13 min read
Business-to-business marketing or B2B marketing refers to marketing products or services to other businesses or organizations instead of customers. B2b marketing is a distinct form of marketing that requires intelligent strategies to target potential companies or organizations. The biggest misconception regarding this type of marketing is that it is treated exactly like any other kind of marketing, which focuses on targeting consumers, due to which b2b marketing is somewhat peculiar for businesses. It is essential to understand how b2b marketing is different and create strategies accordingly.
The competition in this field is enormous and requires effective strategies to make any business succeed. Organizations looking for potential companies to partner with need thorough planning in order to attract companies. In most cases, organizations are already in partnership and refuse replacement. However, with technological advancements, and the spread of social media globally, marketing has been made a lot more efficient, reliable, and useful. Though it still needs strategies, marketing on social media can be one of the most powerful means of marketing for any organization. You can master b2b social marketing through some research and guidance, ensuring that your organization and the products/services offered are subjected to a larger audience, ultimately increasing your company’s profit and sales.
How to do Social Media Marketing for B2B
B2b social media marketing requires you to draw some primary strategies to act on. Following are some of the potential b2b social media marketing strategies that you can adopt for your organization:
Set your goals
Outlining the goals for marketing is essential. It helps in determining what you are striving for. Either you want to promote the company’s website or generate more traffic towards its blog or want a higher audience reach. Depending on the goal, you can choose which social platform you want to use. Every social platform marketing has its benefits. It offers multiple promotional techniques such as paid promotions etc., to ensure that your company’s blog or website reaches the desired amount of audience. Once these goals are set, it is best to organize them by writing them down and answering the crucial questions, such as ‘Who the target audience is?’, ‘Which platform is to be used?’, ‘What do to aim at achieving through the promotion?’ etc.
Stay updated on competitors
Through social media, it has become easier to stay updated about what your competitors are up to. It is important to be well-aware of your competitors and their strategies to market their products or services. Most of the time, competitors can serve as an inspiration for you, and the method they opt for can work for you as well. This does not refer to plagiarizing their strategies. Most competitors’ strategies can be modified and used for your organization as the potential audience is mainly the same. Another benefit of staying updated is that you can prey on their weaknesses and try to incorporate in your own b2b social marketing what apparently seems to be missing in the competitors’ strategies. There tools, such as this one from BuzzSumo, that will help you stay up to date with what your competitors are up to on social media:
Share Creative content
The content you share on your company’s social platforms determines the marketing strategies’ success or failure. It is necessary to share your original ideas, unique and appealing content that is creative enough to attract the audience towards your organization’s blog or website. There are endless websites available for content creation inspiration, which help you create unique and unorthodox content for your social media that stand out from the rest.
Perform SEO
Search engine optimization, better known as SEO, refers to the promotion of your website or blog on search engines such as Google, etc., to ensure that your website appears on top of the search results relevant to your company or business. This improves both the quality and quantity of the traffic directed towards your website. Search engine optimization is one of the most appealing marketing on social media and can be totally free or even paid.
However, effective SEO requires knowledge and expertise in the area. SEO enables web pages to be optimized and become easily discoverable on search engines. It is well-known that search engines such as Google are the most widely used websites, and anything sort of marketing strategy involving google or other search engines can work wonders for your company. However, SEO might be a concept hard for you to grasp and even harder to conduct independently. But with the help of any SEO professional, you can easily enhance the appearance of your organization’s website on search engines and immediately improve your website’s reach and the quantity of traffic directed towards it.
Did you know??? About 64% of marketers actively invest time in search engine optimization (SEO).What’s more, HubSpot was able to increase its number of monthly organic search views of existing blog posts that were optimized by an average of 106%. (HubSpot)
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Don’t restrict yourself to one platform
Most organizations are under the false belief that marketing on just one platform is enough to ensure better traffic on their website. However, it should be considered that each media platform has its own and distinct audience. By marketing on just one platform, you are decreasing the chance of reaching a larger potential audience. The basic b2b strategy for social media is to make sure your organization has a presence on every platform. Most companies keep themselves confined to LinkedIn only, as it is the only well-known business-oriented social platform. Though the leads that LinkedIn provides are appealing, it is still not enough to make sure your organization achieves all the marketing goals initially planned.
(Image Credit: Artillery)
According to recent research, LinkedIn is 63% efficient in marketing.
In comparison, other platforms such as Twitter (55%), Youtube (48%), Vimeo (40%), etc., also have a relatively fair share of effectiveness in marketing. This is why it is better to create an identity for your organization on all media platforms and not limit yourself to just one. Most b2b companies have started to think beyond LinkedIn and are effectively using other platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, etc.
FACT: During a survey, 25% of responding social media marketers at B2B companies stated they used Pinterest to market their businesses. (HubSpot)
Take creative approaches
Along with being an effective and reliable means of marketing, social media also offers massive competition. Any organization using dull or boring content can easily be left out in the social media market. Thus, it is crucial to opt for creative approaches when it comes to marketing your website on the web. Most people on social media are looking for a way to kill time rather than purchase products or services. And any organization focusing solely on their own products and promoting content that explains how great their own products are can be judged as useless or uninteresting.
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The content you choose to share must appeal to the needs as well as the emotions of the customers. Therefore the best social media strategy for b2b business is to create content that keeps the viewers interested. For example, short films, story-based short videos, and creative photographs can be shaped to be both exciting and promotional. This approach can also form a positive relationship with the audience, making them believe that your product or service is just precisely what they need. Once appealed, it will become easier for you to find b2b companies to partner with.
Form an identity
Forming an identity on social media is also essential if you aim to use social media for marketing purposes. Any organization unknown to the public will not be able to effectively market themselves without initially creating a name and identity for themselves. To make this happen, you must formally introduce yourself, your organization, and employees on the media platform. Along with this, you must also share the goals, achievements, and contributions that your b2b company has gained so far. This helps the audience learn about your organization, the products/service, and its purpose. Your identity on social media plays a vital role in the marketing of your organization. For example:
(Image Credit: Lucidpress)
Put experts in charge
As plain and simple marketing on social media seems, it still requires an expert to get it right. And if you have doubts about your ability to manage social platforms, it is well-advised to put someone with the expertise in charge. It can be anyone from your employees. If none of your employees is qualified enough, you can always hire a professional to manage the b2b social media for you. This has multiple benefits. Firstly, the expert will make sure all your desired goals are achieved. Secondly, he/she will be in charge of sharing content, interacting with the customers, and other essential social tasks while you are busy or don’t have the time to keep up with the social media tasks. In this way, your website or blog will always be active and efficient, whether you are available or not.
Consider introducing user-generated content
User-generated content on social media refers to videos, images, texts, or visual posts shared by other people rather than the company itself. This is a popular method of marketing products and even services on social media. Most companies send their products in the form of PR packages to influential people such as celebrities or social media influencers. They also ask them to review the products on social media. The organization then shares the reviews or responses of the celebrities or influencers onto their own social media, making the company seem a lot more reliable and authentic.
By incorporating this strategy, you drive the traffic from the selected person’s media platform to your own. And if the person recommends your product or service, you will see an instant boost in the sales as well. B2b companies can take this approach by reaching out to the owners of other b2b organizations and offering them their own products or services as a way of forming a positive relationship from which both the companies can benefit. If your approach is appealing enough for the other person, you can easily convince the b2b organization to partner with your company.
Remain consistent
Consistency is one of the essential elements of social media promotions. The platform chosen will market your products or services as long as you remain active and regularly make new posts or share blogs on the forum. Suppose you decide to stop posting all of a sudden. In that case, your website or blog will be included in the rusted and dusted community of social media where no traffic is generated due to lack of activity. By remaining active on b2b social media, you ensure that the updates regarding your organization are regularly delivered to the public. There are tools available to help you stay consistent, for example a social media scheduling tool:
(Image Credit: Buffer)
Moreover, a well-active blog or website attracts more audience than an inactive one. An updated website will always be far more appealing than an old-fashioned one that cannot even educate the public regarding your recent activities. This will automatically lead the potential organizations to assume that your company is not reliable enough to work with.
Highlight your employees
The public loves an organization that appreciates its own employees. Therefore it is necessary to bring forth and highlight your employees and their achievements. This educates the public regarding the potential of your employees. Any b2b company that sees massive potential in your employees will tend to think of the benefits that your employees’ new ideas and creativity can bring. Moreover, it motivates your employees to work harder and better. This approach also forms a relationship between your employees and the public. By highlighting your employees’ efforts, you can better understand your organization’s purpose and goals. Any organization that is good to its employees will also attract more people to work with them. For instance:
(Image Credit: TopRank Blog)
Offer support
A reliable organization is always available to offer support and to answer all the queries of its customers. Similarly, any b2b business that aims at being reliable must always provide support to its audience. Social media enables you to communicate with the audience effectively. By taking advantage of this, you can form a positive relationship with your audience by offering support, answering FAQs, and being updated on your product or service’s recent reviews. Many large b2b organizations have separate social media teams to handle the platforms, remain in touch with the customers, and always support them.
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Engage in conversation
Keep your website or social platforms as positive as possible, and encourage conversation both publicly and privately with the audience. Media such as Twitter, Facebook, etc., are excellent for engaging in public discussions with the customers. This forms a strong relationship between your organization and the audience. It is also one of the most reliable b2b strategies for social media and is practiced globally by many popular organizations.
Customize the content for each platform
Most of the content posted on one social platform might be appropriate to be posted on the other one. For instance, Twitter posts contain hashtags that cannot be used on LinkedIn or Facebook. And so, it is necessary for you to customize the content you wish to share according to the social media you are using. Hashtags are a popular way to create reach on Twitter, while paid promotions are highly effective on Facebook and Instagram, short-clips and videos are advised to be posted on YouTube. Thus, you must initially be well-aware of the content type that appeals to the public on each social media and modify the content accordingly. Here are a few examples of Twitter posts with hashtags:
(Image Credit: Raven Tools)
Conclusion
Any organization struggling with the idea of how to do social media marketing for b2b businesses needs to be well-aware of every social media platform and the benefits you can gain by marketing on that platform. Every platform is highly influential in marketing your products or company. You can also consult a social media expert to guide you through the process of creating a b2b strategy for social media so that your business can be marketed on social media successfully.
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FAQ’s
B2B marketers can benefit highly from social media marketing. As it can be the most effective form of advertising for these companies, a large focus should be placed on a social media strategy and diversifying your approach.
Your ultimate goal in social media marketing is just like traditional marketing…to promote sales. Social media helps by identifying potential customers (prospects), positioning the product to appeal to these companies, developing relationships, and lead nurturing.
Here are some ideas of good content for B2B social media marketing:
- Ebook.
- Infographics.
- Webinars.
- Podcasts.
- Social media contest.
- Industry reports.
- Free trials.
- Free consultations.
This is any content or products you want to market to another company. Any company that sells products or services to other businesses or organizations (vs. consumers) typically uses B2B marketing strategies.
Branding in marketing shortens the sales cycle. It gives customers a reason to choose your brand over another and creates customers with a predisposition to your brand.
See how to easily grow your traffic!