Kirsten Lyons — December 4, 2018 — December 4, 2018
Demand generation is a rapidly changing field, but it is also critically important to support the rest of your marketing activities further down the funnel. That’s why we put together these demand gen stats for you—to set your strategy up right so that your pipeline doesn’t become a ghost town come Q2.
Being successful in the world of demand gen today means keeping up with a rapidly evolving landscape, which is why it’s important to keep up to date on what’s working for marketers, and what isn’t. Start with the research and takeaways below to help you get the lay of the land as you set up for a successful 2019.
1. Marketers who document strategy are 538% more likely to report success than those who don’t and marketers who document process are 466% more likely to report success than those who don’t. (source)
Takeaway: Planning the work and working the plan is the demand gen marketer’s secret to success. It is important to be explicit about both your goals and also the tactics that will support your achievement of those goals.
Build your plan thoughtfully and share it widely across your team to keep everyone focused on and accountable to your goals in 2019.
2. 50% of the average marketing database is useless, largely because of duplicate records (source)
Takeaway: You can build a killer marketing strategy built on demand gen darlings, like newsletters and email blasts, but if your database isn’t clean, your efforts will be wasted.
Make sure a data preservation and scrubbing effort is a primary point in your 2019 plans.
3. Only 56% of B2B organizations verify leads before they’re passed to sales (source)
Takeaway: What are the other 44% of you up to, B2B marketers? Ensuring your lead quality improves efficiency and means your sales team is spending their time chasing down the right leads, not someone who is just interested in that awesome eBook you slaved away on.
Focusing on lead quality instead of quality opens up the doors for better marketing as well. If you are focusing your efforts around driving higher quality leads by collecting qualifying information on your prospects, your nurture efforts can also be more targeted and effective.
4. The most effective lead nurturing programs result in a 50% increase in sales-ready leads and 33% lower costs (source)
Takeaway: Lead nurturing is critical to driving real results with marketing today, especially in the B2B space. Prospects are inundated with messages, and hoping your initial social ad made a lifelong impression isn’t going to cut it.
Savvy marketers will develop personalized nurture programs that span channels to support both customer acquisition and retention.
5. 70% of B2B marketers claim that videos are more effective than other content when it comes to converting users to qualified leads. (source)
Takeaway: While video can seem daunting, this type of content can be very much worth the creation challenges. Video is quickly becoming a preferred content type for buyers and an effective tool for marketers.
Whether you decide to go with an outsourced team to help you create the videos of your prospects’ dreams or build in-house talent, video can’t be ignored when thinking about the future of demand gen efforts.
6. Emails for nurturing leads generate an 8% CTR compared to general emails, which generate just a 3% CTR (source).
Takeaway: Not only do leads that are nurtured convert faster and at higher rates than un-nurtured leads, demand gen tactics are more effective when used on nurtured leads. This means that marketers can think critically about what they put in front of prospects when.
7. 82% of purchasing consumers view at least 5 pieces of content first, from the winning company. (source)
Takeaway: Meet your prospects where they are, with stellar content. Stellar demand gen strategies are built off of a framework of rock solid content that provides real value for prospects.
Explore using strategies that connect content with traditional demand gen tactics, like LinkedIn lead forms and gated content downloads on well designed landing pages.
8. Only 10% of marketers use gamification to attract buyers. (source)
Takeaway: This untapped market could be a huge win for demand gen marketers today. As buyers increasingly prefer more visual, interactive content, gamification creates an opportunity to make marketing fun again.
If you need a gamification refresher, start here
Explore how you can create content that engages, and weave gamification into your existing marketing efforts this year.
9. Bundled nurturing content within a resource hub (rather than multiple emails) produced a 3X increase in lead to pipeline ratio. (source)
Takeaway: Don’t let tired “best practices” limit your strategic thinking as you build your demand gen strategy for next year. Instead of segmenting out your content on your schedule with nurture emails, why not let your prospects binge all of your content at once?
Consider building out a content hub or resource center on your website that allows your prospect to engage with your content on their terms and track activity as a part of your demand gen strategy.
10. 64% of B2B buyers they prefer podcasts at the top of the funnel, while 48% said webinars were valuable to them in the mid-stage of their buying journey. (source)
Takeaway: Make sure that your demand gen strategy and activities include varied content types that support different buyer preferences throughout the funnel. You can also repurpose content for later in the funnel, like repurposing podcast audio into content for a recorded video webinar.
11. 70% of marketers say their demand gen budgets will increase, and 34% say their spending will grow by more than 20%. (source)
Takeaway: Demand gen spending continues to increase across the board, and as competition for paid activities increases and organic reach becomes more difficult to gain, many demand gen marketers are lobbying for budget increases.
Making sure your budget is healthy can help you compete in demand gen in 2019.
12. Successful marketers are 242% more likely to report conducting audience research quarterly whereas 56% elite marketers conduct research once or more per month. (source)
Takeaway: Build in at least quarterly audience research to make sure your other demand generation work is resonating with the right people. This stat reminds us that as marketers, our job at the end of the day is to connect with people, and that’s a lot easier to do when we know more about our prospects.
Build out research benchmarks and secure your research process so it becomes an ingrained portion of your monthly or quarterly reporting process.
13. Most midsize to large organizations average less than 5,000 marketing qualified leads (MQLs) per month. (source)
Takeaway: This is a useful benchmark to assess how your overall lead generation tactics are performing, as well as your qualification process. If you are blowing your lead numbers out of the water, but coming up short for your organization size in the Marketing Qualified Lead department, consider revamping your nurture and qualification plan.
Keeping an eye on other organizations of similar size to set realistic goals and assess how your existing efforts are performing.
93% of online experiences now begin with a search engine (source)
Takeaway: This stat has huge implications for how you build your 2019 strategy in terms of tactics. Here you can see the evidence for focusing on organic search traffic, through tactics like keyword research and placement.
By focusing on optimizing content for search and building paid efforts that support well-orchestrated organic campaigns, demand gen marketers can capitalize on search traffic in 2019.
Here’s to a Successful 2019
With these demand gen stats and takeaways, you are sure to be able to build a killer 2019 strategy. Want more great tips and ideas to start off the new year with a bang? Try our demand gen marketer’s guide to interactive content to learn how to engage, nurture, and convert leads to customers with interactive content.
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