Decision Authority for Engineering Field Marketers

Landing pages and number of fields have a big impact on conversions

Most engineering lead generation campaigns have a standard number of fields.  The lead criteria is set by corporate marketing and includes FIRST NAME, LAST NAME, EMAIL, COMPANY, TELEPHONE. There may be GEO, JOB ROLE or INDUSTRY as well. 

This standardization makes the internal workings of large marketing departments run smoothly – every contact fits the definition.  The content creation team is charged with creating assets that are valuable enough to convince prospects to surrender their full contact information.

But what if you want to run an awareness style campaign in a new industry? 

Smaller marketing departments don’t necessarily have the same issues.  They may have the flexibility to run an awareness campaign that only asks for FIRST NAME, LAST NAME and EMAIL, for example.  Asking for only a few fields can double the conversion rate, which is important for an awareness campaign. Marketing automation can take these leads the rest of the way to MQL by nurturing them with higher quality assets and asking for the remaining fields a few at a time.

Another challenge in more corporate environments is that the marketer may not have the power to change the message without approval.  That’s too bad, because publishers can tweak landing pages or emails to make the message resonate with their audience.  Some will even run A/B tests for you to improve your results.

What are your thoughts around this? Do you see other areas where flexibility at the point of contact helps or hurts? 

John