4 Ways Small Businesses Approach Lead Generation Differently

One of the conclusions from the IT&C business development benchmark study we conducted earlier this year was that differently sized businesses rely on distinct lead generation techniques. While we wish to cover the particularities of each category, we’ll start by focusing on the trends characterizing the small businesses. Read on to find out more on the percentage of small business that focuses on lead generation, the time they spend on this, the most frequently used technique and who is the person handling the activities here!

Is Lead Generation a Hot Topic for Small Companies?

According to our findings, only 40% of small businesses implement any form of lead generation, while the majority focuses on growing referentially. Compared to companies with more employees, half of the small ones doing lead generation attract more than 11 leads per month. The small financial value that’s attached to the leads might explain why they do not invest more time into this.

Do Small Businesses Spend Enough Time Generating Leads?

In terms of time spent on lead generation, none of the companies with less than 10 employees allocated more than 80 hours per month. Moreover, 75% of them spend less than 40 hours a month. In other words, they could easily handle all lead generation tasks with one or two people in less than a week. Impressive, wouldn’t you say, given how many leads they generate?

What Is the Main Lead Generation Method?

Since email marketing is one of the easiest lead generation techniques to implement, it comes as no surprise that small businesses prefer it. As a matter of fact, all small companies surveyed pointed out that they use email marketing in some form or another.

Content marketing comes in a close second, as 75% of the surveyed companies admitted on having an affinity for this technique. Paid search and PPC are the least favorite lead generation methods, as they only account for 25% of the small businesses.

Who Handles Lead Generation in an IT&C Small Businesses?

When it comes to whether a small business should externalize the lead generation activities, the answer is clearly no. Only about 25% rely on the services of external agencies, while 50% prefer the internal sales department. An interesting aspect is that in the case of 75% of small companies, the lead generation tasks are the duty of the general manager. That’s perfectly understandable for organizations with less than 10 employees, where it’s not that uncommon for a person to have multiple roles. Whatmore, all small companies that did lead generation relied on their own marketing department.

But how do these stats compare to the ones of the medium and large IT&C businesses from EMEA? To find out that, download our study from here!