Report: 61% of Marketers Say They Generate Leads via Social Media Marketing

Marketers may have a tough time measuring the precise digit-based return on investment of their social media marketing efforts, but they still reap a number of benefits from those campaigns. According to Social Media Examiner’s “2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses,” exposure, traffic and insight are the top three benefits of social media marketing.

The survey of 3,025 marketers found that 97 percent of respondents say they use social media marketing, while 86 percent say social media platforms are important for their business. If the social channel is popular amongst marketers and is apparently important to so many of them, the question that begs to be asked is, “Why?”

Social Media Examiner shares that 89 percent of respondents say that they get increased exposure from their social media marketing, while 75 percent say they get increased traffic and 69 percent say they get marketplace insight.

Other popular benefits noted by respondents include developing loyal fans (65 percent) generating leads (61 percent), improving search rankings (58 percent) and growing business partnerships (54 percent).

Michael A. Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, notes that the order of these benefits has remains mostly unchanged, except for developing loyal fans, which leapfrogged generating leads.

Stelzner also examined each of these benefits more closely to look at how factors like time spent and years of experience affected results. When it comes to generating leads, nearly 60 percent of marketers with 1-2 years of social media experience are able to generate leads via that channel. This number grows as the years of experience rises.

Meanwhile, about 64 percent of marketers who spend 6-10 hours per week with social media say they get lead-gen benefits from their social media efforts. This number rises about 10 percentage points for marketers who spend 11-15 hours with social media each week.

Earlier this year, a study from Optify found that Twitter accounted for 82 percent of leads generated via social media, while Facebook and LinkedIn each accounted for 9 percent of these leads. The report also noted that the average conversion rate for social media in 2012 was 1.2 percent, with Twitter displaying a 2.2 percent conversion rate.

Here are some resources with tips on how to improve lead-gen efforts on the following platforms:

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