Business to business small and medium companies obtain different results from the social networks they use, a study presented by eMarketer shows. 600 US B2B SMB websites, which were included in an Optify analysis, revealed very interesting data.
54% of all social media-sourced site visits came from Facebook and 32% from Twitter, the study showed. However, when it comes to leads, Twitter performed best, with 82% of the social leads, while Facebook accounted for only 9% of the B2B SMB leads. LinkedIn, another important social media network, was responsible for 14% of site visits and 9% of the social leads.
Despite the encouraging general statistics, social B2B traffic accounted for only 1.9% of the total traffic. In fact, the study revealed that 80% of the visits were organic or direct. The percentage of the social leads from the total B2B SMB leads was 4.8% of all. This is not much, but it is relevant. Companies should not ditch their social media accounts too soon, as social media networks evolve all the time and more and more people and businesses start to use them.
Speaking numbers in regards to sources of leads for small and medium-sized B2B company websites, these showed that leads came directly (34%), organic (36.5), through referral (12.5%), paid search (10.5%), email (9%), social media (4%) and other 2.8%.
Marketer Kristen Sanne noted, “Different social media sites serve different purposes, therefore marketers have to know really well what results can they expect from various networks. Having a good knowledge of the deliverables each social media network can bring will help marketers choose the most suited channels of communication for their clients.”