Finding B2B Marketing Success Integrating Social Media & Search
Business.com and BtoB Online | November 09, 2010

Social media: What was not so long ago cconsidered a ‘test effort’ for marketers become a staple of online marketing programs for most business-to-business (B2B) marketers. In fact, research indicates 72% of marketers currently employ a social media strategy.1 Not surprisingly, as companies continue to invest in social media, marketers are moving away from using social media as an isolated marketing tool and moving toward integrating it with other online marketing programs; specifically, search marketing. However, while some B2B marketers appear to have the social-search integration down to a science, others still struggle to comprehend how to best use social media for B2B marketing.

Business.com and BtoB Online’s co-sponsored study of 464 B2B marketers, ‘The Impact of Social Media on Search,’ set out to discover just how marketers are integrating social media with search marketing and uncover the measurable impact B2B marketers are seeing from such integration. With nearly half of B2B marketers reporting a positive or very positive impact on the search performance of their Web site, we were able to identify significant trends in what ‘The Best’ marketers are doing differently from ’The Rest’.

Results Summary
Among the study’s key findings:

  • B2B marketers most often turn to social media for brand awareness (81%), increased Web site traffic (77%) lead generation (67%) and improved search results (57%)
  • B2B marketers are measuring the impact of social media through search marketing-specific metrics and are seeing positive impact in the form of search-engine optimization (SEO) benefits and pay-per-click (PPC) benefits
  • Significant differences exist in the social-to-search usage between those who have seen a positive impact in their social media efforts on search (The Best) and those who have not or are not measuring, (The Rest).
  • The Best use social media techniques to enhance their paid search marketing efforts 67% more often than The Rest
  • 74% of marketers in The Best have seen an increase in Web site traffic since the inception of their social media program

 

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