89.5% of Marketers Surveyed Say They Will Spend as Much or More in the Last Half of 2008 Than They Did in the First Half.

LOS ANGELES -- James W. Obermayer, executive director of the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) today announced the results of the Mid-year 2008 Marketing Study Presented by BtoB Magazine and the SLMA. The full report is available from the SLMA and the top line statistics are available from the BtoB Lead Generation Guide 2008.

"One of the startling findings," Obermayer comments, "is that marketers in B2B said that 45.2% will spend more in the last half of the year and 44.3% will spend about the same as the first half. We see very little pull-back from those that are spending marketing dollars. Only 10.2% said they will spend less."

The study, surveyed 20,400 marketers and SLMA members. "47.25% of those who responded to the survey," remarked Susan Campanale, VP of Marketing and Membership of the SLMA, "said that their biggest obstacle to spending more money on marketing is that they don't have reports to show the ROI for what they spend." In other findings (49.8%) showed that a marketer's biggest priority in the last half is increasing lead generation activities.

Additional findings in the report include the percentage of new business that comes from inquiries, the percentage of the marketing budget spent on lead generating activities, and the percentage of salespeople who close the loop and report on the disposition of inquiries.

Sales Lead Management Association

The SLMA is an association with the mission of helping companies become more successful in the critical business process of Managing Sales Leads. www.salesleadmgmtassn.com