The Customer Acquisition Barometer published by the Direct Marketing Association in association with The Media Octopus is packed full of insights about how both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) companies acquire their business. These are 12 of the most interesting facts and statistics from the report:
- Just six channels are used by one third or more of B2B marketers, compared to 15 being deployed by the same proportion of B2C
- B2B marketers target quality of leads whereas B2C are more concerned about cost per lead
- The six channels preferred by B2B marketers by percentage of B2B marketers using them are email 79%, website 73%, face-to-face 65%, organic social media 55%, direct mail 46% and telemarketing 41%
- The top two channels in B2C are also email 92% and website 87%
- B2C marketers are also twice as likely to use paid social media as B2B marketers; 63% v 34%
- 39% of marketers names their own website as the most effective means of acquiring new customers
- More B2B marketers (13%) rate organic social media as an effective way to acquire customers than B2C marketers (3%)
- The number of marketers rating telemarketing as the most effective means of acquiring new customers rose from 20% to 28%
- 47% of marketers rate quality of leads as their priority for the next 12 months
- Limited budget is identified by 40% of marketers as their biggest obstacle - more B2B marketers (43%) mentioned this challenge than B2C marketers (35%).
- 20% of marketers identified data as a key challenge to their marketing strategy
- 57% of marketers say that Customer acquisition is the most important part of their marketing expenditure compared with just 15% who name customer retention as the most important
