With each day that passes, and with each mobile user who signs up for a Twitter account, the importance of the platforms for businesses reaching out to their clients and prospects deepens. With over a billion people now registered for the service, and over 300 billion Tweets sent, the network isn't a fad and it continues to grow.
But how does Twitter play out in the B2B space? Is there any use for it when it comes to landing deals?
When I first joined a B2B company, a colleague said to me: "At least you don't have to deal with Twitter anymore."
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Last fall, the Content Marketing Institute, and Marketing Profs, reported that 85% of B2B marketers use Twitter as part of their strategic marketing efforts. Surprisingly, that's only 6% less than the traditional platform for B2B marketers - LinkedIn.
This makes perfect sense at its core as Twitter is becoming ubiquitous as a way to quickly communicate or keep in contact with other people. While it doesn't add the depth of over social communications channels, it does allow marketers in the B2B world to keep tabs and constant contact with their clients and colleagues. In growing, and
As I made the case a few weeks ago in this space, B2B marketing is now closely aligning with B2C marketing. Why? It's simple: as the mobile device and social networks are used more and more by all of us, the actions we take as everyday people are no different than what we do as business people. The habitual nature of communicating via social networks from a mobile device have made this so. Now, someone wishing to check on the latest data from their manufacturing operation simply want to be as easy as when they check on their retirement account, or their kids grades from school.
Whether you're a Twitter fan or not, the truths to its effectiveness driving top-of-funnel awareness and behavior are well documented. Just over a year ago, Twitter released a study, which found use of Twitter in the B2B space mimics what behavior the company sees from consumer users. In fact, in driving website traffic, Twitter for B2B showed a 47% lift in site traffic from B2B tech sites after users were exposed to Tweets from those companies.
In addition, Twitter users search for B2B tech brands at a significantly higher rate (30%) compared to the average web user. This all points to B2B brands who leverage Twitter strategically have a positive influence on brand consideration.
The same Twitter survey shows that Tweets also drive conversion. Of course, this is all coming from Twitter but we're starting to see lots of third-party validation of this across the B2B channel. General Electric (my favorite), Adobe, Intel and others continue to show effective use of the channel to engage, drive traffic, and drive consideration via Twitter.
As this convergence of B2B and B2C only increase, my guess is you'll see a flood of brands start to seriously up the ante when it comes to Twitter. Will they all do it well? Of course they won't.
Those B2B brands that take the time to do it right will reap the benefits both from a brand perspective and a demand generation perspective as well.
It just goes to show you, 140 characters can mean money to your bottom line.