Phil Lauterjung

Introduction:

It’s clearly no secret that many businesses have struggled mightily over the past 1 – 2 years through one of the worst recessions we have seen in a very long time.  Now, we have the economic smart guys saying that the recession if over.  Wishful thinking?  Perhaps.

However, those with a business to run still have to develop a plan for 2010 – if you haven’t already done so.  To get your businesses to grow you will need more sales (altogether now – duh!?!), and to get more sales you will need more leads (double duh).  So, how do you spend your lead generation budget in 2010 to do that?  Over the next few posts we will offer some ideas.

First, let’s clarify lead generation.  Wikipedia defines it as “Lead generation (commonly abbreviated as lead-gen) is a marketing term that refers to the creation or generation of prospective consumer interest or inquiry into a business’ products or services. Leads can be generated for a variety of purposes – list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for winning customers.”  I would submit one change to that definition, the only purpose for lead gen is to acquire customers.  The other purposes they list are the tools to assist in the acquisition.

I would also submit that the main purpose of marketing is to support and facilitate the company’s efforts in the acquisition of new customers.  There are numerous terms that marketing folks use, but the ultimate goal, regardless of terms used, is to grow the business.

One question that frequently comes up, especially with small businesses, is how much do we spend on marketing?  The typical evasive answer is that it depends.  However, a good rule of thumb is somewhere between 3% – 7% of sales revenue – depending on your industry.  For those that want to nail it down closer, check with your industry trade organizations for added guidance.

In the next few posts in this series we will give you some smart ways to spend your lead generation budget in 2010.  In the meantime, here is some food for thought in terms of trends from a MarketingSherpa study done a couple of months ago.

The survey was done in May 2009 and there were 1,491 responses.  They tracked the change in information resources used by buyers in complex purchases (mainly B2B).  The ones with increased usage between 24 – 30% were virtual events/virtual tradeshows and search engines (30%), business news websites (29%), vendor websites (28%), online research (25%), and technology B2B websites along with social media sites (24%).

The resources with decreasing usage included tradeshows/face-to-face events (down 37%) and print advertising (-18%).  How do these numbers compare with your business?

If you have the data available for your own spending over the past couple of years it might be a good idea to check it against what some of your peers and competitors are doing based on the MarketingSherpa data.

Coming up next, Smart Way #1 to help with your 2010 lead generation efforts.

NOTE:  This post first appeared at BtoBbloggers – check out all of the other B2B topics and blogs!

Photo Credit: © Diezer – Fotolia.com

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