What Is B2B Social Media Marketing?
B2B is an acronym for business to business, and it basically means we are talking about businesses selling to other businesses. Business to business (B2B) social media marketing uses social channels such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to educate and market your company and services to potential and existing customers.
Social Media Ad Targeting is much harder for B2B than B2C
Often marketers at business to consumer B2C companies use social channels to reach consumers with paid adverts. However unlike b2c when selling a b2b product or service we must note that most of population will not typically buy your product or services, only other business decision makers in the right industries will be buyers. With B2B marketing it becomes not only about delivering a compelling message but targeting that message to those few who can actually buy our products or services.
A good example of this would be if we owned a company selling insurance for building and construction companies. It is likely that we have only 2 financial decision makers within the whole company, only the CEO and CFO would be able to make the purchase decision within a typical company hierarchy. This same construction company could have 3000 employees doing other jobs and all on multiple social media platforms. If we targeted all 3000 employees with ads, that would mean that only 2/3000 = 0.066% of our views would target users who had the ability to buy our products. Therefore targeting potential customers becomes very important in the b2b marketing space.
The need to think strategically
B2B marketers must think more strategically to target their message and put it in front of senior decision makers. Doing this can be of high value as a typical b2b sale is much larger and profitable than the average b2c sale and can lead to multiple further sales and a long-term business relationship.
All social media networks may have a place in your strategy, as once you produce content you can easily copy it to multiple channels at little cost. However, the amount of attention and effort you will give to some social networks may look drastically different for a b2b social media strategy than a consumer-focused b2c plan.
Does Social Media Work For B2B Companies?
Social Media marketing may not be the first thought that pops into your head when it comes to marketing and selling to other companies. However, you need to have your message where your potential customers eyeballs are, and social media has become increasingly popular with B2b buyers and decision makers. Today having a social media strategy has become an essential part of any B2B marketing plan.
These days, sales meetings, product education, and business decisions all happen online. Social media can help build connections and influence that in turn will bring in lucrative contracts.
If you don’t have a social media strategy for your B2B business, you’re one step behind the competition. Having a great social presence is one of the best ways to build your brand and put your products and services in front of your next customer.
What Social Media Networks Work Best For B2B Social Media Marketing?
LinkedIn is still the king
When rating the best B2B social media platforms, LinkedIn is often the clear winner.
CMI report shows that 97% of B2B companies use LinkedIn in their content marketing strategy.
LinkedIn is a great social media platform for b2b business to business marketing because it provides a lot of information about companies, employers, employees, and job seekers.
This allows you to target your content, adverts, and connection requests to exact companies, industries, geographical locations, and job titles. This means on LinkedIn you can directly target the people who are likely to be able and willing buyers of your products.
LinkedIn Is The Best Place To Find New Leads
LinkedIn is often referred to as the best B2B social networking platform for lead generation. This is because you have access to the entire company structure of your potential customers company, including all their employees job titles and departments.
With the LinkedIn InMail paid message feature, where you can contact qualified prospects directly for a small fee. Building targeted leads on LinkedIn should be a no brainer opportunity for most b2b companies looking to gain new customers and expand growth.
Twitter Because CEOs Love To Tweet!
Many B2b companies have taken to using Twitter as a place to generate leads, with successful results. In a survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute, results showed that 87% of B2B companies use Twitter. Twitter campaigns should form a part of any B2B business social media marketing strategy, as more likely than not many of your customers are regular users of the service.
Marketing leaders and their CEOs understand that it’s an efficient and quick way to get out their message out. However, being careful with the message and not miss-communicating in a tweet can often be an issue.
You can also use twitter to remarket that means to reach users with ads who have already visited your website. You can also specifically target users by uploading your own list of prospect email addresses and phone numbers.
YouTube To Educate And Inform Potential Customers
YouTube is not only a great site to watch videos it has become the second largest search engine in the world and has more than one billion users. While originally YouTube was often seen as a video tool for amateurs, it has become a media powerhouse that you shouldn’t ignore. B2C companies have embraced youtube, but B2B businesses have been slower to jump on board.
One of the reasons for this is that videos on YouTube tend to be for a mass audience, and videos getting more views and likes will often do better in YouTube search. Business to business educational or product videos often don’t get as many views as entertainment videos, but just 1 view by the right person can make a huge difference. This is because business to business b2b sales are typically much higher in value with relationships that can last for years entailing multiple purchases.
Are Your Potential Customers Using YouTube To Answer Their Business Questions?
Since YouTube is the second biggest search engine that means your potential customers are looking for answers to their b2b questions on the platform. You don’t want to let your competitors answer their questions first!
For b2b companies, video helps explain complex topics and drive conversions through education and engagement getting customers into and down your sales-funnel. Before your competitors stake claims on all the relevant questions your potential customers are asking on YouTube its important you get your YouTube video strategy together.
Facebook, Is It Only For B2C?
Still the largest social network in the world Facebook is an attractive place to do online marketing for many businesses. There are at least 40 million small business Facebook pages and rising.
Organizations of all sizes have come to appreciate Facebook as important marketing tool that is consistent updated with new innovations. The reason Facebook is such an important marketing hub for many companies can be told in the raw numbers:
- 1.2 billion people use Facebook each day.
- 1.8 billion active Facebook users.
- Facebook Messenger has more than one billion active users.
- Of the social networks, Facebook refers the most traffic to websites.
- The average Facebook user now spends about 50 minutes per day on the platform.
- 38.6% of the world’s population uses Facebook.
Facebook has continually been the go to social network for many B2C product marketers, however its often been much less popular with B2B marketers.
The Problem With Facebook For B2B Companies
There are two reasons why Facebook advertising isn’t considered as effective for B2B businesses
Low Buyer Intent
This simply means that a person browsing Facebook isn’t usually there to buy anything. Rather it’s social and personal. So, if an advert that isn’t lifestyle related comes up, it’s unlikely to receive much engagement. It has been seen though, and that brand awareness alone is great if the viewer is a potential customer.
Lack of Targeting options
As we stated earlier for B2b companies targeting is more important as only a few decision makers within our industry or any company can say yes to buy our products or services. On Facebook unlike LinkedIn people are less likely to put accurate job titles and company information that we could use to identify them as potential customers. This distinct lack of targeting professional options makes it much harder for us to get a return on our marketing spend.
Every B2B Company Should At Least Do The Basics On Facebook!
It can be more difficult to get returns on Facebook for b2b marketers, however every b2b company should do at least the basics. Create a Facebook page for your business and aggregate content from other platforms such as blog posts or articles to your Facebook page. This allows your potential customers to follow you on another platform that they may spend more time using than LinkedIn.
On Facebook B2B Marketers Need To Think Outside The Box
One great way B2b marketers can use Facebook is to use retargeting tools. This allows us to target people who have already viewed or website, expressed interest in our product or are already in our CRM on Facebook with ads.
Another great way b2b marketers can reach prospects on Facebook is to use a tool such as ‘look alike audiences’. If you have already built a solid audience to your Facebook page, you can use a tool that will use algorithmic matching to find users with similar attributes to your existing followers. It’s not 100% accurate and can only use the datapoints Facebook has available from its users however it may be powerful enough to find you new potential b2b buyers.
Get Smart With Your B2B Social Media Goals
Whatever social media mix you decide is best for your company your social media strategy needs to be based off goals in order to be successful. Define specific measurable KPIs for your social media effort. It doesn’t matter whether your goals are based on brand awareness or customer acquisition, it is key to have these goals to measure success later
Social Media Marketing KPI’s
To determine what the KPI’s will be you need to decide what success means to your business. Are you trying to use social media as a direct sales channel? Do you want to increase your reach and awareness of your company and its products and services? Knowing the answer to these questions will help you decide what metrics to keep track of.
For example, if your business is looking for leads, metrics like visits to your site and or submitting your contact form are important. For brand awareness, it’s more vital to consider engagement, reach, and impressions.
Remember B2B Social Marketing Is Still Social!
If all your company is doing on social media is pushing products at people you will unlikely be able to get engagements and conversations started.
Seeing product ads can often be disruptive and nobody wants to interact with a post that pulls them away from what they want their social feed to look like.
The key for your company to stay relevant on social is to engage in the conversations your target audience is interested in, even if it isn’t directly helping to sell your product or service.
