

The days of B2B businesses generating leads via sales letters and cold calls are long gone. Today, savvy B2B marketers use online marketing to attract qualified leads. But which digital marketing tactics work the best for this purpose?
Some digital lead generation tactics are almost universally employed. For example, 95 percent of B2B marketers surveyed use social media to generate leads, 93 percent use email marketing, and 91 percent use organic search.
Despite ranking tops in popularity as a lead generation tool, social media falls far lower on the scale in terms of effectiveness. Fifty-five percent of B2B marketers say social media generates leads for their companies—far below the 73 percent who say email generates leads and the 70 percent who say organic search does. Paid search generates leads for 54 percent of survey respondents, while display advertising works for 37 percent. The latter two tactics are often harder for small businesses to execute, which may account for their relatively poor showing.
Digging down further into social networks, the survey reports 89 percent of companies use LinkedIn and 86 percent use Twitter. However, LinkedIn is by far the top social network for generating leads, cited by 62 percent of respondents, compared to just 37 percent who say Facebook is effective. Meanwhile, Twitter's effectiveness does not even come close to its popularity: Just 34 percent say Twitter drives leads, while 17 percent say YouTube generates leads.
What type of content works best for B2B marketers at generating leads? Although 82 percent of marketers in the survey publish blog posts, making this the single most common type of content used, blogs aren’t the most effective way to drive leads. Good old-fashioned white papers perform best in lead generation effectiveness, cited by 53 percent of respondents. Half of respondents say webinars generate leads, 44 percent say case studies generate leads, 35 percent say videos generate leads, and 31 percent say infographics do.
What lessons can you take away from these survey results?
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