Twitter is the strongest social media channel for generating business-to-business (B2B) leads, outperforming Facebook and LinkedIn 9-to-1 with 82 percent of social media leads coming from Twitter.
In a recent study by digital marketing software provider, Optify, found that social media generates 40 percent of overall traffic to business-to-business websites. However, if B2B leads are your goal, the study found that direct, organic search, and referrals are the best lead generators. The opening stat is from the company also.
When you dig deeper into the various sources of traffic to see which converts to a sale (kind of a big deal, right? Traffic isn't useful on its own unless you sell ads), you often hear that social media is the winner. But Optify shows that email has the highest conversion rate compared to all other sources.
Surprisingly, organic search, which is the #1 driver of traffic, is at the bottom of the conversion rate list, second only to social media among the sources with the lowest conversion rates. It is also important to note that Optify is not an email provider.
Many marketers wonder if there is a best time of year to try to garner customer/prospect attention. Optify found that there is a clear cycle in the B2B space with first quarter of 2012 (Now!) and from September to mid-November, showing the strongest performance in terms of traffic.
Four Critical Stats For Marketing Success
- Google is the single most important referring domain to B2B websites, responsible for over 36% of all visits.
- Social Media is still a small fraction of traffic and leads to B2B websites, contributing on average less than 5% of all traffic and leads.
- Email shows high engagement rates as well as strong conversion rates with an average 2.9% lead conversion rate.
- Paid search usage showed a constant decline among B2B marketers in 2012. Over 10% of companies in the report discontinued their paid search campaigns during 2012.
Optify’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report can be downloaded for free. They analyzed over 62 million visits and more than 350,000 leads from 600+ small and medium-sized B2B websites. This little report gives you insights into what’s working and what’s not in the world of B2B digital marketing.
You can check out their blog post: [Infographic] 2012 B2B Marketing Trends.
Optify’s SaaS-based digital marketing suite provides a simple, complete integrated solution for capturing leads, prioritizing and nurturing the hottest prospects while instantly measuring and reporting on the ROI of marketing programs.
Full disclosure: I helped organize a few webinars for Optify three years ago, so I know the founders and management team well. I have had the privilege of seeing the software work on a deeper level and believe they offer a solid solution for businesses that need to score and nurture leads.
