Think Twitter is a Waste of Time? 41% Got a Customer from Twitter

Results are finally starting to come in!  Hubspot just released their 2010 State of Inbound Marketing report, which addresses the effectiveness of social media in generating business.  Below are some of the key findings and the link to the full report.  There’s also a free, live webinar on Thursday, February 18, 2010, at 1:00 p.m. EST (click here).

Key Findings

• Cost per Lead:  Outbound Marketing Dominated Company – $332 vs. Inbound Marketing Dominated Company – $134
• For 2010, small businesses (1-10 employees) plan to spend 44% of their lead generation budgets on inbound marketing while medium & large businesses (50 or more employees) only plan to spend 31% of their lead generation budgets on inbound marketing.
• 85% of business find their company blogs to be “useful” or better (up from 71% in 2009)
• 71% of businesses find Twitter to be “useful” or better (huge jump from 39% in 2009)
• 10% of business find MySpace “useful” or better (no surprise – down from 20% in 2009)
• Businesses acquired one or more customers directly from social media:  41% from Twitter, 41% from LinkedIn, 44% from Facebook, and 46% from their company blog
• Facebook is more effective for B2C businesses – 68% of B2C businesses acquired a customer directly from Facebook (33% B2B)
• LinkedIn is more effective for B2B businesses – 45% of B2B businesses acquired a customer directly from LinkedIn (26% B2C)
• Customer acquisition through blogs is directly related to frequency of posting.  100% of businesses who post to their blog multiple times per day acquired a customer (90% daily, 69% 2-3 times/week, 58% weekly, 38% monthly, and 13% less than monthly)
• Only 3% of companies post multiple times per day and 38% post weekly

These are amazing findings! How are you going to change your inbound marketing strategies in light of these results?

Get the full report by clicking here!