B2B Social Media Marketing Best Practices

 

Can B2B Companies Go Social? Social Media Marketing Best Practices for B2B

Today, more and more B2B marketers are turning to social media to deliver content and leverage their businesses as thought leaders in their specific industry. Social advertising in B2B is also on the rise, with 83% of B2B marketers indicated they are using social advertising (Barnhart, 2021).

Before planning any marketing strategy the first thing any marketer needs to consider is the target audience. A marketer cannot develop a message, choose a platform or define a strategy without understanding the intended audience.

One or Many Platforms: Which social media channel is best to use?

Again, knowing the intended audience is necessary before choosing a social media platform. While it may be tempting to just post content on all platforms in hopes that something sticks, this most likely will only exhaust your marketing team, leaving your business with a weak social media presence. A better plan is to study your target audience, find out which social media channels they use often, and develop a solid plan that focuses on the most relevant channels for your business. If your marketing team is trying to deliver content to all the social media channels they won’t have the necessary time to deliver meaningful content to the channels that matter most (Burdett, n.d.).

To determine which platforms your audience is using, research your industry. For example, a marketer selling safety equipment to construction trade professionals would need to determine which social media platforms construction professionals use most. According to the Construction Marketing Association, the top four social media platforms used by construction professionals are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Y­­ouTube.

Figure 1: Types of Social Media used by construction professionals (Construction Marketing Association, 2018)

As previously discussed, it’s best for a company to choose a few social media platforms to focus on, so in the case of the safety equipment company they would most likely be best to choose LinkedIn and Facebook to start their social media marketing. LinkedIn is an obvious choice for B2B marketers, this platform was designed for business networking. Because Facebook is being used by construction professionals and their advertising capabilities are robust, this platform would be great for setting up a business profile and creating a paid advertising strategy (Gould, n.d.).

Define Your Marketing Goals: Is Content Still King?

Everyone has heard the saying, content is king, but in B2B social media is content or conversation more important? The B2B industry is different than ecommerce or retail B2C industries, in that B2B companies use social channels to generate awareness, educate their audience and build trust and credibility within their industry. The B2B social media plan focuses on top of funnel marketing strategies. Studies indicate the following as shown in Figure 2 to be the key benefits for B2B content marketing. 

Figure 2: Benefits of B2B Content Marketing Statistics (Barnhart, 2021)

Once a business has defined an audience and determined the particular goal the content needs to be created that will resonate with the audience and help the business owner meet the intended goal. Often for B2B marketers there is access to tons of already generated content from the business’s website. This content can be repurposed and made social friendly For example, a blog post can be turned into an infographic or a small post of helpful facts/tips that can be used in a post that links back to a more educational white paper or e-book (Barnhart, 2021).

Measuring Success of B2B Social Media

The end goal of any marketing plan is to generate more business for the organization. Often B2B marketers have found it difficult to measure their social media efforts. But, these efforts are measurable if the right metrics are tracked. Some metrics that can be helpful for measuring B2B social media marketing include (DeStefano, 2020).

 Reach- This metric will tell B2B marketers how interesting their content is to their audience. Reach can be measured by connections on LinkedIn, likes on Facebook, visits to the company’s blog page, or subscribers on YouTube (DeStefano, 2020).

Engagement- This measures how many people interacted with the business’s content.  How many users clicked on a link from a post, shared content on Facebook or LinkedIn, or made comments on blog or social media posts, these are examples of engagement metrics to measure (DeStefano, 2020).

Conversion- This metric is a very important one to measure for B2B marketers. This tells the business if their efforts were successful and generated leads or sales for the company. Most campaigns are created with intent for a user to take an action, conversion measures things such as: form submissions, webinar registrations, emails subscribes, phone calls, or purchases if the B2B website has ecommerce capabilities (DeStefano, 2020).

Example of a B2B Brand Excelling at Social Media

Hubspot is an example of brand who does an excellent job using social media content to leverage themselves as experts in the industry. The company often posts educational content such as training, insights, and research that has made them a valuable resources to industry professionals. The social media strategy of Hubspot is a tactic many B2B marketers should use, they focus more on thought leadership and knowledge sharing. In B2B interactions, sales pitches and other gimmicky marketing tactics won’t cut it (Morrison, 2021)

An example is shown below of a recent tweet from Hubspot. As stated previously, a lot of their content is intended to offer training and guidance to marketing professionals.

Figure 3: Hubspot Twitter Example (Hubspot Twitter, n.d)

Final Thoughts

Social media has been a game changer for marketers and the B2B world is no different. Many decision makers in the B2B world are looking to social media for researching products, making connections, and networking. Platforms such as LinkedIn has become a go-to for people to learn more from others in their industry through LinkedIn groups or by making relevant industry connections. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have also become a valuable tool among the B2B industry. Marketers can use these channels to increase brand awareness and educate their audience to help build their organizations thought leadership efforts. Social media can also help business by increasing lead generation which will help grow revenue.

 

References:

Barnhart, B. (2021, June 23). How to build a b2b social strategy (that isn't boring). Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/b2b-social-media-strategy/.

Burdett, D. (n.d.). The 3 social media networks that are best for b2b marketing. B2B Marketing Agency for Manufacturers. https://www.salesartillery.com/blog/bid/195560/the-3-social-media-networks-that-are-best-for-b2b-marketing.

Construction Marketing Association. (2018, September 28). Social media in construction - 2017 survey results. Construction Marketing Association Blog. https://blog.constructionmarketingassociation.org/social-media-in-construction-2017-survey-results/.

DeStefano, B. (2020, February 20). How to measure b2b social media marketing success. SVM E-Marketing Solutions. https://svmsolutions.com/blog/how-measure-b2b-social-media-marketing-success/.

Gould, R. (n.d.). Social media best practices for the construction industry. Construction Executive | Welcome. https://www.constructionexec.com/article/social-media-best-practices-for-the-construction-industry.

Hubspot Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. https://twitter.com/HubSpot?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor.

Morrison, C. (2021, January 14). 9 B2B social Media examples to inspire your strategy. EveryoneSocial. https://everyonesocial.com/blog/b2b-social-media-examples/.