John Hayes posted on December 05, 2012 |
The main focus for engineering marketers in 2013 will still be on leads, with web site traffic coming second. That doesn’t sound like news. But the real news is in an underlying shift from lead quantity to lead quality.
Here’s why: Over the past 5 years or so, the leading engineering marketers have built enormous contact databases. They’ve also sent regular communications to the database, but those communications haven’t always resulted in a commensurate increase in qualified leads in the sales cycle. The early euphoria over having tons of “leads” faded when sales forces first complained about the lead quality and then in some cases stopped following up on Internet leads altogether.
Now marketers are spending more time nurturing and qualifying their contact lists more rigorously. For example, somebody who downloaded a white paper on a publisher’s site may be considered a contact. If they then download another piece of information within a short period of time, and then a third, this qualifies as a lead for the sales force (or maybe it’s just a competitor downloading all your stuff).
Lead nurturing is one of the big trends of 2013. And it’s driving the growth of marketing automation companies like Eloqua, Marketo and Hubspot.
You may be wondering where these insights about marketing trends for 2013 are coming from. Well, Adrian Nash, the Sales Director of ENGINEERING.com and I have crossed the USA and Europe to meet with engineering marketers about their plans.
The other main trends we learned about were:
1. An increase in Internet marketing over trade publications and events
2. More focus on content creation
Let me know if you see other major trends that we haven’t covered yet.