Social Media Study Reveals $36B In Missed B2B Sales

The debate is divided over whether B2B businesses should be investing in social media. Critics of the move say that suppliers and manufacturers need to focus on their own website, which has become the first point of contact for prospective buyers, and some studies have shown that B2B buyers do not often check social media sites to do their research.

A new study, however, suggests that B2B suppliers could be missing out on billions – yes, billions – of dollars because they are ignoring social media.

B2B Social Media Report released its latest findings on the topic and found that or the world’s top 200 B2B brands, there were more than 70,000 “intent to purchase” mentions of them on social media channels over a single year, meaning social media users were mentioning these brands with the intention of making a purchase.

Less than 1 percent of these mentions, however, led to an engagement by the brand mentioned with the potential customer. According to B2B Social Media Report, that amounts to $36 billion in missed revenue.

According to reports, researchers weeded through social media platforms and message boards to find mentions of “I want to get,” “I’m looking to buy,” and other similar phrases regarding B2B products and services. They found that B2B brands receive an average of 363 of these intent-to-buy mentions a year – nearly one a day – with 23 percent of the mentions coming from business executives.

The researchers also wanted to delve into why these mentions are not leading to a connection between buyer and supplier and, thus, revenue. The report found that while B2B companies are beginning to pay attention to social media, with 76 percent of the firms surveyed on at least one social media platform, they almost exclusively rely on Facebook and Twitter.

But these intent-to-purchase mentions largely occurred on news sites, message forums, blogs and even video or image sites, meaning suppliers are entirely missing these environments.

On the plus side, the study found that social media interactions between brands and buyers are occurring, with more than one-third of B2B companies using hashtags, and one-third using @ replies, to converse with their potential clients.