Let’s compare the largest players within the social media space; According to the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, Facebook was the dominant driver of site visits, at a majority 54% share, followed by Twitter (32%) and LinkedIn (14%). But, when it came to leads, Twitter was far and away the most important social media source, generating 82% share of leads, compared to just 9% each for Facebook and LinkedIn.
Twitter not only was best for generating leads, but it also showed the highest conversion rates. The researchers note that companies with more than one lead or more than 10 visits per month from social media saw relatively high conversion rates and engagement rates, but that the percentage of companies who saw such results was low, indicating an “immaturity in the use of the channels.”
What does this tell us and how should you be using Twitter, Vine and Pinterest? In short it tells us that at the very least you should be using Twitter, as a way of keeping existing customers on and bring on new customer (i.e. stealing them from your main competitor). For the more advanced portal or as a stage 2 development you should also be implementing Vine and Pinterest.
But, how to use these social media products? Remember your portal is the go-between your customers and your customers’ customers. Offer your customers more and better ways to contact their customers thru you. This will anchor them to you. It’s hard to leave a place where most of functionality lays.
Invest in your offerings to your customer. If you don’t I assure you, you’ll be playing catch-up down the road.
The Data: Optify’s “2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report” examined more than 62 million visits, 215 million pageviews and 350,000 leads from more than 600 small and medium-sized B2B websites during 2012.
