4 Lead Generation Trends that Shaped 2017

Continuing our series of blog posts on how IT&C companies approach lead generation depending on their size, we would like to present you the specifics of medium businesses. Among the details that we’ll discuss are the percentage of medium companies that perform any lead generation activities, the preferred tactics and the person or department handling these tasks, as well as the time allocated for generating leads.

Do Medium Businesses Care about Lead Generation?

Unsurprisingly, 92.3% of companies with 50 to 249 employees perform lead generation activities in one form or another. That makes perfect sense since such businesses are in a continuous expansion. As costs grow, these organizations are looking to also increase revenues, and lead generation contributes to this directly. In their defense, 88.9% of companies of all sizes not generating leads via digital marketing practices claimed that they would be interested in implementing them in the near future.

How Much Time Do Medium Companies Spend on Generating Leads?

According to our findings, 58.33% of medium businesses spend on average less than 40 hours per month, meaning that the activities could be easily done by a single person in a week’s time. Next, 16.67% of businesses with 50 to 249 employees allocate between 41 and 80 hours per month. An equally great number of medium companies spends more than 160 hours per month, while 8.33% claimed that they didn’t know how much time these activities take.

What Lead Generation Practices Do Medium IT Businesses Prefer?

In terms of favorite lead generation activities, email marketing and trade fairs are the top two, with 75% of medium companies performing the former and 66.6% the latter. The other lead generation activities are, in order, SEO (58.33%), social media and online advertising (50% each) and event organization (41.66%). Content marketing only amounts to 33.33%, while paid search and PPC only present interest to 25% of medium IT companies.

It’s only fair to assume that the tasks are prioritized depending on their effectiveness, so email marketing and trade fairs are probably generating the most leads. In terms of how challenging it was to implement email marketing activities, 8.33% of medium companies admitted that the implementation was difficult to a large extent, while 16.67% found it fairly difficult. Overall, email marketing is preferred not only because of its effectiveness but also because it is one of the easiest lead generation practices to implement.

Who Is in Charge of the Lead Generation Tasks?

If in our previous blog post from the series we mentioned that the general manager is usually the person handling lead generation in micro companies, things are a bit different here. In 66.67% of the cases, the tasks leading to attracting more customers are handled by the internal marketing department. The general manager is involved in 58.33% of cases, while the internal sales department performs lead generation activities in 54.54% of the surveyed medium IT companies.

Would you like to know how the lead generation activities of medium companies compare to the ones with fewer employees? We go into detail on the areas to focus on when generating leads in our latest study. Download it from here, read it and let us know what you think of it in the comments section below!