One-Minute Strategic Demand Generation Benchmark Survey Results

Transcription

1 One-Minute Strategic Demand Generation Benchmark Survey Results How do you compare to your peers on critical components of strategic planning for leading-edge demand generation? This survey of visitors to the Bulldog Solutions booth at the BtoB LeadingEdge Virtual Trade show in June 2009 shows how BtoB marketers are handling today s challenges. Strategy Research firm SiriusDecisions says that when you apply best practices to the demand creation process, you ll drive 200% more leads and close more deals than your less sophisticated peers. SiriusDecisions notes, A shared demand funnel between marketing and sales that is consistently measured drives accountability and improvement over time (Demand Creation: Performance Anxiety, SiriusDecisions 2007). High-performing organizations develop agreed-upon definitions of the pipeline stages, such as Inquiry, Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Accepted Lead, Sales Qualified Lead and Closed Business. This enables them to measure baseline conversion rates as a step toward implementing lead scoring, lead nurturing, improved routing and other technology-enabled marketing processes to drive better ROI. Has your organization defined specific stages of the demand pipeline (such as Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Accepted Lead and Sales Qualified Lead)? 63% 3 2% t sure 1

2 Do you have a lead qualification process for the specific stages of your demand pipeline (per the previous question)? 54% 41% t Sure Message Development Top performers make relevant content available when and how buyers are ready to view or listen to it. Research firm Frost & Sullivan and Bulldog Solutions recommend marketers develop clear-cut buyer personas for each of their target prospects, and rely on those personas to drive clearly defined content and message strategies to engage and convert prospects. The development of buyer personas was the spearhead to be able to drive messaging and also to get everybody pointed in the same direction in terms of how we are pursuing our nurturing and our realization of leads, says Michael Rapp, director of emedia for Bulldog Solutions client Fujitsu Network Communications. Have you developed buyer personas defining the pain points, motivators and sources of validation for your prospects? 2 30% 38%, but we re working on it 7% t sure 2

3 Have you developed messaging to map to prospects at different stages of the buying cycle (as opposed to a common message sent regardless of buying stage)? 20% 41% 36%, but we re working on it 3% t sure Do you have sufficient content to support multiple messages and calls to action? 42% 21% 32%, but we re working on it t sure Segmenting MarketingSherpa notes the power of segmenting with a range of statistics indicating segmented lists yield substantially higher engagement than un-segmented lists. For example, Open rates for segmented versus non-segmented campaigns are as much as 20% higher on average for the first 30 days ( Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008, MarketingSherpa 2008). High performers build a robust database by using progressive calls to action, from low-barrier permissions (simply an and company name) to engagements that require prospects to share more information in return for higher-value offerings. 3

4 Is your house database sufficiently robust to allow you to create audience segments based on industry, geography or other key data points relevant to your organization? 69% 26% t sure Marketing Automation Marketing automation leader Eloqua says that marketers can close 50% more sales by automating the communications process to create mass one-to-one communications (Automating Demand Generation: The Power of Factory Thinking in Sales and Marketing, Eloqua 2008). SiriusDecisions notes marketing automation and CRM integration are critical to marketing ROI but also concedes there are danger zones where companies that have deployed basic marketing automation are unable to unleash the full power of that solution. Frost & Sullivan and Bulldog Solutions recommend identifying the specific roadblocks (use the responses in this survey as a starting point), defining a plan to address them, then identifying internal and external experts to own cross functional initiatives for improvement. Do you use a marketing automation platform to drive communications and assess online behavior of prospects and clients? 29% 52% 18%, but we plan to implement one soon 1% t sure 4

5 If you selected to the question above, which one do you use? 8% Eloqua 2% 37% 6% 47% Vtrenz/Silverpop Other t sure Does not apply What is the biggest roadblock in maximizing your marketing automation platform? 17% 31% 8% 9% 22% 2% 11% We re having trouble rolling out acceptance across the organization We don t have the right number of people The platform is overwhelming in terms of complexity We don t have sufficient content We don t have the right processes Our data from third party promotion channels is silo'd roadblock, we have been able to maximize sufficiently 5

6 Is your CRM tool mapped to a marketing automation platform? 19% 61% t sure 1 We don t have a CRM tool Learn More For more information about this report or to learn how Bulldog Solutions can help your organization reach best practices in online demand generation, info@bulldogsolutions.com or visit: /solutions Webinars, white papers and other complimentary resources are available at: /resource-library 6