The latest Hubspot report on the State of Inbound Marketing in 2013 confirms the growing importance of social media in B2B lead generation and inbound marketing.
It is no surprise that the survey found traditional outbound interruption marketing continues to struggle as spam filters, do not call lists and other tools filter out these methods and their reach. HubSpot report that only 22% of all leads came from traditional methods in 2013.
Whereas 17% of marketers report that traditional marketing has become less important, 21% of marketers report that social media has become more important over the past 6 months. The HubSport research below shows that inbound marketing dominates lead sources, with social media and SEO driving the highest level of leads with each driving 14% of all leads. In terms of the most successful social media channels more companies have acquired a customer via Facebook than other channels. The chart shows the percentage of companies who have acquired a customer via each channel in 2013. LinkedIn performs very strongly given its relative user numbers, and reinforces the platform as a key B2B marketing channel. Google+ is a relatively new channel and it is interesting to see that 15% of companies already report having a acquired a customer via this channel. Given the growth of Google+ it will be particularly interesting to see how this might grow in the coming years.
Social Media and SEO leads were also the most likely to convert as shown below, with 15% of marketers saying that SEO delivers above average conversions. If you are still not convinced by the importance of social media in your inbound marketing strategy, HubSpot also found that social media engagement increases website traffic.
You can read the full read at the HubSpot website, email registration required.