Social media still generates less than 5% of overall traffic and leads to B2B websites, according to a new study by digital marketing software provider Optify, with Facebook as the strongest driver of traffic among the top three social media platforms studied. But Twitter is by far the strongest social media channel for B2B lead generation; fully 82% of social media leads come from Twitter, outperforming Facebook and LinkedIn by 9-to-1.
Other highlights from the study:
- B2B traffic exhibited two clear peak seasons: Q1 (Jan-March) and September to mid-November
- organic search is the strongest driver of known traffic to B2B sites (41% of traffic)
- Google is the single most important referring domain to B2B websites, responsible for over 36% of all visits
- email shows high engagement rates (3.75 pageviews per visit) as well as strong conversion rates (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
Are you surprised that, despite gaining momentum in 2012, social media still ranks the lowest – in terms of B2B traffic and lead generation – among all other major online channels? Though, as the study asserts, “the potential is big.” And did you expect that Twitter would drive more B2B leads than other major social platforms?
Optify’s study analyzed the performance of the primary sources of traffic to B2B websites, looking at over 62 million visits, 215 million pageviews and 350,000 leads from more than 600 small and medium-sized B2B websites.
