7 Steps to Powerful Social Media Marketing
Many B2B companies rely on traditional sales and marketing strategies. Their salespeople cold call cold leads. They attend trade fairs and sales networking meetings. They watch with jealousy as B2C companies get way better marketing ROIs through connecting with customers online, and especially through social media.
Isn’t it time you had an effective B2B social media strategy plan? You could connect with billions of potential customers. Customers that you could never hope to cold call or meet at trade fairs and networking events.
Why you must use social media for B2B
There is a myriad of reasons for B2B companies to use social media. Here are a few:
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An effective B2B social media strategy helps you attract more traffic to your website
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More than half of B2B buyers use social media in their buying decisions
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You can amplify trade fair results by posting from the trade fair onto social media
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Effective strategies will help increase awareness of your brand
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You improve your recognition in the market by posting authoritative content
Here’s the best of all. A single cold call will reach a single potential client for two or three minutes. A single social media post has the potential to reach 3.9 billion social media accounts (and counting), forever.
Of those billions of potential customers, those who connect with you are searching for the type of content you provide. They are potential buyers of your products and services. They’re warm leads, for you to engage and interact with.
The only question for you should be how to cope with all those customers, not where to find them. The answer? Your B2B social media strategy has brought them to you, at which point tactics like automated email marketing take over. By the time your salespeople become involved, your B2B social media marketing has attracted leads and warmed them up to near boiling point – customers ready to be closed.
Getting started with B2B on social media in 7 steps
Where to get started? You must consider what type of content will be appealing. To do this, you’ll need to identify who your potential customers are and where they hang out on social platforms, and what is important to them. First, though, you must determine what you want to achieve.
Step #1: Decide on your objectives
What is it that you want to achieve with a social media strategy? Is it to generate traffic to your website, get more leads, increase your email list, improve engagement and shares?
Decide on your objectives and be specific. Use the SMART method and set goals that are:
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Specific
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Measurable
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Attainable/Actionable
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Realistic
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Timebound
Step #2: Identify your target audience
Who are you targeting? Get specific here. Don’t use a scattergun approach. Sit down and decide who you will be creating posts for. For example:
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Is your business targeting private or public companies?
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How many employees do they have?
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What are their problems and needs?
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Where are they located?
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What budgets will they have?
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What business are they in, and what sector of that business?
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Who are the decision makers?
If you have more than one target audience, you’ll need to create content that targets these different personas.
Step #3: Competitor analysis
You’ll need to identify where the greatest opportunity lies. To do this, start with analyzing what your competitors are doing. Measure strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Then decide where your focus should be.
Step #4: Which platforms?
We dropped the scattergun approach at step 2. Makes sure you don’t pick it back up again. Just as you would target your audience, target your social media, too. The best B2B social media strategies are highly focused on the social media where their audience is to be found.
For B2B marketing, the most effective social media platform is usually LinkedIn. You may also find your customers on other platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and so on. Use Pareto’s Principle here – 80% of your customers are likely to be connected through 20% of your efforts.
Step #5: Create your social media self
You want your social media posts to be appealing. You want them to be attractive. You want them to engage. You will need to balance being controversial with being conversational. You’ll need to explain and emotionalize. You’ll need to be brave, not boring; sincere, not sarcastic.
Think long and hard about the character you will create on social media. The voice that will connect best.
Step #6: Provide consistent and relevant content
‘Speaking’ in your voice and providing the content your customers crave is essential. So is consistency. Promote to pain points. Nurture to needs. Relate to research. Connect to content.
Use your social media wisely to share your content to a wider audience and help drive traffic to your blog and website. Be consistent and post regularly to help build authority and trust.
Step #7: Measure your results
You know what you will be measuring because you set this out at step 1. Now you must decide how you will measure and track this. What tech will you use, and how will you maintain your measurement of progress?
How do you do all of this?
We get it. You’re busy. Too busy to put all the above in action and guarantee that you’ll be able to follow through with the momentum and motivation. Yet if you don’t, you know you’ll be left behind. The great thing is you don’t have to. You can outsource, and focus on closing the sales that your B2B social media strategies help develop.
Hiring an agency to do the work for you will help to maintain consistency and quality. You’ll benefit from a targeted strategy with highly detailed reporting and analytics. You’ll benefit from their experience and their advanced social media tools.
Too good to be true? To find out more, contact BlabberJax today.