Laura Ramos is perhaps the most recognized expert in lead generation research for B2B. She is a Vice President and Principal Analyst for Forrester.
Laura has been studying what she calls the “Marketing Effectiveness Index” which are the most effective methods used by B2B businesses to generate leads since early in 2006.
She uses responses from surveys to give grades from 1 to 5, with 5 the highest, for different methods of lead generation. Click here to see a chart of her results for the last three years.
Another study for 2010 is coming out soon, but her most recent rankings in 2009 are as follows:
- Inside Sales / Telemarketing
- Executive Events
- Trade Shows
- Webinars
- Email Marketing
- Search Marketing
- Direct Mail
- Video, Podcasts, etc.
- Blogs
- Other Web 2.0
The big news in 2009 was that Inside Sales surpassed Executive Events and Email Marketing moved ahead of Search. Trade Shows hung strong even with significant cutbacks in corporate travel budgets.
The rankings for 2008 were:
- Executive Events
- Inside Sales
- Search Marketing
- Trade Shows
- Webinars
- Email Marketing
- Direct Mail
- Video, Podcasts, etc.
- Blogs
- Other Web 2.0
Very interesting in that the social media mediums are at the bottom of the list. Does that mean they have not yet arrived as a way to truly generate leads?
I think this is a measure of the overall effectiveness index for methods used to generate leads. I look at our own blend of where leads are coming from and we have yet to see any of the social media drive more than a couple of percentage points of our overall leads. How about you?