Blogs & Podcasts Rank in Top 5 Lead Generation Tactics for Business Technology Marketing

July 31, 2006; 09:28 AM
More than 1,900 business technology marketers responding to MarketingSherpa's annual survey named blogs and podcasts among the top five most effective sales lead generation offers. An Executive Summary featuring seven new charts is available at:

businesstechnologymarketingdata.marketingsherpa.com/ ?source=mspr1unopt1

When asked, "Which offers are 'very effective' for generating high-quality leads?" marketers in all three industries studied -- technology services firms, and business software and hardware -- rated Blogs and Podcasts among their top five picks, ranked in order:

1. Free Trial Demo --Business software marketers ranked free trials extremely highly, with 54% calling trials very effective.

2. Webcast -- At 41% this was another favorite for software marketers, however technology services and related hardware firms also ranked webinars at 33% and 31% respectively.

3. White paper -- All business technology marketers rated white papers fairly evenly, giving white paper offers ratings ranging from 31-36% 'very effective.'

4. Blogs -- 35% of software and ASP marketers rated blogs very effective, and 33% of technology services firms did so. However, just 19% of hardware companies felt blogs were effective. This may be because general business executives tend to read blogs, while purely technology professionals (such as IT staffers) do not tend to do so.

5. Podcasts -- Last year podcasts were barely on the technology marketing map. By June 2006, 22% of software marketers who'd tried them called them 'very effective' lead generation tools. Surprisingly 13% of hardware marketers also rated podcasts highly, perhaps the IT professional they target is more likely to be in an early adopter community that listens to podcasts. However technology services firms ranked podcasts fairly low - at just 9% 'very effective.'

These results are available from MarketingSherpa's Business Technology Benchmark Guide 2006. To download a copy of the Executive Summary, go to:

businesstechnologymarketingdata.marketingsherpa.com/ ?source=mspr1unopt2

To download a copy of the entire report, along with 151 additional new data charts and tables, go to: sherpastore.com/Technology-marketing.html/?source=mspr1unopt3.

About MarketingSherpa:

MarketingSherpa, Inc. is a research firm publishing Case Studies, benchmark data, and how-to information for marketing, advertising, and public relations professionals. More information is available at: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/?source=mspr1unopt4.