57.4% of B2B marketers derive the biggest impact on their lead generation goals from SEO activities, according to a November 2011 report from Webmarketing123. Data from the “2011 State of Digital Marketing Report” indicates that PPC comes in a distant second, cited by 24.8% of B2B marketers as having the biggest impact, while social media marketing is third with 17.9% of respondents. SEO wins among B2C marketers, too, although by a smaller margin: 41% see it as the dominant influence on lead generation, followed by PPC (34.2%) and social media marketing (24.8%).
Lead Generation Most Important for B2B
Lead generation (46.4%) is by far the most important objective of digital programs for B2B marketers, outstripping sales generation (22.2%), brand awareness development (15.3%), and site traffic generation (11.1%). Among B2C marketers, lead generation (23%) drops to the second spot behind sales generation (39.9%), but remains ahead of site traffic generation (17.4%), and brand awareness development (16.9%).
Traffic is Top Program Success Indicator
Although site traffic generation is not the most important objective to most digital marketers, the vast majority use web traffic as a measurement of campaign success, cited by 73.9% of B2B marketers and 79.8% of B2C marketers.
Among B2B marketers, lead generation (69.2%) takes second place, followed closely by website click-through rate (64.7%) and sales (62.5%) as prominent methods of measuring success. Less than half turn to call-to-action conversions as indicators of success, while just one-quarter use brand awareness. For B2C marketers, sales (68.5%) and website click-through rate (68%) are the second and third most-popular indicators, followed by call-to-action conversions (47.8%), lead generation (46.1%), and brand awareness (37.1%).
Marketers Confident in PPC Expertise
Just 29.1% of marketers want to learn more about PPC, according to the report. By contrast, 62.1% are curious to learn how all digital channels can be leveraged to produce an integrated, cross-channel strategy, while 45.9% are interested in finding out more about social media marketing, and 38.1% want to know more about SEO.
Demandbase: Lead Quality Biggest B2B Site KPI
Most businesses assess the overall effectiveness of their company’s website by the quality of the leads it yields, according to a study released in September 2011 by Demandbase. Results of the “2011 National Website Demand Generation Study” indicate 34% of B2B marketing/IT professionals say quality of leads is the most important key performance indicator (KPI) for measuring their website’s effectiveness. Visitors (22%) and sales (21%) virtually tie for second place. There is then a significant dropoff in the rate of respondents citing quantity of leads (9%), with page views (8%) and combined other responses (6%) following closely behind.
About the Data: Over 500 US marketers participated in the Marketing123 survey. 66.9% were B2B marketers, while 33.1% were B2C marketers.
