B2B Web Strategy Blog – eMagine

Social media: it’s working for B2B lead generation, too

July 21st, 2009 Posted by: Bill Gadless

For those who thought that social media were mostly good for brand- and relationship-building, and maybe SEO… along comes a study from DemandGen Report showing that – at least for the 218 B2B sales and marketing professionals sampled – lead generation is becoming the main goal of social media use.  In fact, some early adopters are already generating between 10% and 15% of their leads through social media connections;  and 35% of the respondents expect the number of leads generated via social media to increase by 1%-5% over the next 12 months.

Some of this could well be due to broadened participation within B2B organizations:  while marketing (cited by 86% of respondents) & PR (54%) departments account for most activity in driving demand via social networks, the survey showed that other disciplines – including sales (41%), product management (21%), and engineering – (13%) are finding that prospecting gold can be a byproduct of their customary social networking.  In terms of vehicles, LinkedIn was deemed nearly twice as useful for lead generation as Twitter, which was nearly twice as useful as Facebook.

Just in case the message isn’t clear:  Steve McAbee over at The Practitioner cites a survey issued by Forbes and Google about the habits of C-level execs, showing that over half of those under age 40 use social media several times a week.  It only makes sense for B2B businesses to go where their buyers are.

Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy,Lead generation