According to Demand Gen Report’s 2013 Benchmark Survey, “One half of B2B marketers say their demand generation budgets will grow by more than 20% in 2013, and they will spend those dollars on social media as well as developing white papers, webinars and improving their web sites.” Investments will continue in web analytics, custom landing pages, lead nurturing and lead scoring via marketing automation tools like Marketo, Hubspot and Eloqua.
To maximize sales opportunities and revenue from demand gen programs, prompt lead follow-up by sales or business development teams is imperative. Here are some studies that show how quick lead response grows revenue:
- Companies that attempt to contact prospects within one hour of receiving queries are nearly 7 times as likely to have meaningful conversations with key decision makers as firms that try to contact prospects even an hour later. (Source: Harvard Business Review)
- Calling a buyer within one minute of them submitting a form on your website increases your chances of converting that lead by almost 400%. (Source: Leads360)
- 50% of all leads coming into a company are never called a second time despite the fact that it takes up to 6 phone call attempts to convert 93% of leads. (Source: Leads360)
Before you launch your next Demand Gen program, make sure you have briefed your sales development team so they understand the elements of the program, buyer personas and key messaging. Set in place a service level agreement (SLA) documenting when leads will be imported into your CRM system and ready for follow-up and when the calls/emails should be started and completed. A bit of advanced planning for how leads will be tracked and nurtured by marketing and contacted by sales can pay off huge dividends in increased sales opportunities and revenue.