A survey by Demand Metric and Salefusion has found that many mid-sized and small businesses have maintained lead generation processes.

The survey indicates that the most popular approaches for generating business leads are content marketing (67 percent), event or tradeshow marketing (73 percent) and email marketing (78 percent).

The survey’s author indicate that lead generation is perhaps the most significant point of contention between sales and marketing departments. The goal of this study was to better comprehend the successes and failures of marketers in light of today’s latest technological advances. Given the constant pressure of marketing departments to produce quality leads, the lead generation process must be effective.

Approximately 60 percent of businesses whose leads have been stored in marketing automation systems or CRM said that their processes for lead generation are highly or moderately effective. Meanwhile, less than 50 percent of businesses that store leads in email folders, in-house databases and spreadsheets report a similar level of effectiveness in their lead generation process.

Marketing automation systems and CRM offer sales and marketing with the necessary tools for improving, measuring and executing lead generation. According to the survey, marketers are searching for ways to identify leads. As the demand for marketing data continues to grow, more efficient tools will be increasingly important.

A few other statistics outline the unique challenges and opportunities of business marketers in their quest to improve their customer portfolio.

• At 70 percent, content marketing is the lead generation tactic expected to see the greatest increase.
• Event and tradeshow marketing have experienced the largest decrease in investment (40 percent).
• The most popular lead storage units are CRM systems (45 percent) and spreadsheets (17 percent).
• Web forms (73 percent) and data entry (66 percent) were considered the most common method for capturing business leads.
• Only 16 percent of respondents who used marketing automation systems or CRM says they held no standard for lead quality.