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.

When you target the consumer, the idea is usually to get a general idea of what it is they are looking for, creating a set of demographics that are functional, but not always entirely accurate. B2B marketers are able to dig a whole lot deeper into those demographics to gain a clear insight into the desires, habits, and behavior patterns of each and every prospect they chase. If a CEO will sign off on a marketing campaign based on a loose set of B2C data, just imagine how quickly he will be on board when you can present the detailed personas on every potential lead.

B2B companies are generally the ones who are the major innovators in any given industry, and it is they who create the next great thing for B2C businesses to provide to the general public. If your company is on the cutting edge of creating these new ideas and concepts, what better way to educate prospects than through social media. Since you already probably have a relationship of sorts with these prospects, your new innovations will not have to be delivered through a hard sell process. Being able to showcase your company’s ingenuity and depth of knowledge via social media can be a major boon and really help the bottom line.

CEO Jan Johansson before the press conference – SCA © by SCA Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget

It’s the bottom line that is generally first and foremost in the mind of the average CEO, so being able to convince him that you can generate great leads at a significantly reduced budget is something that is sure to get a positive response. Marketers often struggle with keeping the cost per lead under control and since there are very little costs associated with social media marketing, that cost per lead ratio can drop significantly whilst also generating an increase in revenues. The fact that you are building solid relationships helps contribute to those boosts in revenue. Sales cycles can often be long and drawn out, which makes maintaining a healthy relationship with all your customers that much more important.

These arguments should be enough to sway any boss into embracing B2b marketing via social media, although you may still encounter one more road block. Some bosses will question whether you have the experience to manage a marketing strategy that is still relatively new. The answer is that you have already maintained those social connections, albeit in different ways. Newsletters, press releases  and other print campaigns are not all that different from the social media method, so make sure that your boss is aware that the transition will be a smooth one.

Now, before you read this and go running off to present your findings to the boss, you’ll want to be sure that B2B social media marketing is a good fit for your business. That is something we will discuss in our next article.

If you hold the position of B2B marketer in your company then you are already aware of how crucial your work is to the success of the business. The ability to generate quality leads while staying within the constraints of a tight marketing budget is no easy task, yet it’s one that regularly goes unnoticed by the men at the top. Research has shown that a large percentage of CEO’s remain skeptical that marketers make an impact on company earning, most of which is likely down to the fact that the success or failure of many traditional marketing methods are hard to gauge in terms of return on investment (ROI).

There is a way to take those traditional methods and incorporate them into social media so that you can end up with a clear picture of just how well each one has performed. You will be able to generate more legitimate leads that can easily be quantified, and all for much less than you would normally expect to pay. That all adds to to a positive ROI that cannot be dismissed by even the most stubborn of CEO’s.

Social Media Marketing Hub and Spoke Infographic © by ralphpaglia

Dipping your toe into B2B social media marketing will require you to think a little differently than you have in the past. The traditional marketing method usually meant being given a budget at the beginning of the year and then dividing that money up into such marketing campaigns as direct mail, print publications, TV, and more. While it can be argues that these are all tried and true methods of marketing, the problem tends to be that you are basically left having to pay a middle man so that you can rent the attention of the average consumer.

The trend of business to consumer (B2C) is one that has grown stale in recent years, and it’s no real surprise that its steady demise has arrived at the same time in which interest in social media is on a meteoric rise. More and more companies are seeing the benefits of B2B marketing via social media and are adjusting their strategies accordingly. Those businesses that choose to stick with the older methods are quickly losing ground that will be difficult to make up moving forward.

You may ask why a business wouldn’t adopt social media into their marketing strategies and the simple truth is that it all comes back to business owners that still fail to see the big marketing picture. Your most difficult job as a B2B marketer may very well be convincing your employer that this is the way to move forward, which is exactly why our next article will supply you with some solid arguments that will help convince your boss of the need for change.