Today’s customers are learning and talking about products and services via social media. Through interactive conversations, social media offers huge potential for sharing knowledge, to raise brand awareness and to generate new business. As a result, social media has completely changed the landscape of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) marketing, commanding significant budget and resources. Yet despite this, many companies are failing to grasp its increasing relevance for Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing.
Marketing departments can no longer control how a business is perceived externally. Employees, customers, prospects and competitors can openly discuss your business on a variety of online channels. Prospects now have access to a much more representative group of customers and a more balanced view of what they think of you. This puts a premium on transparency. Social media marketing can be very effective because it is authentic. Failing to engage could put your business at a significant disadvantage, especially if your competitors are participating.
Before you embark on a social media campaign it is important to assess the risks. Your organisation needs to be ready to be open and transparent. Figure out what kind of dirty laundry you could potentially expose and make sure your business practices are up to scrutiny. There are many examples of companies falling foul of a misguided forum post or an inappropriate tweet from an employee. To help prevent this, put in place social media policies and give guidance to marketing, sales and customer service representatives on communicating on social media sites. However, this should not be too prescriptive as it will take away authenticity. People sell to people and social media should amplify the personality of the salesperson, within the bounds of what is socially acceptable in business.
Social media marketing provides new opportunities for B2B companies to generate leads and to improve customer satisfaction. Importantly, it enables you to influence people before they form an opinion. This could include prospects, industry analysts and bloggers, and those who have close business relationships with potential customers. People have business acquaintances with individuals who share similar values. If one person concludes that a particular company is the preferred provider, this can become the consensus and those close to them won’t feel the need to reanalyse the decision from scratch. Speak openly about your product – good and bad.
This will include how you compare with your competitors. Answer questions honestly, even if you are weak in certain areas, and you will build trust. This is crucial to winning new customers as a large part of the buying process is completed before customers even talk with a salesperson.
Make sure you understand the challenges your customers face and that your content is useful and interesting. It is easy to set up pages on social media sites but you will need worthwhile content to build and sustain momentum. With a growing number of social media channels it is better to focus on a few. Be selective and invest in the channels that reach your target audience in a meaningful way.
For example, you could use Twitter to distribute regular company announcements and Facebook for more in-depth stories, analysis and visual content. Despite Facebook’s consumer focus, some B2B brands are finding it effective for marketing. Cisco has more than 390,000 fans following its Facebook page which features a community support group where customers can ask specific questions.
While LinkedIn was established for recruitment purposes and for building a network of professional connections, it now has well over a million specialist discussion groups. This allows you to select a particular audience and get involved in conversations that are relevant to your business.
It is self-defeating to over promote yourself, products and services, as people will see through it. The stories that are believable are the genuine voice of your customers. Cultivate a group of people who like using your product and who will talk positively about their experience of working with you. Don’t expect all reports to be glowing recommendations. The aim should be to get a balanced view with more positive comments than negative.
Many B2B businesses have shied away from adopting social media marketing because they feel they don’t have the resources needed to manage it. However, there are many tools that can help streamline the workload. Social media management platforms enable businesses to integrate campaigns, removing duplication of work and ensuring content is consistent across social media channels. They can automate repetitive activities, organise the timing of releases across different time zones, help manage responses and offer a raft of analytical tools.
To be effective, social media needs to be coordinated with sales and marketing objectives. Integrating with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems allows leads to be pushed to your sales team or for customer feedback to be forwarded to customer services for action. Generating real leads is the best way to demonstrate the success of a social campaign and taking online conversations private can prevent negative comments from escalating.
Marketing departments need to get to grips with the need to be transparent and should view social media marketing as an essential part of marketing strategy. Put time and effort into finding the social channels that work for you and in generating content that is of value to your customers and you could discover a new revenue driver. Social media is here to stay and it is time to start evaluating its potential.
By David Carratt, Founder and Director, Vie Carratt.