New Study Shows Budget Dollars Shifting To Lead Gen, Lead Management In 2009

Budgets for lead generation and lead management had already increased in 2008 for more than 50% of the respondents, and 81.9% indicated that those levels of spending would remain flat or increase again in 2009. In fact, 54.6% of executives said they anticipated lead generation and lead management initiatives would see increased spending this year.

The survey results also suggest that spending for generating and managing leads would likely shift from other line items, as 63.5% of respondents said their overall marketing budgets would be flat to down in 2009.

In other positive findings from the Demand Imperative report, the sophistication and metrics in place to manage the lead generation process is clearly on the rise. For example, more than 50% of companies now have established lead gen goals or quotas in place, and more than 20% are expected to measure and meet those goals on a monthly basis.

And while the economic downturn has caused many companies to put more pressure on their internal demand generation teams to increase the lead volume at the top of the sales funnel (31.3%), the majority of respondents (59.2%) indicated there will be “more of a focus on quality leads, rather than quantity. “

Looking forward to strategies that will drive the flow of qualified leads, executives pointed to identifying prospects through intelligent databases (29.1%); building personas for specific customer segments (25.1%); using social networks/online communities (25.1%); and tracking anonymous Web visits and alerting sales to account activity (20.4%) as some of the top initiatives.

Respondents also demonstrated a clear understanding of the impact lead generation is having on the sales pipeline, with the following estimates of their organization’s annual revenue being driven by marketing influenced leads:

• Less than 10%.......18.4%


• 10%-20%.............21.8%


• 20%-30%.............18.4%


• 30%-40%.............10.9%


• 40%-50%.............14.4%


• Over 50%............15.4%

The Demand Imperative report also demonstrated that more organizations are realizing the benefits of aligning their sales and marketing organizations. For example, while delayed buying cycles (33.7%) and declining campaign response rates (13.9%) were cited as negative impacts of the economic downturn, a positive trend cited by 27% was “sales and marketing working more closely to identify and close deals.” In addition, when asked to select the top strategies and processes that have had the greatest impact on their business in 2008, sales and marketing alignment finished second behind email tracking, cited by 22.8% of respondents.

Another clear indicator of marketing and sales working more closely together came from the finding that 62.1% of marketing executives indicated their compensation (including incentives, bonuses, etc.) is now tied to revenue goals.

The full results of The Demand Imperative report will be available to DemandGen Report subscribers later this month.