Twitter Trumps Facebook and LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation

Social Media

January 2013 -- Despite the increase in adoption and budget dollars, social media is still a small fraction of traffic and leads to B2B websites, contributing on average 4.75% of all traffic and leads.

Additional findings from digital marketing solution provider Optify’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report:

FACEBOOK DRIVES B2B TRAFFIC, BUT TWITTER GENERATES  LEADS
 

• Facebook is the strongest traffic driver among the top three social media networks  (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), with a 54% share, followed by Twitter (32%) and LinkedIn (14%).

• Despite Facebook’s ability to drive traffic, Twitter is the strongest channel for generating leads. Twitter outperforms Facebook and LinkedIn 9-to-1, with 82% of social media leads coming from Twitter.
   

  
  Source: Optify, 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, 2013

TWITTER: HIGHER-THAN-AVERAGE CONVERSION RATE
 

• Twitter has a higher-than-average conversion rate (2.17%) compared to other digital sources, including referral (2.04%), paid search (1.96%), direct search (1.65%) and organic search (1.45%). Only email has a higher conversion rate (2.89%).

  
LINKEDIN: HIGHEST PAGEVIEWS AMONG TOP 3 SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS
 

• The social media channels with the highest engagement rates (as measured by pageviews per visit): LinkedIn (2.48 pageviews), followed by Facebook (1.94 pageviews). Twitter averages only 1.51 pageviews per visit, even though it has the highest conversion rates.

 
OPTIFY: "CONSIDER SOCIAL MEDIA AS A LEAD GENERATOR, NOT JUST AN AWARENESS TOOL"

Per the report: “Companies should consider social media as a lead generation source, not just as an awareness tool. While our report shows that social media has contributed a fraction (less than 5%) of traffic and leads, we found that companies that actively managed lead generation campaigns on social media saw a healthy return in terms of conversion rates and leads. We believe that part of the reason is a misconception about the use of social media as a broadcasting/awareness tool instead of a lead generation channel.”


About:  Optify 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. The data was collected using Optify’s visitor and lead tracking technology and includes only U.S. based .com sites with 100 to 100,000 monthly visits. The digital channel analysis includes websites with a minimum of 10 visits per traffic source each month.

Source: Optify, 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, accessed Feb. 11, 2013.