In our previous article, we spoke in great length about ways in which you can convince your boss to adopt social media ,marketing into the B2B business. The arguments that we presented were pretty powerful and should be enough to sway the man at the top, but before you go rushing off to deliver those ideas, it’s worth taking a moment to pause and think about what you are about to do. There is no denying that social media marketing can be an effective tool for a large number of businesses, but the big question has to be whether or not your business is one of them.
Figuring out whether or not your B2B business would benefit from social media sites really isn’t as difficult as it might sound. You need only answer a few simple questions to see if in fact the adoption of a social media marketing strategy would indeed be effective. The first thing you need to answer is how many individual businesses you deal with. If that number is less than five and you are not looking to grow any larger than that, your marketing budget would definitely be better spent elsewhere.
You also have to take be aware of the sort of service that your business is providing. If, for example, you deliver services or products to the military, are an extension of some closed door government sector, or are in control of information that is somehow secret, your employees may not have full access to the internet from your location. They may be unable to share a great deal of information via social media, so you then have to ask if the effort to do so is really worth it.
Did Facebook Ban Me? © by BrentDPayne
If you are intent on adopting a social media marketing campaign oif some kind, you have to look at who you have on staff to take care of it. Simply having a Facebook account for 18 months does not immediately qualify someone as an expert on social media. You wouldn’t think of letting someone run your IT department because they know some cool Warcraft game secrets, so don’t make the same mistake with marketing. If you don’t have a capable candidate already on staff, go find one before getting started in social media marketing.
You have to ask yourself why you are thinking of using social media at this very moment. Is it because you have a short term sales goal ion mind that you think will get a boost from getting social online? If that is the case, forget about it. Social media marketing can and will help your business, but it’s not something that is likely to happen overnight. Even the best planned marketing campaigns take time to grab hold, so if you are thinking in the short term, think again.
Many businesses grab hold of social media because they believe it is a low cost alternative to traditional marketing methods. While it can deliver a solid ROI, most social media marketing campaigns aren’t as cheap as people might have you believe. These sorts of campaigns, when done properly, require the input of trained staff in order to work. Good talent doesn’t come cheaply, so don’t believe you can wing it for free and expect massive returns.
So there you have it. You should now be armed with enough information to decide whether or not social media is right for your B2B business efforts. In the next article we will start looking at what you can expect from your marketing efforts.
