Dive Brief:

• Ascend2's“2016 State of Lead Generation” report found that improving lead quality is of the utmost concern for marketers.
• Improving lead quality was the most cited answer for both the “most important goals” (77%) and the “most significant barriers to success” (53%).
• The report found a majority of marketers felt their lead gen activities were successful: 39% described themselves as very successful (defined as best-in-class), while 40% reported being somewhat successful (defined as above average).

Dive Insight:

Lead generation is one of the top goals for content marketers, especially for B2B marketers conducting lead nurturing and support for the complex B2B sale. Ascend2's research shows that marketers value lead quality over lead quantity, with lead quality being both the most important goal and the biggest barrier to success. 

"The quality of leads handed-off to sales significantly impacts an organization’s ability to achieve the next most important goal of acquiring new customers,” Todd Lebo, Ascend2 partner and CMO, told Marketing Dive.

Other lead gen priorities uncovered by the research include acquiring new customers (50%), increasing quantity of leads (41%), and measuring performance and ROI (32%). Survey respondents reported that email and content marketing were the most effective lead gen tactics (45%), followed by social media marketing (39%), landing page and website optimization (38%), and search engine optimization (38%). Interestingly, content marketing was seen as the most tactically difficult approach (47%) while email marketing was seen as the least tactically difficult (28%), something marketers may want to keep in mind when considering the tradeoff of effectiveness versus degree of difficulty.

“When prioritizing tactics for an effective lead generation strategy, a balance must be struck between tactical effectiveness and executional difficulty," Lebo said. "A tactic will succeed only if resources are available to execute it effectively.”