While there is much discussion about social media, this report by Optify says that, though social media tracks massive users’ attention towards it, still accounts for only a fraction of traffic and leads only the U.S B2B websites.
Here is a mix of reports speaking about B2B traffic and their interest in investments on their own company websites over social media. And, which is the best and most opted site for small businesses.
Social Media B2B Traffic
The data in this report was collected using Optify’s visitor and lead tracking software and includes only US .com sites with between 100 and 100,000 monthly visits.
Interestingly, social accounts for about 1.9% of the traffic comparatively lesser than organic searches (41%), yet has the potential to grow as the effective and the more important channel in the future.
Astoundingly, email showed high engagement rates with an average of 3.75 pageviews per visit and 2.9% of conversion rate as more number of B2B marketers are leveraging on email for lead nurturing and for lead generation.
Fascinatingly, the report found that the businesses which keenly handle their social media campaigns are said to be have noted with high engagement and conversion rates though the companies able to get these results are low.
The finding says that, Facebook drives the most traffic compared to Twitter and LinkedIn, However Twitter brings up the most leads. LinkedIn and Facebook achieve conversion rates of 0.8% and 0.74% respectively, while Twitter achieves 2.17% conversation rate, which is higher than the average for all channels combined – includes organic and paid search too.
LinkedIn is performs best in terms of page views per visit with 2.48 whereas Facebook accounts for 1.94 followed by Twitter with 1.51.
Social contributes an average of only 5% of all traffic and leads which seems negligible in front of organic search as it accounts for 41% of traffic to B2B sites, of which Google accounts for 90%.
According to another report, nearly 50% of the B2B companies will increase their marketing budgets in this year, where more than half of them say that they would definitely increase their investment in email marketing, social media, online video and search.
But, more than 70% of the B2B companies are most interested to invest on their own business website development this year. 93% of those B2B Magazine polled indicated that they use websites as a marketing channel where social media stands in the second lead with 65%.
Twitter, the most popular social networks with brands is now said to be generating millions of dollars per year in ad revenue.
According to a survey by Wall Street Journal, small businesses are not much interested in Twitter, as only 3% of the respondents identify Twitter as a social media channel with maximum potential.
Whereas 3% of them believed that the Pinterest has more potential and 4% of them believe in Google+ also, either Facebook did well as only 14% of small business companies opted for it, which is lesser than YouTube. If none of these websites are opted by small businesses which is the one they believe in? Its LinkedIn which gained maximum poll by 41% respondents opting for it.
The report says that as there are massive differences between small businesses and major brands in many aspects they cannot operate in the same way in social channels. As there are huge differences between the audiences of social networks, brands have to choose their audiences to help their business to be more productive in these social channels.
You might also feel interested to see: B2B marketers are still preferring LinkedIn, Best days to post in social networks according to the type of industry, social media tools and Free social marketing tools, why brands have to invest in social marketing and social media mobile marketing.
