100 B2B Lead Generation Stats For 2020

In the modern B2B world, sales and marketing teams are required to design and implement complex strategies – at the very least, these are based on rapidly evolving customer behavior and often include technological advancements, data and analytics, etc.

In fact, this is the bare minimum that we have to do to stay competitive and keep our pipeline filled.

So, the question here is; how do you keep on top of these trends? How do you ascertain what new technologies/strategies are working for your target market?

The simple answer is; by tracking certain statistics.

To this end, we’ve compiled a number of lead generation stats for 2020. Combined, they form a picture that can guide your overall strategy this year and help boost your sales.

Let’s dive in.

B2B Lead Generation Stats – The Current Landscape

1. 1. 42% of organizations believe email is one of their most effective lead generation channels. (Source: WebFX)
   2. Marketers who segment their email recipient lists achieve 39% higher open rates, 28% lower unsubscribe rates, 24% better deliverability. (Source: MarketingProfs)
   3. Organizations that use marketing automation with prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. (Source: business2community)
   4. The three most commonly used B2B lead generation strategies are email marketing (78%), event marketing (73%), and content marketing (67%). (Source: Marketing Insider Group)
   5. 22% of B2B businesses reach out to prospects with lead nurturing on a weekly basis. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)
   6. 46% of marketers with well-planned lead management strategies have sales teams who follow up on more than 75% of leads. (Source: Forrester Research)
   7. 61% of B2B marketers think generating high-quality leads is one of their biggest challenges. (Source: Forrester Research)
   8. 63% of consumers requesting info on your company today will not purchase for at least 3 months. (Source: Marketing Donut)
   9. Only 3% of your market is actively buying. 56% are not ready, 40% are poised to begin. (Source: Vorsight)
   10. Approximately 96% of website visitors aren’t ready to purchase. (Source: Marketo)
   11. Most B2B buyers are already 57% of the way through the buying process before the first meeting with a representative. (Source: Accenture)
   12. 90% of B2B buyers now twist and turn through the sales funnel, looping back and repeating at least one or more task in the buyer’s journey. (Source: CMO)
   13. B2B buying cycles are getting longer and more complex—58% of buyers said their decision process was longer in 2017 than in 2016; just 10% said purchase time decreased. Buyers are conducting more detailed ROI analysis before making a purchase decision (77%); using more information sources for research and evaluation (75%), and increasing the number of buying group members (52%). (Source: Demand Gen Report)
   14. 80% of B2B buying decisions are based on a buyer’s direct or indirect customer experience, and only 20% is based on the price or the actual offering. (Source: CMO)
   15. 46% of all B2B researchers and buyers are millennials. (Source: Google)
   16. Mobile drives or influences an average of more than 40% of revenue in leading B2B organizations. (Source: Google)
   17. 50% of B2B search queries today are made on smartphones, and this percentage will grow to 70% by 2020. (Source: Google)
   18. Mobile marketing can accelerate time to B2B purchase by 20%. (Source: BCG)
   19. More than 90% of buyers say they’re likely to buy again from a vendor that had a superior mobile experience, compared to 50% of those who report a poor experience. (Source: BCG)
   20. 80% of B2B executives research products or services on a tablet in the evening. (Source: businesswire)
   21. 22% (11 out of 50) of the fastest-growing B2B companies have a live chat widget on their website. (Source: Drift)
   22. A personalized web experience can increase sales by 19% (Source: MarTechAdvisor)
   23. 79% of B2B marketers credit email as the most effective distribution channel for demand gen efforts. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
   24. 78% of executives say that an unsolicited email has led to a face to face meeting or event attendance at some point. (Source: ITSMA)
   25. Marketers see an average of 760% increase in revenue from customized, segmented email campaigns. (Source: CampaignMonitor)
   26. 81% of businesses reported their blog as being critical to B2B lead generation. (Source: blog.strategic-ic)
   27. In the B2B setting, events help generate the most leads, while case studies help convert and accelerate the most leads. (Source: Marketing Charts)
   28. 69% of successful B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
   29. The top 3 types of content B2B marketers use are social media content (95%), blog posts/short articles (89%), and email newsletters (81%). (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
   30. 84% of B2B marketers use paid distribution channels (like Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and more) for content marketing purposes. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
   31. LinkedIn is 277% more effective in generating leads than Facebook. (Source: LinkedIn)
   32. Facebook (89%), LinkedIn (81%) and Twitter (75%) are the three most used social media channels by B2B marketers. Instagram is up and coming. (Source: MarTechAdvisor)
   33. 53% of marketers say half or more of their budget is allocated to lead generation, while 34% say less than half of their budget is allocated to lead generation (Source: go.brighttalk).
   34. Content marketing is used for lead generation by 83% of B2B marketers (source).
   35. A CRM system is believed by 84% of companies to be beneficial in determining the quality of leads (Source: dmnews).
   36. Cost per lead can range from $150 to $350 on average.
   37. It takes about 10 marketing-driven lead nurturing stages for a lead to convert from the top of the funnel into a paying customer. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
   38. B2B companies with mature lead generation processes enjoy 133% more revenue compared to average companies. (Source: Marketo)
   39. Companies using lead generation tactics have sales reps that spend 73% of their time selling while sales reps at companies without lead generation only spend 57% of their time on sales. (Source: Marketo)
   40. B2B companies are now focusing on lead quality over lead quantity (73%), improving conversion rates (72%), generating increased lead volume (62%), and improving their ability to measure the marketing impact (61%). (Source: demandgenreport)
   41. The channels that marketers use most to attract leads are email (67%), website (60%), and search (50%). (Source: Demand Generation Report)
   42. Some of the marketing strategies that successfully generated leads over the past few years are events (68%), webinars (61%), lead nurturing campaigns (57%), white papers (50%), case studies (50%), and videos (37%). (Source: Demand Generation Report)
   43. In a study by the Digital Marketing Association (UK), 9 out of 10 marketers said they perceive email marketing as a channel of ‘importance’ or ‘great strategic importance’ for achieving business goals.
   44. 33% of demand generation professionals say that the generation of MQLs is their primary metric for success. (Source: Demand Gen Report)

B2B Lead Generation Stats – Problems

1. 45. 68% of businesses report struggling with lead generation. (Source: CSO Insights)
   46. 42% of B2B marketing professionals state that a lack of quality data is their biggest barrier to lead generation (Source: go.brighttalk).
   47. Only 56% of B2B companies check valid leads before passing them to the sales dept. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)
   48. 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of nurture is the main cause for this (Source: hubspot).
   49. Increasing quality leads is the top priority for 68% of B2B professionals, followed by increasing lead volume (at 55%.) (Source: B2B Technology Marketing Community)
   50. Lead generation from LinkedIn was successful for 65% of B2B companies. (Source: LinkedIn)
   51. 25% of marketers don’t have any idea of their conversion rates. (Source: B2B Technology Marketing Community)
   52. B2B marketers say their greatest barriers with lead generation are the lack of resources in staffing, budgeting, and/or time. (Source: B2B Technology Marketing Community)
   53. IT, B2B, and wholesale companies have the weakest mobile email opens, while TV/radio/film, events, and real estate have the strongest mobile email opens. (Source: Campaign Monitor)
   54. 86% of buyers say they are “overwhelmed and annoyed” with more than 10 pieces of review content (Source: BizReport)
   55. B2B companies that blogged 11+ times per month had almost three times more traffic than those blogging 0-1 times per month. (Source: HubSpot)
   56. 35% of B2B content marketers can measure ROI, 47% admit that they can’t measure ROI and 18% aren’t sure. (Source: Twitter)
   57. 68% of B2B companies have not identified their sales funnel. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)
   58. 73% of B2B buyers say they want a personalized, B2C-like customer experience. (Source: Accenture)
   59. 83% of the most successful content marketers use KPIs to measure their content initiatives, whereas merely 30% of the least successful do in comparison. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
   60. Only 16% of marketers say outbound practices provide the highest quality leads for sales (Source: HubSpot).
   61. 79% of new leads never translate into sales. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)
   62. Only 29% of brands nurture their existing customers beyond their initial purchase. (Source: Demand Gen)
   63. Misalignment between sales and marketing costs companies at least $1T each year. (Source: B2B Marketing)
   64. A lead generation market report revealed that professionals deem paid advertising (30%), organic social media (14%), and online paid advertising (11%) as the most overrated marketing tactics. (Source: HubSpot)
   65. As of 2019, 56% of email traffic ends up in the spam folder. (Source: Statista)
   66. You have just 3-4 seconds to grab your reader’s’ attention and interest them enough to open and read your email (Source: Litmus)
   67. If an email does not display correctly, 71.2% will delete it immediately. (Source: Prisync)
   68. 69% of email recipients report email as Spam based solely on the subject line. (Source: Invespcro)
   69. Email campaigns can yield a 17% open rate and a 4% click-through rate. (Source: HubSpot)

B2B Lead Generation Stats – Current Opportunities

1. 70. 80% of U.S. marketers said they wanted to use integrated marketing and advertising technology from a single vendor. (Source: Google)
   71. 47% of consumers are likely to read between 3 to 5 pieces of content before they talk to a sales rep. (Source: Demand Gen Report)
   72. Content longer than 3000 words gets an average of 77.2% more referring domain links than content shorter than 1000 words. (Source: Backlinko)
   73. 58% of marketers use webinars for promotion. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
   74. Video content will account for 82% of total internet traffic by 2022. (Source: Cisco)
   75. 80% of companies have already adopted AI chatbots or have plans to do so by 2020. (Source: Oracle)
   76. By spending as little as six hours per week, 66% of marketers see lead generation benefits with social media. (Source: Social Media Examiner)
   77. Expertise in lead nurturing results in a 50% increase in sales-ready leads, along with a 33% decrease in its cost. (Source: Forrester Research)
   78. Lead generation outsourcing is 43% more efficient than generating leads in-house because lead generation companies have more expertise. (Source: NNC)
   79. Emails for nurturing leads generate an 8% CTR compared to general emails, which generate just a 3% CTR. (Source: HubSpot)
   80. Lead-nurturing emails get 4-10x times the response rate compared to standalone emails (Source: Demand Gen Report).
   81. Nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus other leads. (Source: Demand Gen Report)
   82. Follow up with web leads within 5 minutes, and you’re 9 times more likely to convert them. (Source: InsideSales)
   83. Companies who automate lead management see a 10% or more bump in revenue in 6-9 months time. (Source: Gartner Research)
   84. 49% of businesses say most of their leads require a long cycle of nurturing. (Source: Ascend2)
   85. Organizations adopting a mobile CRM see a 59% increase in sales performance. (Source: Innoppl Technologies)
   86. 51% of email marketers say email list segmentation is the most effective way to personalize lead nurturing. (Source: Ascend2)
   87. Aligning content with a prospect’s stage in the buyer’s journey can boost conversion rates by 72%. (Source: Business2Community)
   88. 75% of content marketers say in-person events are the most effective content marketing strategy. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
   89. Having good lead generation practices allows businesses to have a sales quota achievement rate that is higher by 9.3%. (Source: CSO Insights)
   90. The biggest factors that will drive B2B marketing growth are big data, predictive analytics, AI, and social media. (Source: PwC)
   91. At 33% less cost than other lead-generating mechanisms, emails generate 50% more sales (Source: Entrepreneur)
   92. A lead generation market research shows that the most effective channels for early-stage engagement are email (59%), search (56%), website (51%), social media (44%), online ads (27%), retargeting (19%), contact syndication (17%), telemarketing (14%), direct mail (7%), and predictive analytics (2%). (Source: Demand Generation Report)
   93. 79% of B2B marketers say that email is the most effective distribution channel for demand generation. It is followed by blogs and social media at 60% and 41%, respectively. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
   94. 76% of B2B buyers leverage three or more information channels when researching a purchase. (Source: Blue Nile Research)
   95. Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10% (Source: Aberdeen)
   96. Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. (Source: McKinsey)
   97. For B2B companies, subject lines that contained “money,” “revenue,” and “profit” performed the best. (Source: Adestra)
   98. Email offers a 17% higher conversion rate than social media. (Source: McKinsey)
   99. Emails with social sharing buttons increase click-through rates by 158% (Source: Mailigen)
   100. Businesses can increase their leads by 55% if they increase the number of landing pages they have to a minimum of 15. (Source: HubSpot)

Lead Generation Stats – Bottom Line

And that’s it – these are some of the top lead generation stats that can help you form a sales strategy and close more deals than ever.

The bottom line here is that your lead generation strategy should never be stagnant – you need to evolve with the changing trends. Remember, what worked for you in the past may not be as effective anymore.

If you want to learn more about lead generation and sales, take a look at the following blogs:`

• • A Short Primer On B2B Lead Generation
  • 5 Sales Prospecting Ideas For 2020
  • How to Integrate Lead Nurturing Into Your Sales Process

Want help with your B2B lead generation strategy? Cloudlead specializes in sales prospecting and B2B lead generation. We mine top of the funnel leads based on your ideal customer profile with sales triggers that help you close more deals than ever.

Book a demo with us today.