Survey: Facebook Best For B2C Sales and Leads; LinkedIn For B2B
A new survey shows that when it comes to generating leads and sales, Facebook gets top marks among business-to-consumer marketers while LinkedIn does well for the business-to-business marketer. Twitter comes in as a strong second place winner for B2C leads. The data comes from the 2012 State Of Digital Marketing report from WebMarketing123, a California-based digital marketing […]
A new survey shows that when it comes to generating leads and sales, Facebook gets top marks among business-to-consumer marketers while LinkedIn does well for the business-to-business marketer. Twitter comes in as a strong second place winner for B2C leads.
The data comes from the 2012 State Of Digital Marketing report from WebMarketing123, a California-based digital marketing agency. It’s the second year for the report, which surveys over 500 US marketers, including companies like Sony, GE, Bose and FedEx.
Sales & Leads From Social Media Sites
Part of the survey asked which social media sites generated leads or sales:
Facebook: Leader For B2C Leads & Sales
The chart above shows that 67% of B2C marketers who generated leads from social media said some of those came from Facebook, followed by 43% reporting leads from Twitter, then LinkedIn at 21%, followed by Google+ at 15% and Pinterest at 13%.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that 67% of all B2C leads came from Facebook or that 67% of all social media B2C leads came from Facebook. If that were the case, you could total the amounts for each social media site to get 100%.
Instead, this gives you a relative comparison of how effective each channel is. Overall, 67% of B2Cers say they got some of their social media leads from Facebook, a greater rate than with other sites. In short, Facebook is seen as more effective for leads.
When it comes to sales, the pattern is the same. Facebook leads at 39%, followed by Twitter at 19%, LinkedIn at 9%, Google+ at 7% and Pinterest at 6%. But all’s not positive for Facebook. The report notes while it still leads for leads, it had a bigger lead last year:
The number of B2Cs generating leads via LinkedIn has increased 75% since last year, while the number reporting Facebook as a source of sales declined nearly 20% (from 48% to 39%)
LinkedIn For B2B Leads & Sales
For B2B marketers, it’s LinkedIn that’s ahead, with 44% saying they generated leads through the site, followed closely by Facebook at 39%, Twitter at 30%, then Google+ at 7% and Pinterest at 3%.
For sales, it’s the same order, just different percentages: LinkedIn at 23%, Facebook at 19%, Twitter at 14%, Google+ at 3%, then Pinterest at 1%.
Uncertainty Remains; SEO Trumps All
The report also says:
It’s notable that 20% of the marketers active on Social Media aren’t sure if they’re generating leads, and a full 40% aren’t sure if they’ve closed sales attributable to Social Media.
Of course, when it comes to lead generation overall, SEO is the big winner. The survey found 49% of B2C marketers and 59% of B2B marketers found SEO more effective than social media (in the 20% range) or paid search (also in the 20% range).
Our sister-site Search Engine Land has an article that goes into more depth about the overall lead generation findings of the survey. Check it out:
Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.
Related stories
New on MarTech
About the author
