Everything I’m about to say is anecdotal. However, the pattern is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
I haven’t conducted a multi-year research study. I haven’t parsed datasets or reviewed industry-wide analytics dashboards. What I have done is listen to a growing chorus of quiet confessions—marketers, founders, even clients—admitting they’ve stopped trying to drive growth with social media. And here’s the kicker: they’re thriving.
That’s right. Companies with zero social media investment are experiencing remarkable results. They’re not ghosting the internet out of laziness or neglect. They’ve prioritized strategies that are generating real, measurable outcomes—and social isn’t one of them.
But They Could Be Doing So Much Better, Right?
That’s the instinctive reaction from most marketers: imagine how much more these companies could achieve if they just added a robust social media strategy.
Except… that argument doesn’t hold when the numbers say otherwise.
Take one company I know that has grown over 100% year-over-year in a highly competitive space. Not a single executive or employee maintains a social media presence. They attend global conferences, meet face-to-face with prospects, and have a disciplined inside sales team. Their marketing efforts are hyper-targeted, and their pipeline is thriving.
Another company just completed a massive office buildout and is funding its growth internally. Their enterprise integration product has no current competitors. As soon as they show a demo, they close the deal. Social media plays no role in their discovery, sales, or conversion.
They don’t monitor alerts, share updates, or post content. They’ve made a conscious decision to exclude social from their strategy—and they’re still outperforming peers.
And Yet, Social Still Has Its Champions
On the other end of the spectrum, I spoke with a business owner who proudly claimed that social media is the only channel they use.
When I asked what else they had tested, the response was telling: Nothing. We don’t need to.
It’s a fascinating mindset, but it reveals a common problem. If social is the only channel in play, there’s no comparative benchmark. If revenue increases, it gets credit by default. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best—or even a good—channel. It simply means that it’s the only one being measured.
This kind of insular thinking makes it impossible to determine whether results are being driven by social media, despite the glowing narrative surrounding it.
The Vanity Metrics Trap
I’ve seen companies celebrate their growing follower counts and engagement stats—shares, likes, retweets, comments. They generate excitement and enthusiasm internally. The social media team is praised. The graphs are all pointing up.
But when we look under the hood, nothing’s moving the needle. No rise in demo requests. No uptick in downloads. No new qualified leads. Just noise.
We had one client with outstanding social metrics: tens of thousands of followers and a deeply engaged audience. But after a thorough audit, we discovered no measurable correlation between social activity and sales performance.
This disconnect is common.
While social media is getting more attention from B2B marketers, however, these channels contribute an average of less than 5% of all traffic and leads.
DemandGen
That’s a staggering gap between effort and confidence.
What My Experience Shows
I’ve run my experiments. I’ve paid to promote content, driven tens of thousands of users from Facebook to my site, and tested different types of creative, messaging, and targeting.
Nothing converted.
Facebook and Twitter generated visibility, sure. But not revenue. The click-throughs didn’t turn into subscribers, customers, or clients. Meanwhile, direct traffic, SEO, and email continued to outperform social by a wide margin. Time on site, engagement depth, and conversion rate were all higher for non-social sources.
And I’m not alone.
Four Problems with Social Media Marketing
Four consistent roadblocks make social media a tough sell when it comes to directly driving B2B revenue.
- Intent: Your followers aren’t following you because they’re actively shopping. Most are passive, curious, or disengaged. According to Gartner, only 17% of a B2B buyer’s journey is spent meeting with potential suppliers. That leaves little room for low-intent engagement, such as a tweet, to influence the deal.
- Attribution: Social platforms often serve as high-level awareness tools, but tracking conversions from social through to closed revenue is murky. Even with UTM tagging and custom analytics dashboards, attribution remains imperfect. Many interactions occur on dark social—private messages, email shares, or copied links, which aren’t trackable.
- Funnels: Marketers love drawing tidy funnels: awareness, interest, decision, action. But the leap from engagement to conversion is not just long—it’s unpredictable. According to McKinsey, B2B buyers now use 10 or more channels before making a decision. Social might be one of them, but it’s rarely the final one.
- Vanity: Metrics like followers, impressions, and likes feel good. They’re easy to present and easy to grow. But they rarely map to revenue. LinkedIn found that only 2% of marketing-qualified leads are influenced by social media engagement in isolation.
Marketers, Wake Up
I recently spoke with a colleague who told me about a CMO who was let go after consistently reporting vanity metrics to the board. Follower growth, tweet volume, and pageviews were up, but revenue was flat. Eventually, the numbers stopped shielding the strategy.
Another client celebrated their growing social community for months. They were producing beautiful content, actively engaging, and getting industry shoutouts. However, upon reviewing their sales data, we found that the effort had yielded almost nothing. Their best leads continued to come from referrals, SEO, and in-person events.
I’m Not Throwing It Away
I’m not saying social media doesn’t have a role.
It absolutely can support brand awareness, establish trust, and build long-term credibility. It can enhance the customer journey and reinforce your message. It’s invaluable for amplifying thought leadership, distributing content, or keeping top of mind with your audience.
But those are soft benefits, not direct growth levers.
If someone tells you their social strategy is delivering significant results, ask to see the data to verify. Ask how they track leads. Ask where deals originate. Ask how often those efforts are tied to social as the first or last touch.
Chances are, social is playing a supporting role, not leading the charge.
The Bottom Line
Not every business needs social media. For some, it may even be a distraction from more effective strategies.
It’s time for marketers to shift the question from How do we grow our social presence? to Where is our revenue coming from—and how do we do more of that?
If social is part of the answer, invest wisely. If not, don’t force it. The most effective marketing strategies are grounded in outcomes, not assumptions.
Follow the results. Not the likes.
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