Social media is more and more used by B2B marketers and is becoming a major component of their web strategy. It is interesting to see that, although the adoption rates are increasing, there seems to be lots of uncertainties regarding their effectiveness.
Today we will review a chart that was published in a research by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs that was published on iab.net and will try to provide an answer on this correlation.
Without further ado, lets begin!
A vast social media environment
Before tackling the issue of uncertainties, we have to understand what are the social platforms used by B2B marketers.
In the same study, they present a wide array of social media platforms in which B2B marketers are investing time and resources. No surprise that LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google+ are among the top 5 platforms with respectively 91%, 85%, 81%, 71% and 55% of B2B marketers using them.
The study also states that, in average, B2B marketers are using more social media platforms for their company than they did the year before (an increase from 5 to 6 compared to last year).
A conflicting perception
While we are noticing an increase in social media usage, we are also noticing depreciation on the confidence level of B2B marketers for the majority of social media platforms.
Except for LinkedIn, B2B marketers have expressed concerns about the effectiveness of the other social media. Twitter has a neutral status with half of the B2B marketers believing its active and half believing it’s not effective. We also notice that Facebook is down the list with a whopping 70% of B2B marketers thinking it is less effective.
Why are we witnessing such discrepancy between the increase in usage and decrease in level of perceived use?
Contribution channel
Contribution channel might be the answer. Contribution channel is the way to determine how a given channel interacted in the conversion process.
Basically, a channel can have one of the three following impact on a conversion:
• The last interaction
• The assist interaction
• The first interaction
The last interaction refers to the interaction a channel had immediately before the sale of a product. This interaction gets credited for the sale. However, most often than not, other channels been involved in the conversion but are not receiving any credit.
The assist interaction is the channel that leaded the prospect to the final channel where the conversion took place. Just like in a hockey game, the player passing the puck to his teammate who scores, assist interaction are really important.
Finally, a channel can also play the role of the first interaction. This is where I believe we might gain some insight on the real impact of your social media strategy. The first interaction is the channel that first brings your company to the attention of the client. It plays a major role but is often disregarded.
Social media tend to fall in the category of first interaction. They do convert, but they don’t do it often has other channel. Taking the example of the chart about the confidence gap, if B2B marketers are using Facebook and expect the same conversion rate as for his other channel, they will be dissatisfied.
In conclusion
I believe that by giving more attention to the contribution channel, marketers could gain insight on how really their channels perform and at which level they do so.
This would prevent the attribution of all the conversion credit only to the channel who brought the last interaction.
While this might not be the absolute answer, I still believe it does hold some ground. Channel contribution gives much more insight into the real channel effectiveness and enables your company to know exactly how are your investments impacting your returns.
Latest posts by Gabriel Touchette
- 5 myths about inbound marketing - 9 September 2014
- 10 Steps to Rock your Facebook campaign - 1 August 2014
- A Day Without Internet - 28 March 2014
- Leadership and Management for Inbound Marketing efforts - 12 March 2014
- Social Media – adoption rates Vs perceived effectiveness - 6 March 2014
