What Marketers Believe Are The Top 3 Successes to Capturing Leads

The great folks at Formstack surveyed 200 small and mid-sized U.S. businesses and non-profits to identify where marketers are going right and wrong with their lead generation strategies. This infographic is a glimpse into a full The State of Lead Capture in 2016 report with more key insights on lead capture challenges and strategies.

Download The State of Lead Capture in 2016

Their first finding, that marketing requires insight into the sales that close, is beyond critical. Interestingly enough, many companies distance sales from marketing – especially if they’re working with an agency. There’s a bizarre fear that if you share that information with your marketing agency and are highly successful, your marketing agency may slow down on their output or decide to raise their prices. If that’s your fear… you need a new marketing agency.

Only 19% of marketers use sales CRM software to track their best leads

The second finding is that marketers should reduce spend on social media advertising. I absolutely disagree. I think what marketers should do, instead, is reduce their expectation that social media advertising will produce direct leads (outside of remarketing). We often work a paid strategy with clients where we push for a conversion through paid search, but we promote content through social media to build trust and awareness.

If you only measure sales success by who last attributed the lead, you’re honestly not executing a good multi-channel strategy across the intent of relevant readers. Social media is a fantastic resource that I’d encourage marketers to increase spend in, not decrease.

78% of marketers use Google Adwords and social media advertising

The last finding, conversion optimization, is also solid advice. I’m struck by how many marketers are constantly trying to find new sources of visitors while not nurturing and converting the visitors they have. Testing verbiage, offer, landing pages, forms, layouts, colors, designs, videos, sites, social updates… everything associated with your digital presence will increase conversion rates.

Optimization strategies are never ending as new technology, user behavior and design trends continue to emerge. Utilize analytics, conversion rates, and A/B testing to increase the visitors you have into customers.

45% of marketers can’t tie investments to specific touchpoints with their brand