B2B Marketers – Your Lead Generation Targeting Strategy is Missing Key Influencers

B2B Marketers – Your Lead Generation Targeting Strategy is Missing Key Influencers

Author: David Fortino / Source: Marketing Insider Group As a B2B marketer, one of the primary goals for your department is to run lead ge

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B2B Marketers – Your Lead Generation Targeting Strategy is Missing Key Influencers

As a B2B marketer, one of the primary goals for your department is to run lead generation initiatives to fill your pipeline with revenue driving opportunities. Most marketing campaigns offer the ability to target specific personas by search behavior, geographic region, professional attributes such as job level, etc… From there, your organization’s CRM is predictably built around MLA and SLA requirements that identify what criteria a prospect must meet in order to be accepted as a workable lead, yes? At least, that’s how we operate over in the NetLine Marketing Department and that’s exactly where marketers are running into trouble.

Lead Generation Targeting

Whether the directive came from your CMO or CEO, my guess is that you like most B2B marketers are aiming to reach senior leadership and C-suite at top organizations. They’re the crème de la crème! These professionals are the most likely to translate into immediate revenue for your company and you need more prospects just like them. Am I right? I can see your targeting requirements now, ‘I will only accept Manager level professionals and above.’

Sadly that’s not foreign to most marketers. In fact, 53% of marketers that ran content syndication lead generation campaigns with NetLine in the past 12 months did exactly that. But what you have failed to realize is that the most active segment of professionals consuming long-form business content are outside those parameters, exactly 30%. Have you ever analyzed the pool of non-senior level prospects who filled out a form to download your content? I know the answer, those people are as a good as dead to you. Garbage in; garbage out. But maybe, just maybe, you should consider that these prospect ghosts are more of the giving type?

Research the Marketplace

Let me explain. Marketers are producing an exorbitant amount of content, with plans to do even more this year. But it seems that many may be operating blindly without an understanding of the personas consuming content—who’s engaged, who’s not. To better understand the marketplace of content consumption and first answer the question ‘who is downloading all this marketing content?’ NetLine conducted a research study. The research examined more than 8 million leads generated by content downloads to extract insights on who the active audience is, where they work, etc….NetLine found that the most active job level segments are mid-level professionals, including: Individual Contributors, Senior Employees, Consultants and Contractors.

Insights

NetLine Corporation Research Lead Generation_Job-Level-Graph

The highest volume of content consumption was reported by Individual Contributors, who produced 20% of total activity. This is an increase of 26% over the prior 12 months. In a comparison of Individual Contributor and Senior Employee activity over senior-level activity, senior-level professionals consumed 35% less content. Additionally, professionals outside the traditional organizational structure, such…

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