LinkedIn & Company Blogs Generate Business-to-Business (BtoB) Leads per New Survey

DemandGen Report surveyed 218 BtoB sales and marketing professionals and found that social media is (actually) driving leads and helping to connect with prospects.  The study took place in June.  (DemandGen Report is an online publication that focuses on sales and marketing automation tools to help companies drive growth.)

Source: DemandGen Report

LinkedIn (58 percent) and company blogs (36 percent) are the top two social media tools producing these results.  Interestingly, Twitter came in third at 31 percent.

In no surprise to me, only 17 percent of these folks report Facebook as a source of leads.  It seems unless you are a large, well known brand Facebook is probably not a good use of lead generation time/resources for a small to midsize business-to-business company.  Although the article does not state the size of the companies surveyed, DemandGen Report offers a webinar series for small to midsize companies so I think SMBs are their readers.

Here are some highlights of the survey results:

• Some early adopters are generating from 10 to 15 percent of leads via social media connections
• While marketers and PR folks are driving the most activity, other teams are participating: Sales –  41 percent; Product management – 21 percent; Engineering – 13 percent

• The top 3 most successful social networking tactics reported by this group are:   Joining/participating in industry groups (25%;  Starting conversations on industry topics (25%); Answering questions on industry topics (23%)

Is LinkedIn helping your company blog to drive leads and connections with prospects?  How about your company blog?

Read the entire DemandGenReport article here.

Brian Carroll offers a great how-to for using LinkedIn for lead generation here.

Mike Sachoff cites another study showing company blogs as the most valued Social Media tool here.