How 21 B2B Firms Are Generating Big Wins Through Social Media

Do businesses really get significant client wins and profit from their social media?

We wanted to prove that lots of firms are winning big - and so spent the end of last year interviewing ~130 business owners and directors to uncover their experiences with social media.

From those conversations, we were able to uncover lots of examples of transformative business wins being achieved - which I'm sharing below. Keep in mind that these are all modest-sized B2B businesses and that the kind of time/money they have invested to get these results would be realistic for most small business owners to replicate.

In other words, there’s no compelling reason these results couldn’t be replicated by a business like yours.

Which of these examples sounds similar to your business - and therefore represents the kind of results you could aspire to achieve?

• An accounting business that has historically won its business through referrals. Did a social media mastermind course during Covid and has been active on social media since. The business has quoted for ￡400k of fees and won ￡260k of fees, generated purely through social media.
• A Leadership training & consulting business that in one full financial year generated 32 of their 36 non-referral client wins directly from LinkedIn, with those client wins resulting in them delivering their services to a global client base.
• A strategy and transformation consultancy using quarterly events as a way of meeting potential new clients, now getting 30% - 50% of their attendees via LinkedIn marketing (making social media a critical part of their sales pipeline)

• A recruitment agency whose founder describes them as “a social media company that sells recruitment”. 90% of their income comes from social media and associated initiatives (eg. podcasts & webinars) that get them into conversations with new clients as well as being constantly on the radar of existing clients.
• A branding consultant who’s been approached by journalists as a result of their social media presence and appeared in Success magazine, The Wall St Journal, and Fast Company - to name just a few. This has generated many paid speaking engagements and numerous client wins.

• A recruitment agency whose visibility on social media - especially for awards they’ve won - has been a significant source of inbound client enquiries and made social media a key source of client wins.
• An industry federation that was able to more than double their membership base from 126 member companies to 280+ member companies - entirely through LinkedIn / social media marketing. (Note: while achieving this membership growth, they also raised average membership fees by 50%, so the revenue growth has been even more spectacular).
• A recruitment agency that’s won many clients through social media, both directly and also from the word of mouth effect that their social media presence has created for them in their industry.
• Customer service focused businesses achieving significant cost savings - as the average call center cost is $6 per call, whereas the average social media customer service interaction costs only $1.
• A consulting firm winning most of their business via social media. By using a mix of research-based marketing, content-based marketing and event-based marketing, they have been able to win most of their client engagements via social media; with the success of all three of those activities being driven by what they do on social media and the resulting meetings that these activities get them with C-Suite decision makers.
• A strategic marketing consultant who consistently wins a third of all their clients from LinkedIn.
• A PPE and Medical Supplies business that used LinkedIn to get all the key relationships they needed to establish themselves in each of the new markets they have entered.
• A training provider that’s had 2 important client wins and multiple speaking opportunities result from inbound enquiries on LinkedIn, plus far more client wins via more proactive outreach on social media.
• A video production company that has won most of its client base through LinkedIn (with YouTube as the other main contributor of client wins).
• A recruitment business that launched a completely new line of business post-COVID, securing all clients for this new service and placing 200 candidates entirely through social media.
• A business attending a trade expo and having made a significant investment to attend, used social media ads to generate 600k minutes of video watch time in the run-up to the expo and thereby be the most visible exhibitor at the show. Which resulted in them generating $21m in qualified pipeline from the Expo vs. the $5m of qualified pipeline they had targeted.
• A startup business advisor who gets most of their business from LinkedIn, either directly from LinkedIn or with the site having played a part in that client choosing to work with her.
• A systems integration consultancy got into conversations with The White House through social media and subsequently won government contracts from that initial interaction; with another similar business win coming about from similar exchanges with the Department of Defense.
• A neurodiversity trainer who wins almost all their business via social media, principally LinkedIn. The credibility of having been a speaker at TEDx, plus the social proof of other people posting about how great she is as a speaker, makes potential new clients get in touch with her via LinkedIn.
• A law firm solicitor who was averaging working with 3 clients a month subsequently raised that to 9 clients a month within just a few months of investing intensively in a LinkedIn strategy.
• A professional services firm that won the majority of its 150 client wins over a 4 year period from the strategies being deployed on social media.

Quite a list, isn’t it?! But it’s not all good news, though.

More than three-quarters of the businesses we spoke to really aren’t getting ANY tangible results from social media.

So what are the successful firms doing - and what are some of the pitfalls to avoid? You can read the full research here - "What Impact Can Social Media Have on B2B Businesses? " - and you're welcome to DM me here if you'd like to discuss how your firm could improve its results.

P.S. feel free to share your own experiences or ask questions in the comments.