What is effective may not be inexpensive. Then again it may be.

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I stumbled upon two marketing maven surveys, one that reported how effective some lead generation options were and another on how low cost they were. Coming from two different organizations, there were gaps in what was surveyed and reported, but there was enough connecting tissue to make an intelligent review of B2B promotional options.

Before I ramble on too much about the details, what was striking is that options for lead generation in social media never scored in the top half of all options by effectiveness. This isn’t to say that social media is to be avoided, but that as a lead generation tool, it isn’t worth a lot of investment. This will shock many here in Silicon Valley because the endless local mantra is that everything is possible with social media. If it were, then social media promotions would have risen above the mean.

Oddly, the survey measuring the effectiveness of promotional options did not do so for events. The common wisdom is that a well-targeted event produces excellent leads, and thus is effective. Nobody argues that is it relatively expensive, but expensive leads that are of the ultimate quality will produce more revenue than cheap leads of poor quality.

Email has overcome direct marketing in effectiveness at a time when people are overwhelmed by email. Evidentially not enough people have gotten sick of a nearly perpetual stream promotional emails … it is still considered highly effective and, of course, about as inexpensive as B2B product promotions get.

But referrals are more effective still and about the same price per lead. Not enough is done in the B2B world to facilitate referral marketing, aside from share buttons on web sites that indirectly create another form of email marketing.

Search has dropped down the effectiveness chain, but remains cost-wise. Webinars have sunk (so few provide usable content anymore) and white papers are grudgingly persistent.

The take-away for today is that a small set of highly effective lead generation tools are also inexpensive and, for the moment, will produce … until everybody focuses on these few, wear-out the patience of buyers everywhere, and a new tool worms advertisements into the eye or ear of the buyer.