B2B or Business to Business is the process where two business make commercial transactions between them. To understand this well we will take an example a product manufacturing company buy a software program from a software company. As we can see B2B is different than B2C, which is focus more on consumers. Business to Business marketing is more informal and the transactions are more higher than B2C volumes. On the internet is well know like e-biz.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND B2B COMPANIES
Social Media is influencing our lives. We become part of it and business as well. Social Media is a play ground for companies. We can define it according to Wikipedia like interactive computer technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information ,ideas career interest and other form of expressions via virtual communities and networks. No far from the present social media was used efficiently only by B2C companies. Should your company be present on social media? The answer is YES.
OUR STRATEGY
According to Hootsuite 3.4 billion people are active social media users, almost half of total world population . We consider is a must to a business to be present on social media. In the last years business have struggled to dominate social media with successes and failures . According with some statistics the most successful companies on social media are B2C. We don't agree with this, we consider that B2B can be used efficiently. With that being said our first strategy comes out "the myth of B2c".
1 THE MYTH OF B2C
A report of Central of Statistics Office shows that almost 70 % of irish enterprises use social media. Is your company included in this category.? Traditionally business to business companies are still using like marketing approach with success: ( SEO, networking, events, seminars and so on) This tactics are effective, however for better digital strategy you need to integrate social media. If you think that SMM won't work for B2B , you probably will miss a lot of opportunities. Social media is not designed only for B2C, is for all of us, you need to be part of this game.
2 YOUR COMPANY GOALS
Before to start to implement your social media marketing strategy, you need to set up your goals. Like many other activities goals need to be implemented in order to be successful. Goals have to be defined since from the beginning. Here SMART goals comes in. In social media depending on type of business your company is operating , goals can be measured by KPI (Key Performance Indicators). KPI's differ from business to business, if for example for a company important are leads, for other brand awareness. For company looking leads metrics like clicks and conversions are more important than engagements or impressions. WHERE YOUR COMPANY IS SITUATED?
Specific Company X wants to increase leads by posting on daily basis on social media channels like:( LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter) . Their strategy is to post one post per day and all post should be redirected to an landing page.
Measurable 10% increase sales by the end of the year.
Attainable Creating and posting engaging content and redirected it to a landing page have helped to increase sales by 5 %
Relevant The action plan need to be relevant with your goal, the action that is not relevant with your goal is not relevant.
Time-based Any actions need to be done in certain amount of time, in our case at the end of this month.
3 CREATE YOUR COMPANY STRATEGY
Backing to our sales goal, we know that we need to increase sales. Knowing what you need to accomplish on social media and how you will measure the success, the next step is how to get there. To go there you need a social media marketing plan. Writing down the plan , can allow you to achieve your goals and to pave the road to your brand success. Your plan should include some specifications like: (what social media channel will use?, what is our target audience? , what type of content we will publish, how to write the content? , competition and so on)
4 ORIGINAL CONTENT Content is king. We don't have reasons to not believe this. Can we attribute this that one of the reasons that some B2B companies failed to success on social media? It is questionable, however it is obvious that all your efforts should be focus to create and share original content. To be successful on social media dosen't mean to copy and post content. Our audience can make distinction between a good and weak content, your duty will be to create authentic and engaging content for your audience. If you have trouble to create content for social media channel, you can outsource your content to Erexym Media.
5 TARGET YOUR RIGHT AUDIENCE
For a B2B to find and target the right audience it's a bit more complicated than B2C. In this case, your target audience are other business. If your company goals is to generate leads targeting business owners or company stakeholders with decision factor is one of the key of success. As we said at the beginning one of the reason that some companies failed on social media is that they haven't targeted the right audience. By far the most important social channel for B2B is LinkedIn. The next question that we need to ask ourselves is: Should we need to focus only on LinkedIn? The answer is "NO". Other channels should be included in your strategy. Bear in mind your ultimate goal is to create content for your audience (other business) and to transform it in leads.
6 EMPLOYEES YOUR BIGGER ASSETS
Customers behavior change and demand frequently quality content. Are we able to deliver quality content that satisfy our audience?. Are our employee able to create and share quality content? Unfortunately many brands struggle in social media because their content might be wrong and people who are in charge with creation and distribution of content have failed to understand social media. Employees play a crucial role in every organizations, we can define a company like a group of people. Social Media is not posting every day for the sake of posting is more than that. Hiring and putting in charge people , who have passion, experience and know company culture it's crucial for success . To be successful you don't need to rely only on a person or department which creates and share content. You need to include all your staff. Creating social stories with your employee can pay you huge dividends. Implying your employee in social media activities can increase your brand outreach. For example if a brand publish and share content, the employee can also share the content in their circle helping to boost awareness this strategy is know like employee advocacy.
7 STUDY YOUR COMPETITION
If your strategy dose not work , and you are still struggling to build your audience , we need to know that not everything is lost. Revising your strategy is the best measure that you can take. Creating a new strategy should first include your competition. Why the study of your competition is very important?. Studying a direct competitor can bring you valuable insights , about what kind a content they are creating, how often they post and their audience.
8 SELL SELL SELL
We can not call an entity a business if it dose not make sales. Sales are for business like oxygen for humans. The main goal for every business, even they use social media like marketing channel should be sales. As we said before B2B marketing strategies rely heavily on marketing activities like: cold calling, networking, SEO, and other marketing channels. Can we use social media to generate more leads? The answer is 'Yes' . Social channels should be used to generate more leads to your business. The main goal of social media is to introduce a prospect into your sell funnel. LinkedIn is by far the most popular social media channel for B2B companies. We recommend that your attention to focus on other social media channels like: Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.
9 BE PERSEVERING
Don't be sad if the results will not show up immediately . The key of every success is work and perseverance. Posting every day on social media channels can be a hassle and takes a lot of time . Having a posting strategy or schedule posting calendar is ideal .
10 ENGAGE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE
This strategy is perhaps the most unused strategy by most of the companies. Having a social media channel , your main goal is to promote your brand. However you don't need to forget that the social media was created to make connections with other people. It is wise to engage with your own audience. Replying to their queries, reviews and other types of questions can put you into ideal situation. Failing to do this can result in losing potential leads , a situation that you want to avoid as much as you can.
WHAT WE DO FOR YOU ?
B2B SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT
Our main goal is to make to stay you on front of your competition. At Erexym Media we create and deliver quality content to help you to build your own brand by targeting the right audience. Our social media management campaign will include:
7 Reasons why you should use our B2B Social Management Services
1 Improve SEO
Search engines are continuously try to improve the relevance of their search results by incorporating social media signals as their ranking factor. Despite it was a debate if search engines are taking social media signals as their ranking factor. Search engines are extremely ambiguous about algorithms that are using as ranking factor, from my own experience and from researches done by marketers demonstrate that links posted in social media are indexed by search engines.
For B2B business is not a point to miss social media, a place where can help you to bring more visitors to your website.
2 Benefits of outsourcing
Managing many business social media channels can be a hassle for every company. One of the solution is to outsource social media activity to a specialize social media marketing company. Usually social media activity is done by in house departments or outsourced to other companies. Outsourcing your social media activity can provide some advantages :
3 Improve audience and relationship
It is a false to believe that the main purpose of social media is to sell your services and products. The main purpose of social media is to create an audience and to develop a relationship with them over a period of time. Of course the main purpose of every business is to make profit. The most important think about social media is to help business to build brand awareness and after that profit.
4 Engaging content
The essence of every marketing campaign is to create content that gets engagement. This principle applies as well on social media. To develop and audience can be done either posting regular or by paid advertising. Creativity play an important role in creating good content.
5 Analytics
We help our customers by providing monthly analytics reports about our activities. Tracking social media campaigns help us to understand who are the customers , what they are looking, optimization click through rate and leads and so on.
6 Customer service
I've seen a lot of business who have failed to implement a good customer service to their business. A bad customer service can have huge negative impact. Social media is also a place, where you need a good customer service. One of the advantages of using our services is that we monitor reviews . We provide feedback and social engagement monitoring.
7 Alternative to networking events
Success of B2B business relies on networking events and trade shows. For this kind of business is more easy to present their services to general public. Can the social media be an alternative to networking events? The answer is YES and NO. We consider that social is a place where people are there. If the people are on social media what are the reasons why your company is no there? However we advise to use both and to not give up to networking events.
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