It’s much less common to hear about a successful Twitter strategy for a marble company, or the industrial boiler manufacturer that conquered Instagram. But examples like this do exist, they’re just a minority.
For various reasons (sometimes legitimate, others less so), many B2B companies struggle to integrate social media marketing into their online communication strategies , preferring traditional tactics such as cold calls or business breakfasts.
We are not saying that classic outbound marketing is not new zealand whatsapp number data 5 million effective, but that, contrary to what is thought, it can easily coexist with social channels. Adopting an inbound approach does not mean excluding interruption marketing techniques a priori : if used wisely to promote useful content for our target audience, they can make sense.
New Call to Action
A good B2B Content Marketing strategy should also include a social media action plan that is perfectly integrated and consistent with the rest of the company's communications.
Not using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to your advantage means missing out on important business opportunities. Let's see how to select the most suitable platforms for your business and set up a successful inbound social media marketing strategy .
B2B Social Media Marketing: 3 Strategic Tips
1. Choose the right channels
First of all, we need to dispel a myth: “social media doesn’t work for me because my industry is boring.” False. Social media is not only effective tools for small beauty & fashion brands that are popular on Instagram. The users on these platforms are so many and so diverse that surely a small percentage of them could be interested in your products.
You just have to find them. The secret to success is to change your perspective. Stop thinking about your company and start asking yourself what types of content your audience might appreciate. You don't have to be self-referential and talk only about yourself. Putting potential customers at the center can help you establish a relationship of trust and build relationships that last over time.
To understand which content is most effective, always ask yourself: “If I didn’t work for this company, would I watch this post?” If the answer is no, maybe it’s time to adjust your aim.
2. Set goals and KPIs
Ok. You understand that it is important to have a B2B social media marketing strategy and maybe you have already identified the platforms that are best suited to your business, now what? Where to start?
Before you jump into producing and promoting content that is relevant to your audience, take a step back. The first thing to do is to clearly define what you want to achieve from social media: brand awareness? Increased traffic? Increased leads and contacts? The answers to these questions will tell you which metrics to measure.
If, for example, you want to increase the coverage (reach) of your posts and reach a wider audience, the parameters to consider are:
Organic coverage.
Paid coverage.
Impression.
Engagement.
Number of followers.
Etc.
If you want to increase leads, the metrics to look at are:
Click.
New Leads from Social Media.
Conversions.
Etc.
Set goals and plan your strategy to achieve them, using an effective analytics platform to monitor all actions taken.
3. Advertising
In conclusion, it is worth spending a few words on the advertising issue. We have been accustomed to considering social media as free tools, and, from the user's point of view, they are. But if we want to use these channels to do business, we must begin to conceive them as paid media in all respects.
To ensure that our content is shown to the right people, the only truly effective tool is advertising . Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn have developed increasingly specific targeting criteria, thanks to which it is possible to create ads that will be viewed by a selected audience and in line with our target.
At the heart of inbound marketing is the desire to show the right content to the right people at the right time, and social media advertising is certainly one of the best ways to achieve this goal. This is true for B2C, but also for B2B.
After this brief excursus, it should be clear that it no longer makes sense to ask whether social media works or not for B2B. Instead, we should ask ourselves which channels are best suited for the sector in which we operate and for the audience we are addressing. We talked about this in our guide on Performance Marketing!
