Survey: Marketers Continue to Focus on Improving the Quality of Leads

Ascend2’s “2015 Lead Generation Trends” report shows that 70 percent of marketers believe improving the quality of leads is their most important lead generation objective. Increasing sales revenue (58 percent) and boosting the overall number of leads (54 percent) are also top objectives for marketers.

“Increasing the number of leads generated is important, but improving the quality of leads and increasing sales revenue are the top objectives,” wrote the researchers. “Marketing and sales teams are in agreement that lead quality is directly related to the rate of conversion from lead to sales revenue.”

Email marketing has been the most effective online lead generation tactic for marketers, with 48 percent of respondents citing this method. Landing pages (44 percent) and content marketing (43 percent) have also been highly effective.

Despite being helpful, 43 percent of marketers also said that content marketing has been the most challenging lead generation tactic to execute. Social media marketing (36 percent) and testing/optimization (35 percent) are also difficult for marketers.

Looking Back on Previous Challenges

In Ascend2’s 2014 “Lead Generation Strategy Research Summary Report,” marketers were also focused on quality lead generation. About 59 percent of respondents said it was their top priority, while increasing the number of leads (49 percent) took second place.

Email marketing (51 percent) was the most effective online lead generation tactic back in 2014, similar to 2015. Content marketing (50 percent) and the company website (46 percent) were also top lead gen methods for marketers last year.

In terms of difficulty, content marketing (48 percent) was the most challenging in 2014. Social media marketing came in second place with 43 percent of marketers citing this method.