• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, December 31, 2014

While the vast majority of business-to-consumer brands are using social media to interact with customers, business-to-business marketers are lagging behind when it comes to using social media, particularly for conducting market and competitive research, according to a new survey of over 100 B2B marketing executives by SiriusDecisions.

Although 95% of business-to-business marketers have created corporate social media accounts, half still are not active on social media on a regular basis, SiriusDecisions found, and just 10% felt they were able to articulate the business value of social media efforts. Turning to social media intelligence in particular, 60% are using a paid social media intelligence tool, but only 15% of these believe they are using the tool optimally, and just 5% of these are using it to track and inform influencer programs. Satisfaction is obviously low, as 30% of the group using a social media intelligence tool said they are looking for a different one.

In terms of goals, in the group using social media intelligence tools, 98% are using it to monitor their brand in the marketplace, 25% are using it for measurement, and just 13% are using it to gather competitive and market data for analysis.

Perhaps as a result of this, social media’s impact on B2B marketing has been slight -- at least in its digital form. Back in November the B2B Demand Generation Benchmark report from SoftwareAdvice found that when it comes to B2B lead generation, the original social media -- good old-fashioned trade shows -- were still the clear winner, with 77% of marketers saying they generated a significant quantity of leads, and 82% saying they generated high-quality leads.

Also popular were referral marketing, in-house email marketing, online video, search engine advertising, and B2B print, radio, or TV ads. The one place where social media marketing stood out for B2B marketers was in perceptions of its low cost, cited by 34% of respondents in the SoftwareAdvice survey.