buyers is what will solve this issue – and that requires time-sensitive, unstructured activity data on a mass scale."
In the "2015 B2B Lead Generation Report" published by BrightTALK, the top issue for 59 percent of marketers was generating high-quality leads. However, 58 percent expected their lead generation budget to increase in the coming year.
B2B marketers named lack of resources (61 percent), lack of high-quality data (42 percent) and lack of target audience insight (38 percent) were the top lead gen challenges.
Source: Survey: B2B Marketing Success Measured by Lead Quantity and Quality
