B2B Social Media Marketing Strategies that Work
If you believe that any company on earth is going
to give you a competent social media marketing strategy that actually works
well, then you are a carrot. If it truly
worked well then they would use it themselves and keep it a secret. It’s like the adverts that promise you can
make xx amount at home, I mean come-on, really?
If that were true then why are they not doing it and keeping the money
to themselves?
I have researched through some of B2B social media
marketing gurus and come up with some very, very good points that you should
consider when you craft your social media marketing strategy.
B2B (Business to Business) marketers were asked about social networks being
used in their companies. Respondents said, in order of importance, Facebook,
LinkedIn and Twitter, followed by YouTube and blogs.
In each network there is
a use. Different marketing professionals
use different social media according to their different objectives such
as:
LinkedIn for lead generation and traffic
Facebook for promotion and branding
Twitter for promoting with short and concise
text to create a "buzz"
Social networking to see who is talking about
them
YouTube for instructional videos and for
demonstrations, technical support and training
Blogs for SEO and corporate content
writing
Currently the favorite
social media platform among B2B marketers when asked, is LinkedIn. Others may respond with Facebook, blogs,
Twitter and online communities. It is
interesting to read that Facebook is known by most B2B marketers as the channel
to which most users pay attention. This
may be due to peoples’ nature of repeatedly checking it and peoples’ tendency
to flip through Facebook on their phone when they have time to kill. Blogs and online communities have been
referred to as having the most commitment and customer feedback. Many marketers perceive Twitter as a way to
create traffic to their website, and make the promotion of products and events.
Reality being what it is, the use of social media
in marketing has nothing to do with technology.
These marketers are people who interact and take time to produce content
to reach markets and other businesses of like mind.
The greatest obstacles to the adoption of social
media in marketing are:
Lack of good resources because some companies
will not commit to the medium fully
Poor indices to measure success and performance
indicators
Lack of genuine knowledge of social media
Resistance from the top (again some senior staff
won’t commit to this “flash in the pan”)
Poor indices to measure
success and performance indicators are a very important point. Studies have shown that about seventy five
percent of current B2B marketers do not keep any measure of social marketing
ROI (Return on investment) of their strategies.
This indicates a reactive approach, and an ignorance of social media and
more importantly, an ignorance of their audience/customer base.
Marketing through social
media as a component of integrated marketing is part of an overall B2B
marketing. It is a very good way of
having other companies come to you, instead of you cold calling them. B2B marketers’ main obstacle is a lack of
good resources to effectively execute marketing through social media. Added to this is the poor indices to measure
success and performance indicators, which indicates a lack of professional
knowledge and integration of social media.
