2012 B2B Marketing Trends in Review
Kerry Guard • February 8, 2013 • 3 minutes to readAs we move farther into 2013, analyst data continues to roll in detailing 2012 digital marketing trends, case studies & discoveries.
Here at MKG Marketing, we've had the opportunity to carve out quite a niche as a B2B marketing agency over the past 17 months, working with clients such as:
As a B2B marketing agency, we constantly have current & prospective clients ask us the following:
What's next for B2B marketing? What trends are you seeing that we can take advantage of?
With that in mind, we wanted to walk through some of the trends we saw in 2012 and share some of the advice we've been giving our current clients here in 2013:
Trend #1: Social Media Accounts for Only 2% of B2B Traffic
Our good friends at Optify produced a 2012 B2B marketing report that found social media channels accounted for only 2% of total traffic for B2B brands in 2012.
As you can see, the leading traffic sources were direct referrals & organic, at 40% & 41%, respectively.
WHAT THIS MEANS: Focus on making your site FINDABLE.
That's right: content & organic search marketing are going to deliver ~81% of all site traffic, so B2B marketers need to focus on providing value back to their audience as well as ensuring that their site is positioned to bring in quality organic search leads.
Trend #2: Twitter Rules the B2B Social Media Marketing Universe
To proactively answer a common question from the first trend mentioned above: NO, do not give up on social media!
If you are a B2B marketer / B2B marketing agency, you simply need to focus on the channels that are providing the most qualified visitors.
So, which social media channels are providing the best quality traffic?
As you can see above, Twitter only drives 32% of site visitors, but provides B2B marketers with 82% of all social media leads!
WHAT THIS MEANS: It's time to begin testing Twitter as a legitimate lead generation channel.
At MKG Marketing, we always analyze performance as a percentage: This exercise, among many, allows us to understand which traffic sources are generating quality leads and scale the marketing investment accordingly.
Trend #3: B2B Marketers Need to Invest in Their Website
According to HubSpot, approximately 96% of landing page visitors are not ready to make a purchase when they visit your website.
With that stat top of mind, guess what B2B marketers are investing most heavily in during 2013?
That's right: 7-out-of-10 B2B marketers will be investing in website development with their 2013 budgets.
WHAT THIS MEANS: A conversion friendly website is a B2B marketer's best friend.
As a marketer, you have between 0 - 8 seconds to make a great first impression on your visitors before they leave the site. B2B marketers need to have a sharp team of individuals to help design & implement landing page best practices & testing.
If you don't have the personnel in place to support the design & implementation of this kind of strategy, drop us a line on Twitter and we'd be happy to discuss.
What, if anything, do you think we missed in this recap?
