TO B2B OR NOT TO B2B: SHOULD B2B BRANDS BE ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND HOW THEY CAN SUCCEED?

Do you manage social media for a B2B brand? Are you finding it a challenge to create an effective B2B social media strategy?

It is not a secret that the most shareable, the most engaging, and the most exciting social media campaigns typically belong to B2C brands, celebrities, or social cause campaigns featuring heartbreaking or empowering stories. B2B brands are rarely seen among the winners of the Cannes Lions or similar award shows.

What can a real estate investment firm, a semiconductor manufacturer, or an industrial equipment services company talk about on social media? More importantly, what should be their social media objectives? What outcome should they expect from their social media strategy--increased followers, engagements, sales, or maybe all of them? Can you have your cake and eat it too?

The challenge can seem daunting. Unlike a restaurant chain or retail store, most B2B brands can’t offer a free appetizer or $5 discount coupon on social media to boost sales. They also may struggle to create fun or emotionally appealing content because quite often their product is boring, unsexy, expensive, or all three. Nor can they adopt a fun, playful brand voice due to the fear of diluting or derailing perception as a serious and competent business brand. 

Many B2B social media marketers are faced with a dilemma: In this day and age, all reputable brands are expected to be on social media. But how can they grow and engage social media audiences for their brand? Can social media contribute to their business’ bottom line and, if so, how?

And here is a key question: How can they make a business case for social media when they ask for a piece of the marketing budget pie? After all, “free” social media is not free – you still need to allocate time for research, copywriting, design, social sharing, and community management which costs money. On top of that, there often needs to be some advertising dollars thrown in on a regular basis in order to reach the target audience.

Let’s start with the first goal – growing your audience. In my experience, Facebook is the easiest and the most inexpensive audience to grow if you choose to increase your fans/followers via paid ads. However, it could also be the most useless audience because these "paid for" fans/followers may not be particularly active in their engagement with your page, so your return on investment will be quite low. As soon as you stop pouring money and resources into Facebook ads, your organic reach drops dramatically. If you would like to grow your audience organically, check out these articles for tips on how to grow your Twitter presence , Facebook following, Instagram account and Google Plus circles .

Why might a B2B company choose to grow social media followers even though they don’t reach their audience? One of the biggest arguments for this is that a large social media following is an indicator of a company’s popularity and weight in the market. Many people browse for a brand's website and then check social media icons to see how many people follow the company. High numbers are influential, even if many of those numbers aren't active audience members.

A second possible goal is to increase engagement through post views, likes, comments, and shares. One of the best strategies for a B2B company to increase engagement is diving into content marketing. A B2B company can milk a popular topic that is related to its business and provide useful content to its audience such as educational articles, research findings, how-tos, and helpful tips. For example, if your B2B brand’s audience is small business owners, you can start sharing content about different aspects of running a successful small business. It could be relevant to small business accounting tools, inexpensive marketing techniques, small business tax law updates, inspirational quotes and small business success stories among others.

With regard to the engagement strategy, keep in mind that it is important that a B2B brand be proactive in interactions with followers by reaching out to influencers and responding to comments and inbound messages. Resources in terms of time and personnel need to be allocated to execute the company's side of the engagement equation.

Third is the most coveted social media goal: SALES. Ever since Dell announced they made $6.5 million from Twitter sales back in 2009, many marketers fantasized about selling truckloads of products and services via social channels. However, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of B2B offerings are pricey and often require a very elaborate sales process. It is more common to see a Facebook ad conversion for a highly targeted local event or a book offer than to close a sale for sophisticated conference equipment that costs thousands of dollars via social media.  

As far as metrics are concerned, in order to track an ad conversion on Facebook or Twitter, you need to create a conversion pixel and append it to your landing page. It requires modifying the website’s code, and not every brand is willing to do it. An alternative solution is to assign a unique tracking code to your landing page in your website tracking system like Site Catalyst or Google Analytics, and use that link in your social media ad. It will allow you to further track your customer journey on your website after they click on a landing page.If resources permit, you may also consider including a unique phone number in your social media ad and track these phone calls separately in order to see the effectiveness of your social media campaign.

So, how can a B2B brand succeed on social media? By setting realistic expectations. Social media strategy should be crafted specifically for a B2B brand, reinforce the brand’s strengths, and offer value to its followers such as being a knowledge resource or an inspiration. Narrow targeting, custom and lookalike audiences will improve your chances of reaching the most desired prospects for your B2B brand. However, it might not be realistic to expect to sell B2B products and services via social media channels. Social media might contribute to creating awareness or initial research of your company or offer, but quite often a prospective B2B customer will need to make several phone calls or visit your website a number of times before they are willing to make a purchase.