Only one in five B2B marketing and sales professionals (20%) say their demand generation campaigns are fully effective, whereas 80% say they are ineffective to semi-ineffective, according to a survey from Corporate Visions.

Among those 80%, content is the biggest challenge. Asked to identify the single most important factor hampering successful demand generation campaigns, a plurality (37%) cite content that "isn't engaging or provocative," whereas 31% cite a lack of sales and marketing alignment, and 12% cite budget constraints. Some 9% of B2B professionals say they don't have enough content.  

Moreover, campaign messaging lacks a customer focus: 60% of B2B marketing and sales professionals say their organization's demand generation campaigns focus solely on their own company's products, features, and services—rather than focusing on their customers' pain points.

As a result, nearly two-thirds (65%) of sales-specific respondents say their sales teams use less than one-half of the demand generation content their marketing department produces.

"This quarter's survey results clearly show us that organizations are facing serious challenges when it comes to creating and executing effective demand generation campaigns," said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and marketing officer for Corporate Visions.

"Ironically, the survey revealed that the two largest disconnects are the two most important factors to achieving demand generation success: creating engaging content and developing messages that clearly address customer pain points. If salespeople and marketers are able to work together to implement these two strategies successfully into their campaigns, they will be able to motivate prospects and win more business."

About the data: Findings are from Corporate Visions' Q2 2012 Sales and Marketing Messaging Report, based on a poll of more than 440 B2B salespeople and marketers in the second quarter of 2012.