75% of B2B buyers research your company on social media in addition to your website. Here’s why you should care.
This might just blow your mind:
A recently completed Social Buying Study from International Data Corporation (IDC) concludes that 75% of the business-to-business (B2B) buyers studied and 84% of C-level/vice president executives use social media to support purchase decisions.
Truth be told (and even crazier) is the study is from late 2014. One can assume that the number has increased — even moderately — from that time. Even tempering those numbers a bit still means that most of your senior-level customers and prospects take the time to look beyond your website to dig a bit deeper — and your company profile on LinkedIn and your Tweets are on their list.
That statistic is quite shocking to read, but in practice, maybe less surprising. We all spend time online researching each other, as we like to be as well informed as possible about the companies and people we buy from and sell to. Timely, relevant information is widely available, so why not use it?
I’m not going to dig too deeply into all of the social media channels here. The point of this statistic is, hopefully, to show you that your company most likely underestimates the need for a sustained, multichannel, robust approach to marketing that creates large numbers of connections and followers, and then grows that number over time.
You never know who might choose to follow you, but statistically, it could be someone very important to your business.