B2B Marketing More Insight and Analysis

Lead generation is essential to any successful sales and marketing team but like most marketing functions it has evolved through the years. Hoping to be at the forefront of the next evolutionary step, B2Group has launched its SME Census.

The census is a continuous telephone survey in which B2Group hopes to speak to approximately three million SMEs. Questions in the survey will allow the data provider to supply qualified leads for B2B blue-chip businesses in a range of sectors including telecoms, utilities, logistics and IT. Working alongside sector exclusive partners, B2Group will provide leads, which have already given information about the products and services the SMEs require, to one business per sector.

Over the last two years, B2Group has been building its database assets and aggregating them to create a wide database prior to launching the census. B2Group claims its new service is taking a step forward in lead generation by providing qualified leads that will be continually updated to its exclusive sector partners. In addition, to reward SMEs for providing their data, B2Group has created its SME Hub where smaller enterprises, amongst other things, will be encouraged to keep their own data up to date.

Is it the end for raw data?

With B2Group giving businesses the option to avoid unqualified data and go straight to qualified leads, could this mark the end for data in its raw form? Zina Manda, director of Mardev DM2, does not feel it will, saying the census “is just a different way to generate leads. There will always be a place for raw data because it's important for a business to establish a pipe-line. Not everybody is going to be ready to buy now.”

Karim Iskander, VP of international sales at business intelligence provider Onesource Information Services agrees with Manda's perspective that it is not always beneficial to know who is ready to buy straight away. He believes marketers can gain more valuable information on leads by knowing background information on their target businesses. He says, “There are more triggers to a potential lead than active admittance of need. For example, forthcoming merger and acquisition may also identify the need for products and services.”

Iskander advocates the use of several methods to capture information on leads saying it would be beneficial to “broaden the number and quality of information sources that intelligence is gathered from to include social media platforms like LinkedIn.”

Jeremy Whitaker, CEO of B2Group, explains that while the census is available online it opted for telemarketing rather than social media platforms because “we need to engage with the SME market and the best way to do this is to have a live dialogue with them.”

Telemarketing as a lead generation tool

In spite of B2Group's confidence in the success of using telemarketing as its primary contact mechanism, Denise Effenberg, MD of Teleleads is sceptical. While her company also uses telemarketing to generate leads, she says it relies on “a really concise message to a targeted audience. The SME Census has the potential to be too general.”

She questions the value of a lead created using a mass telemarketing approach. “Some SMEs may not have an IT department, for example, and the MD who is short on time and perhaps not that knowledgeable about computer software has to take the call. They may not be able to give detailed or accurate information.”

Whitaker counters this view by saying that the leads the census generates can be further qualified if the sector partner requires. “If a company wants more information, we can offer a survey as a follow-up to the census and ask more specific questions.” However, the more specific the question, the more expensive the lead.

Qualified leads are a costly price to pay

B2Group will sign up B2B blue-chip organisations as its partners (Daisy Group is its first partner) and admits that its price of leads could be 100 times more expensive – instead of 5p per lead from raw data, the average could be £5–£10 a lead. Manda says £5 for a properly qualified lead is the industry norm. “Paying £5 for a contact you know has a need for a service that you offer, compared to sorting through data, isn't bad.” She sees exciting potential in the SME Census and calls it “a very interesting project.”

Despite large corporate partners and expensive leads, B2Group is still hoping to appeal to smaller businesses using its SME Hub. It hopes the hub will become an online community where SMEs can network and trade amongst themselves. SMEs that complete the census will automatically be registered for the hub.

A boost for the SME market

The SME market is notoriously difficult to reach and Whitaker says that due to many SMEs not being on any register, companies don't know they exist. He says one of the benefits of the census is that B2Group can provide leads for SMEs that have previously been unheard of to their clients.

However, Connie Bensen, director of social media community and strategy for software company Alterian, believes that social media can be used as an alternative lead generation method. She thinks it is possible to bring your brand to the attention of others using social media and that this method will reap greater benefits in the long run. “If you have no brand visibility online you need to create good content that people can learn from. This builds trust, and with trust you get a higher conversion rate and a shorter sales cycle.”

Outsourcing lead generation activity is always going to be met with uncertainty. B2Group's service will not be cheap but those in the data and telemarketing business will be watching closely to see if it changes the face of B2B lead generation and whether other data providers follow suit. As ever in the B2B marketing arena, change is slow as a lot of observations are made before any action is taken. So, expect rivals to be watching B2Group but not rushing to do the same thing just yet.

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