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Drilling further down into the data from Hushly's Comprehensive Data Analysis Benchmark Report of B2B Landing Page & Content Performance reveals that performance trends for vendors varied. We used UTM data to really dive into the details so we could drill down and give useful information.

Traffic Source Analysis

In this analysis we look at three sources of traffic: Search, Retargeting, and Social. (All other sources – email, ABM ad vendors, referral, and so forth are listed in the Other category). Also, we did include some interesting wild cards that we saw show up in the data so keep an eye out for those nuggets of information.

We do have statistically relevant data on ABM ad vendors (6sense, RollWorks, Demandbase, Terminus, and a few others) who drove traffic and we analyzed the data to see who performed the best and worst across a variety of performance metrics but as with all data there's clear winners and losers so knowing that and the fact that we partner with a lot of them we made the decision to hold that data for now and perhaps publish something separate down the road that's specific to ABM.

Total Traffic by Source

Of the traffic sources we focused on, search is far and away the most significant, accounting for 30% of all traffic to customer website and landing pages. Retargeting is 4% of the traffic and social media is 3%. (All other sources represent 63% of all traffic.) More than half of all social traffic originates from mobile devices, while more than 40% of search traffic and more than 30% of retargeted traffic also come from mobile.

Engagement

Retargeted traffic has the highest engagement rate of these sources, at 64.2%. This is understandable, as these are individuals who have previously visited the customer's site and have been encouraged (via targeted advertising) to return. In comparison, social traffic has a 45% engagement and search 32%.

As to engagement lift (the percent of visitors who abandon a form but then re-engage with a Hushly MicroForm), search traffic exhibits a 911% lift. Retargeted traffic gets an 857% lift, and social traffic only sees a 161% lift.

Conversion

Traffic from social media sources has a significantly higher conversion rate than other types of traffic. The conversion rate for social sources is 17.2%, compared to 3.1% for search and 1.1% for retargeted traffic. The 17% average conversions from Social Media are amazing. However, we did have one wild card in the data that showed up which blew away the 17.2% conversion rate. Salesforce App Exchange saw a 60% conversion rate on average with statistically relevant traffic in the 10's of thousands of sessions so not quite the millions we saw for social but definitely worth a hat tip. So evidently if you advertise on app exchange that audience is not only engaged but converting extremely well so hats off to salesforce app exchange and our customers who had some amazing conversions stats.

Conversion

Leads

As a reminder leads are opted-in, enriched, and human-verified. Overall, social traffic results in the highest percentage of net new leads, at 74%, followed by search (70.8%) and retargeting (63.2%).

Retargeting, however, produces the highest lead quality lift (89.9%) and in this case that means Hushly blocked 89.9% of the leads as they were fake emails so traffic quality from retargeting is not great. Lead quality lift from search traffic (76.2%) and social traffic (70.5%).

Search Engine Analysis

The data next drills down into traffic from the five major search sources – in alphabetical order, Bing, Google AdWords, Google Display, Quora, and Reddit. Many of us on staff were surprised to see Reddit and Quora as large traffic generators and even more surprised when we saw how engaged that traffic was with the content and then we were blown away with the actual conversion numbers by both of those as they flew past the traditional search players we b2b marketers love so dearly (google).

Engagement

When it comes to engagement from search sources, Quora leads the pack with a 68.5% engagement rate. Reddit is number-two with 40.6% engagement, followed by Google Display (39.1%), Bing (27.2%), and Google AdWords (24.9%).

Google Display has the biggest content engagement lift, at 2023%, followed by Quora (1037%), Bing (728%), Google AdWords (531%), and Reddit (147%).

Conversion

Despite Quora's lead in engagement, Reddit has the highest conversion rate (8.3%). Quora is number-two at 6.1%, followed by Google AdWords (3%), Bing (1.9%), and Google Display (1.8%).

Social Media Analysis

Engagement

Surprisingly, the social media with the highest percent of traffic engaging with content is Instagram, at 53.8% engagement. Facebook closely follows at 50%, with LinkedIn and Twitter trailing at 42.6% and 41.5%, respectively.

Of these major social media, Twitter receives the largest engagement lift from Hushly's additional content offers, with a whopping 528% lift rate.

Conversion

Facebook takes the top position in conversions with a 20.5% conversion rate. It's followed by LinkedIn (16%) and Twitter (13.3%). In this data, Instagram did not deliver any conversions. When we asked about the types of campaigns our customers were running on Instagram they all said brand campaigns and awareness level activities so the goals weren't conversions so for all intensive purposes that Instagram traffic is engaging and completely consumed the content as all of it was un-gated.

Many b2b marketers were surprised to see Facebook take the lead in both engagement and conversions over LinkedIn. As we don't have any b2c businesses in our customer base this was real data that shows Facebook works and works well for b2b marketers.

Leads

Looking at the percent of net new leads, all three social media companies had strong performance. (Instagram didn't create any new leads.) The numbers were close, with Facebook at 77.2%, LinkedIn at 72.9%, and Twitter at 68.1%. To put that in perspective three out of 4 contacts from Facebook and LinkedIn were brand new to our customers MAP & CRM. Those are great numbers for companies who are growth oriented.

Lead quality lift was similarly close, with Facebook at 73.9%, Twitter at 69.6% and LinkedIn at 68.3%.

Retargeting Analysis

Finally, the Hushly report analyzed performance by retargeting source. Retargeting sources use cookies to present previous visitors with ads for the customer when they visit other sites, and represent a highly efficient way to re-expose them to the site's content. The major retargeting sources are, in alphabetical order, Edelman, Facebook, Google AdWords, Google Display, LinkedIn, and RollWorks.

Engagement

There is a wide disparity in terms of engagement from retargeting sources. Google AdWords had the highest engagement rate at 69.9%, with LinkedIn (61.5%) also performing well. RollWorks with a 38.1% engagement rate, followed by Facebook (37.7%), and Google Display (just 16.5%).

You might ask yourself the question what is Edelman doing in here, they are a marketing agency and a large one at that. Indeed they are but companies who use Hushly are using them and more importantly building UTM structures calling them out so since we had the data and its was statistically relevant in the 100's of thousands of sessions we figured why not include them. Now we don't know what traffic combinations they used to drive traffic but they had some respectable numbers nevertheless so we now have verifiable results this agency is delivering... with of course the help from Hushly!

Conversion

Conversion rates for retargeting sources were all over the proverbial map. LinkedIn was highest with a 30.8% conversion rate, with Facebook at number-two with 18.9% and RollWorks following at 11.2%. The other three sources had rates in the low-single digits: Google Display at 2.9%, Edelman at 2.1%, and Google AdWords at just 0.9%. (Note that Google AdWords had the highest engagement rate but the lowest conversion rate – a significant gap between engagements and conversions.)

Leads

In terms of net new leads, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google AdWords, and RollWorks all performed well, with rates above 55%. Google Display’s rate was about half the leaders (33%).

Edelman was 0% so we dug into that one a bit and found out these were upsell and cross sell campaigns mostly with known contacts so no new contacts weren't the objective. That's why it pays to understand the data not just read it which our customers do.

NEXT REPORT

Post-Conversion Analysis

Where do converted leads come from and what behaviors is Hushly seeing?