Three in 10 B2B marketers have exclusive content that they use for lead nurturing, and another 13% plan to create content exclusively for such campaigns within the next year. That’s according to a new study [download page] from Demand Gen Report, which surveyed more than 350 B2B marketing practitioners about their nurture strategies and programs.
The results reveal some interesting findings regarding a frequently-discussed topic: to gate or not gate content, particularly for nurture campaigns.
As it stands, it depends on the content type.
Among those using the various content types, e-books (72% of users), on-demand webinars (68%) and white papers (63%) were the most likely to be gated.
By contrast, only a small share are gating video (19% of those using them), infographics (22%) and thought leadership (25%).
Overall, respondents said that webinars, email newsletters and research-based content proved to be the tactics performing best in their nurture campaigns. That brings to mind a recent survey in which research report downloads were considered by marketers to be the best method for generating leads with a high customer conversion rate.
1 in 3 Running More Than 10 Lead Nurture Programs Per Year
While almost two-thirds of B2B marketers surveyed run between 1 and 10 lead nurture programs each year, some are more aggressive, including 1 in 10 who run more than 30.
This requires the use of new approaches to support an array of nurture programs. The new tactics most commonly being adopted include account-based nurtures, marketing/sales orchestration and enhanced personalization strategies, per the report.
Interestingly, while generating warmer, sales-ready leads was identified as the biggest benefit of lead nurturing, respondents said that increasing the number of opportunities in the pipeline is their #1 goal for future nurture efforts.
Some challenges will act as impediments to those objectives. Chief among those obstacles is developing targeted content by buyer stage and interest, followed by building the right timing/workflows for campaigns.
The full report can be downloaded here.
