B2B Lags Behind B2C in Social Media Marketing, but Maybe Not for Long
According to White Horse, a Web marketing, design and consulting company, B2B companies are lagging behind their B2C counterparts in the use of social media marketing. However, there are signs that B2B spending on social media efforts will boom shortly.
White Horse’s recent “B2B Goes Social: A White Horse Survey Report” found that 40 percent of B2B companies dedicate one or more full-time marketers to social media marketing endeavors, which is noticeably lower than the 54 percent of B2B companies who do the same. But the smaller marketing departments in place at B2B firms make even this smaller number significant.
While 71 percent of B2B respondents said they employ two or more part-time staff for social media marketing, 57 percent of B2C marketers said the same.
Meanwhile, 10 percent of B2B marketers said they look to outside agencies or consultants for social media marketing efforts, compared to 28 percent of B2C marketers.
A separate survey from White Horse shows that 59 percent of B2B marketers either have only basic social media presences or are not actively engaged in social media marketing, compared to 44 percent of B2C marketers.
That survey also showed that B2C marketers were more active in nearly every social media tactic. Third-party forums and podcasting were the only exceptions.
“Social media is fertile ground for B2B lead cultivation,” said Eric Anderson, vice president of marketing at White Horse. “B2B marketing tends to be relationship-driven, and social media can be a natural facilitator for that approach.”
A study in March from Outsell, a research and advisory firm for publishers and information providers, showed that B2B marketers planned to boost spending on marketing tactics involving social networking sites by 43.3 percent in 2010. The study also found that webinars expected to see a 26.0 percent boost in spending, followed by 17.1 percent for search engines and 7.5 percent for company websites.
Back in November, Visible Technologies and SiriusDecisions conducted a study and found that customer community received 32 percent of the social media budgets of B2B companies in 2009, followed by podcasts with 20 percent, blogs with 18 percent, Twitter with 14 percent, internal community with 8 percent, media sharing with 6 percent and wikis with 2 percent.
Sources:</strong
http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/b2b-marketers-allocate-fewer-social-media-resources-13052/
http://www.whitehorse.com/_templates/t_press_release.aspx?id=1523
http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/b2b-marketers-have-little-social-media-engagement-13036/
