I’m a big believer in online marketing being used for lead generation in BtoB environments. If you’re not using e-commerce on your website, any online marketing efforts should focus on gathering information from those visitors. That can be done via click path trending, keyword analysis, lead generation, etc.
An article from BtoB magazine on lead generation got me thinking about lead generation statistics. Here’s the excerpt in which I was most interested:
The survey found that more than 50% of buyers said they provide a valid name, e-mail address, industry, job title and company name when they register; although less than 40% provide accurate phone numbers. As for e-mail addresses, in many cases marketers may harvest personal e-mail addresses rather than corporate ones (43% of users said they gave personal e-mail addresses). Respondents said they did so to better manage information rather than hide from follow-ups.
Perhaps most interesting, Lohman said, was what type of content users said they were willing to register for. White papers came out on top at 80%. Demos lagged at 38% and webcasts at 31%. That’s somewhat surprising, Lohman said, as marketers themselves ranked demos (77%) and webcasts (64%) as two types of content they most often require registration to access.
Whether your getting customers to fill out a form for podcasts, white papers, or just a call for more information, this is important data. I get quite a bit of lead forms with gmail.com or yahoo.com email address, but a correct phone number, which makes me believe these numbers are accurate. As a gatekeeper for registration forms, you need to give leads every chance to be passed on. That may mean ignoring some false looking data.
The second set of data revolves around what types of information registered for are most popular. This does not surprise me either as I think people will register and download bits of information that they can absorb on their schedule. Over time, I think downloadable webcasts and podcasts will close the gap on white papers.
What are your thoughts on lead generation and registrations?
Many surveys say only 2-3% will ever submit contact details.
So 97% of all visitors just leave the website without.
If then only 50% of the 3% gives valid contact details, 98.5% is gone without leaving any possible contact.
However they leave trails or traces on your website, sufficient for website visitor identification revealing the company name and their interests by search terms used and pages visited. Identify your website visitors for leads”
I guess that those figures on personal emails are referring mainly to the free account emails, as a recent list of mine proved to have well in excess of 90%+ email addresses that were yahoo, gmail etc. Which actually left me wondering if there was going to be much use in contacting the leads in the first place.
In the end I had done so, and the results were nothing more than what I had expected.
this is like the conversation of how important graphics are vs copy. Some will prefer the whitepaper, some the podcast, some the webinar–these are the “graphics”, but the content–what value are you providing, what questions do you answer, what concerns do you address–will always strike at the motivation to fill out the form.
Lead generation is great as long as you are getting true data that you can follow up with. The majority of people who leave thier contact info on web sites give good info because they have an interest in the product or service being offered on the web site. You can have tons of traffic but if you have no way to follow up with prospects, then you are missing out on growing your business. Keep up the good work.