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BtoB Research Report – Sample Charts and InsightsSocial Media Marketing: Best-in-Class Marketers Rise to The Top (May 2013)

BtoB’s newest research report, released May, 2013, is designed to provide senior-level marketers with a snapshot of the current state of social media marketing, and insights into trends to watch for going forward.

This reports includes over 54 pages and 72 charts and graphs that are based on the 432 responses from b2b marketers, surveyed in January and February 2013. From this research you will learn:

• How are b-to-b marketers budgeting for social media marketing?

• What social media strategies and tactics do they find to be most effective?

• How are metrics being used to judge success?• Which social platforms are most preferred?

To learn more about this report, visit www.btobonline.com/section/intelligencecenter

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Table of Contents

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (EXCERPT)

SOCIAL’S KEY DRIVERSSocial media continues to make inroads in the marketing suite as marketers realize its key strengths. These include the opportunity to reach a larger audience via a popular platform and its (generally) low cost, in particular when it comes to  “earned” social media content and mentions. Other factors include the widespread adoption of social media in the b-to-b market, and presumably the fear of being left behind in the use of this channel.

It’s clear that the social phenomenon is driving the eager response by marketers. As of late 2012, Facebook had more than 1 billion users worldwide, more than half of whom access the site on mobile devices. Twitter has more than 500 million users worldwide, and LinkedIn has topped 200 million users. The growth of these channels continues, as they improve their interfaces, add compelling new features and expand their advertising capabilities.

Marketers continue to have multiple social media options at their disposal. In addition to the “big three” of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter—as well as trusted “standbys” such as blogging and community forums—relative newcomers include Google+, which has the advantage of being driven and promoted by the dominant search engine, and Pinterest, which is being explored for its business potential (along with other image-centric platforms such as Flickr and SlideShare). Meanwhile, YouTube cannot be underestimated as a valuable way to demonstrate products and services, and for the opportunity to have videos go viral through extensive sharing. YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and is indexed by the world’s largest—its owner, Google.

Source: BtoB magazine: Emerging Trends in B2B Social Marketing, March 2013To learn more about this report, visit www.btobonline.com/section/intelligencecenter

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (EXCERPT)

SOCIAL MONITORING TOOLSThe range of tools that marketers use to monitor, analyze and report on their social media marketing campaigns is diverse. HootSuite is among the most popular dashboards, with Google Insights, Twitter’s TweetDeck, RSS feeds, Twitter Search, HubSpot and Salesforce.com’s Radian6 all having strong followings.

HootSuite recently announced an integration with Webtrends Analytics for its enterprise clients, which will add reports showing connections between social media messages and website conversation, including sources of most valuable traffic and the social platforms that provide the greatest ROI. HootSuite also has entered the enterprise social media field with the recent launch of HootSuite Conversations, a tool for internal team collaboration.

Earlier this year, TweetDeck said it planned to suspend its mobile versions and focus development efforts on Web-based versions. With the rise of mobile, it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Salesforce.com recently combined social listening and analytics technology from its Radian6 tool with content publishing and social media management solutions from Buddy Media, which it acquired last year. The upgraded Marketing Cloud now also includes metrics supplied by such analytics vendors as Clarabridge Link, Klout, Kred, Rapleaf and Trendspottr.

HubSpot recently acquired Chime, whose plug-in for Google’s Chrome Internet browser aggregates notifications from Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter into a single stream of notices.

Source: BtoB magazine: Emerging Trends in B2B Social Marketing, March 2013To learn more about this report, visit www.btobonline.com/section/intelligencecenter

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Adoption of Social Media Marketing-- Accelerating

9%

31%33%

18%

3%

7%

28%

32%

26%

6%6%

29%

38%

22%

4%4%

15%

34%37%

10%

2011

2012

2013

2014

Please indicate your company's current stage of adoption of social media marketing tactics in terms of advertising, communica-tions, customer support, new product development and other activities.

Adoption of Social Media Marketing-- Accelerating

Source: BtoB magazine: Emerging Trends in B2B Social Marketing, March 2013To learn more about this report, visit www.btobonline.com/section/intelligencecenter

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Effectiveness of Primary Social Media by Marketing Goal

Product Co-creation

Product Development

Sales revenue

Customer Support

Customer feedback

Competitive intelligence/listening

Lead generation

Search engine optimization

Website traffic-building

Community building (i.e. listening to social buzz)

Product/event promotion

Branding

2.10

2.46

2.75

2.94

3.16

3.19

3.22

3.35

3.58

3.59

3.63

3.86

Choose how effective this ONE most important method of social media marketing is for the following marketing and communi-cation goals. Please rate on a 1-5 scale where 1 is Not Very Effective and 5 is Very Effective.

Effectiveness of Primary Social Media By Marketing Goal

Source: BtoB magazine: Emerging Trends in B2B Social Marketing, March 2013To learn more about this report, visit www.btobonline.com/section/intelligencecenter

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Social Media Budget Change

56%

42%

1%

IncreaseRemain the sameDecrease

Social Media Budget Change

How will your company's social media marketing budget change in 2013?

Source: BtoB magazine: Emerging Trends in B2B Social Marketing, March 2013To learn more about this report, visit www.btobonline.com/section/intelligencecenter

BtoB magazine

BtoB Research Report – Sample Charts and InsightsSocial Media Marketing: Best-in-Class Marketers Rise to The Top (May 2013)

To learn more and purchase this report, visit www.btobonline.com/section/intelligencecenter