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Lead generation in marketing is the process of attracting prospects or the process of generating consumer interest in a product or service. Lead generation goes beyond generating consumers’ interest but nurtures them to maintain and create a long-term relationships thereby increasing sales.

Lead generation is solely centered on a standout from the crowd (marketplace) to reach the right customers. Below lead generation statistics show the general B2B market statistics, benchmarks, and performance for measurement.

Companies that have been able to come to terms with the benefits lead generation has to offer are carefully putting strategies in place to improve the quality of their services to prospective customers.

More so B2B companies can be on the lookout for massively advanced software solutions as new technologies such as predictive analytics, big data, social media, AI, and sales funnel softwares are paving the way for new and more personalized, and proactive lead generation.

In this article, I will be showing you proven statistical strategies that will improve your B2B marketing and lead generation if properly and uniquely modeled. These statistics have been tested and trusted to convert sales funnels.

Let’s dive in:

General B2B Lead Generation Statistics And Facts

1. Top B2B companies with well-established lead generation processes enjoy 133% more revenue when being compared to average companies.

Lead generation takes a process that involves a well nurtured and crafted strategy to gain and build on the interest of prospective clients. Companies that have carefully built on their lead generation strategies, generate more revenue compared to average brands. (Source: Intellistart)

2. Due to effective lead generation, 56% of B2B companies exceed their revenue goals.

This shows the high result obtainable in a well-strategized lead generation process. (Source: FinanceOnline)

3. Research shows that B2B companies that nurture leads see increased sales by 47%.

Nurturing leads helps build trust and create relationships with your potential customers which increases sales. A study revealed that most companies only nurture leads at the top of the sales funnel. But the truth is, you have to nurture your leads both during and after the whole buying process. The goal is to build a relationship with your customers that will last for a long time. (Source: Writer’s Block Live)

4. 79% of marketers admit generating more quality leads is their top priority.

In a study, 79% of marketers agree that generating high-quality leads is their top priority, while 75% of them said getting more traffic to their website, 57% said improving brand reputation, and 47% said increasing customer loyalty is most paramount to them. (Source: eMarketer)

B2B lead generation marketers top priority statistics

5. 80% 0f B2B companies affirm that lead generation is the most important content marketing goal and priority.

In another report, 80% of B2B companies admitted that lead generation is their most important content marketing goal, while 79% said creating brand awareness, 71% said generating engagement, and 66% said lead nurturing. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

Organizational Goals for lead generation of B2B Content Marketing statistics

6. 1 out of 7 prospective consumers’ take emails to be relevant while 59% unsubscribe from a company’s email list because of the frequency of their emails.

59% of people admit that the frequency of the emails received is the reason they unsubscribed from a b2B companies email list, while 43% said not recognizing the brand, and 21% said because they had a bad customer experience. (Source: DMA)

Reason Why People Unsubscribe From B2B Company Email Lists

7. In most cases, companies need to contact their prospective customers at least 18 times before getting a response.

And, the callback rate is below 1%. (Source: Gartner)

B2B Lead Generation Trends

Over the years, businesses have been comfortably carried out physically but the emergency of the Covid 19 pandemic caused a significant shift in corporate practices, marketers had to adapt to the new technology. Such as lead generation software.

8. 56% of industry experts point to weak technology infrastructure as the main reason businesses struggled hard to cope with the pandemic.

This is clearly seen in the manner marketers rushed digital transformation during the mandatory lockdown. (Source: Illuminate)

9. 70% of B2B decision-makers would prefer digital communication over in-person interaction.

Digital communication helps companies to minimize the cost of mobility and time wastage. (Source: Mckinsey & Company)

10. Only 7% of B2B companies respond to a new lead within the space of 3 to 5 minutes despite being paramount to retaining them. (Source: Drift)

11. 81% of B2B marketers use video as a marketing tool to generate more leads and sales.

With video marketing, companies have defaulted to short information videos, live streams, and webcasts to generate new leads. Customers prefer video contents to strenuously reading through long written content. (Source: Hubspot)

12. According to 90% of business leaders, digital communication and sales channels will not only exist now but will improve massively in years to come. (Source: Scott D. Clary)

51+ B2B Lead Generation Statistics, Facts, Trends, Benchmarks, And Market Size For 2022 [2024] ᐈ Passive Secrets — (Source)

B2B Lead Nurturing Statistics

Attracting prospects to a business does not guarantee sales or conversion but building a relationship and maintaining communication keeps your prospects, enhances trust, and increases brand awareness before and after purchases are made.

13. An average of 50% of total leads are not ready to buy, and 80% of new leads never wind up making a purchase.

This shows the importance of lead nurturing. Several strategies can be used to nurture leads, though they tend to change with time but have been proven to work and overtime convert. (Source: Marketo)

14. 59% of B2B marketers agree email marketing drives the highest return on investment.

Even though some prospects tend to unsubscribe to emails because of their frequency, it still mains the highest return on investment if properly managed. Not only is email marketing cost-effective, but it is also personalized through data and user behavior research. (Source: Campaign Monitor)

15. Being active on social media is a cost-effective way of generating new leads.

Being the new order, social media is a cost-effective way to build a relationship and nurture your lead. Research shows that people spend most of their time-consuming content on the internet space. Users ranging from ages 16 to 64 spend an average of 2.25 hours on social media daily. Social media can help you interact with your prospects and give them easy access to communicate with you and your brand. (Source: Hootsuite)

16. A study has it that Conducting a customer-based survey improves lead generation

To connect with and keep your lead, it is paramount that you understand their needs. It enables heart-to-heart communication with your lead and lets you into their problems while you journey through getting them to buy your products or services. (Source: Business News Daily)

17. Nurtured lead makes 47% more purchases than non-nurtured lead.

Lead nurturing leads to more sales and drives traffic to a market but at the same time, nurtured customers make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured prospects. (Source: The Annuitas Group)

18. 73% of B2B leads are not sales-ready.

To ignite the leads, marketers need to adequately engage them in the sales funnel. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

19. B2B Companies with nurtured lead generate 50% sales at a 33% lower cost. (Source: Marketo)

20. 22% of B2B marketers nurture leads weekly.

It is highly important to frequently send out nurturing emails to prospects. A study has shown that more than a quarter of marketers reach out to their prospects weekly. (Marketing Sherpa)

Here are a few challenges that come with lead generation:

B2B Lead Generation Challenges

21. 61% of marketers rank lead generation as their number one challenge. (Source: Hubspot)

Lead generation continues to be the biggest challenge for B2B marketers, as reports show.

In another survey, 37.1% also admitted that lead generation is their greatest marketing challenge.

The challenges marketers experiences include:

Generating high-quality leads (37.1%)
Providing ROI (31.2%)
Tracking offline conversion (30.7%)
Reaching the right audience (30.2%)
Understanding lead quality (25.9%)
Creating high-quality content (21.5%)
Obtaining more budget or new recruits (17.6%)
Providing ROAS (17.1%)
Using the right channels (14.6%)

Biggest Challenges of B2B Marketers — (Source: Ruler Analytics)

The truth is, lead generation demands a large budget. Marketers follow the majority instead of investing and building on their unique strategy.

22. 53% of industries allocate half of their budget to lead generation

Despite being a major challenge, industries consider it of major importance with 53% of them spending half their budget on generating leads while only 34% of industries spend less (Source: StartupBonsai)

23. 44% of companies complain that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which took effect in 2018 has made capturing new leads and marketing to them extremely difficult. (Source: OneMoreLead)

How Many Leads Can You Generate And Convert Per Month?

24. Large and medium-sized B2B companies generate less than 5,000 qualified leads every month.

Up to date, large industries still experience a hard time generating a good number of qualified leads per month. The majority of B2B companies generate less than 5,000 leads monthly with an average of 1,877 leads per month. (Source: Hubspot)

25. 66% of companies spend 6 hours per week on social marketing to generate leads from social media.

With a well-nurtured lead generation strategy, marketers can stand to spend fewer hours on social media yet achieve a very good result. (Source: Social Media Examiner)

26. 79% of a company’s leads won’t ever convert.

Despite generating thousands of leads per a particular period, the vast majority of them won’t ever convert. (Source: Next Leap Strategy)

27. 63% of leads that inquire about a company’s product will not convert for at least 2 to 3 months.

Research has proven it to be true, that it is best to approach conversion with a long-term mindset. 63% of prospects who seek information about your product or brand are not ready to purchase. (Source. Marketing Donut)

28. A study has it to be that emails sent out at 1 pm get more results than others.

There have been quite several studies trying to find out the best time to send out a reminder but Optinmonster has it that mail sent out at 1 pm yields the best result. Although I believe this could work differently for different marketers. (Source: OptinMonster)

Lead Generation Conversion Rate For Different Industries

The conversion rate for these industries was carefully evaluated using individual outlets as a case study to determine the lead generation conversion rate applicable to the general sectors of these industries.

29. Industries with high performance have a conversion rate benchmark of up to 25%. (Source: Chilipiper)

Life insurance industry

30. Lead to customer conversion rate is 9% overall.

It’s a mixture of higher-converting organic traffic (27%) and lower-converting PPC ads (7%). This organic traffic is a form of self-selected marketing-qualified lead because these potential clients seek them out for their expertise. These numbers have increased just a little bit over the years. A higher proportion of PPC leads came in because more people were spending more time on social media. Though PPC conversion went down, from 9% to 7%. Organic traffic conversion remained the same. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

Finance industry

31. Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate is roughly 19%.

This is said to have increased in the past year because of an increase in on-page conversion rate by improving the lead and sale pages as well as improving sales funnels. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

Media

32. Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate is placed at 5.2%. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

Food industry

33. Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate is 2.2%, while MQL–to customer conversion rate is 9.7%. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

Ecommerce

34. Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate is 1.8% and the MQL-to-Customer Conversion Rate is 6.3%. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

Travel industry

35. Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate before Covid was 10%.

Post-Covid has been as low as 2% but in recent times has increased to 7%. MQL-to-Customer Conversion Rate before Covid was over 20%, currently, the MQL conversion to sale is 12.5% and has been stable for the past two months, however, it is expected that this increases to 15% over the next few months. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

Real estate

36. Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate of real estate industries is roughly 19%% for organic search. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

Software Industry:

37. Lead-to-customer conversion rate is 15% for sales-qualified leads and 1.7% for marketing-qualified leads. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)

General B2B Lead Conversion Rates

38. The top 25% of the company’s lead-to-customer based conversion rate is 5.31%

This is said to be low compared to the transformation rate of the top 10% of companies who convert much higher than 10%. (Source Popupsmart)

39. The top performers in lead generation have a conversion rate benchmark of up to 25%. (Source: Chilipiper)

40. The majority of B2B companies (22 out of 25) have conversion rates of 3.5% or lower. (Source: Hiredna)

41. Companies with 30 or more landing pages generate 7 times more lead-to customer rates than industries with only 10 or fewer. (Source: Hubspot)

42. Marketers with active blogs generate 67% more lead-to-customer conversion rate than others with no blog. (Source: Optinmonster)

B2b Lead Generation Market Size

43. US Digital lead generation market size is $3.05 billion. (Source: Statista)

44. Lead generation market size is expected to grow at 17.5% from US$2,763.8 million to US$9,589.1 million by 2028. (Source: The Insight Partners)

Best B2B Lead Generation Source

45. The best lead sources for industries are SEO at 14%, social media at 12%, and email marketing at 13% (Source: Hubspot)

46. Other B2B lead generation source includes Events at 7% and Customer Referrals at 54%. (Source: Call Box)

47. 91% of B2B buyers search with their mobile phones. (Source: DemandGenReport)

48. 74% of B2B customers search more than half of their products online before purchase. (Source: DemandGenReport)

B2B Lead Generation Marketing Statistics

The market percentage of lead generation varies for different industries, one cannot categorically state an exact percentage of lead that the marketing department is expected to generate. Marketing and sales work altogether.

49. In Commercial accounts, it is estimated that about 25% of B2B leads should come from marketing. (Source: Markletic)

50. In Direct Enterprise Accounts, marketing influences about 75% of B2B leads.

This is because they have been generated and all marketing will only influence them further. (Source: Markletic)

51. In SMB/Channel Accounts, 40% of lead is generated through marketing, given to the larger lead pool. (Source: Markletic)

52. In a less matured sales region, marketing generates 40% to 45% of lead. (Source: Markletic)

B2B Lead Generation Statistics Final Notes

Lead generation across all channels is the main determinant factor that influences the growth level of the industry.

This is why more than 50% of industries plug in half their budget into lead generation despite being the most challenging task for marketers.

It is also important that industries, companies, and marketers carefully put personalized strategies together to effectively target the right audience.

If marketers could model their businesses by paying close attention to the above lead generation statistics and strategies, they would be creating a new era of unlimited leads that convert to their brands.

b2b lead generation marketing statistics passive secrets

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