B2B marketing managers devote a significant portion of their work hours to content creation and lead generation and management, according to a recent Optify study. Approximately 3 out of 10 respondents said they spent more than 15 hours per week on content creation and management, the highest proportion among all categories listed.
But the so-called “star performers” or “marketing athletes” (those who meet or exceed their lead generation goals) said they were 50 percent more willing to spend more time on those actions than their less successful colleagues. And while 16.9% of the group devotes more than 15 hours a week to lead generation, star performers “are willing to duplicate the efforts of their colleagues.
The so-called “star performers” accounted for 47 of the total respondents.
Of the 7 tactics for lead generation identified, star perfomers “use virtually all but the least known pay-per-click (PPC). The tactics to which they dedicate more than 15 hours weekly are the social networks, followed of the off-line, SEO and PR. The ones that have less interest for them are email marketing, online advertising and PPC.
It is interesting to note that star performers are twice as willing as their less successful B2B colleagues to dedicate more than 15 hours a week to off-line tactics.
Star performers self-evaluate very highly in their knowledge of multiple lead generation tactics. The areas in which the scores are highest are: social media (42% are recognized as experts); offline tactics (34%); and email marketing and SEO (28%). The areas with a lower score (little or no knowledge) are PPC (25%), online advertising (18%) and SEO (17%).
This perception of lack of knowledge of SEO and at the same time its high interest for social media is very interesting, especially if we take into account the result of the study carried out last August by Webmarketing123, which revealed that 52% of the B2B marketers claimed that SEO is the digital tool with the most impact on their lead generation goals, compared to 21% cited by social networks. The relative disparity may come from the perceptions of complexity that this tool has more than the ability with which contribute to the effectiveness of marketing.