Social media marketing continues to gain significant traction with B2B marketers, especially as it has proven greater ability to generate positive ROI. The following statistics highlight just how quickly social media marketing has grown as a preferred way of reaching potential buyers:
40% of B2B marketers say that social media will be critical to their marketing success in 2017 (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
To put that number into perspective, that’s the same percentage of B2B marketers who said that email newsletters would be critical to their marketing success. For years, email has been acknowledged as one of the best ways to transform prospects into buyers. Now, with the rise of strategies such as “social selling,” it’s becoming apparent that social media is beginning to be viewed in the same way.
82% of marketers agree that social media marketing is core to their business (Source: Salesforce)
This further suggests that social media is an important part of moving B2B buyers along the customer journey, not just a way to build brand awareness. In short, posting tweets or status updates each day is not just a way to engage existing fans and customers – it’s also a way to build a new pipeline of potential customers.
39% of marketers report significant ROI generated from social media marketing (Source: Salesforce)
This marks a sharp increase from the year-earlier period, when only 9% of marketers reported any type of ROI from social media marketing. Part of the problem, of course, has always been showing causality between interactions on social and actual sales in real life. But with new social media dashboards and more advanced social media tracking platforms from vendors such as Lithium, this problem appears to be diminishing. For example, using Lithium social media software, it’s possible to deliver better customer experiences through social channels.
Social media spend will account for 20.9% of marketing budgets within the next 5 years (Source: The CMO Survey)
That figure is almost twice as high as the current level of 10.6%. This suggests that B2B marketers will continue to double down (literally) on their social media marketing initiatives. As the level of organic social traffic withers away, the increased spend on social may have to be diverted to “pay-to-play” initiatives, in which brands can pay to have their posts promoted and seen by fans.
95% of B2B marketers use Facebook as a social platform (Source: Clutch.co)
And it’s not just Facebook where B2B marketers are directing their marketing
dollars. Twitter (74% of marketers) and LinkedIn (66% of marketers) also attract a significant share of social media marketing dollars.
84% of B2B marketers intend to increase their video marketing budgets
If there’s one aspect of social media marketing that has really taken off over the past year, it’s the use of social video. It’s now one of the most popular forms of content that is consumed on the Internet, and it’s only becoming more popular with the increasing role of mobile.
Taken together, these six statistics highlight the increasing role of social media as a core part of any B2B marketing budget. Clearly, two major areas of emphasis are Facebook and social video, so expect to see even more as we head in 2017.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.