Through Midas Touch, the B2B specialist social media
agency which I run, we have worked with several B2B organizations – especially
in the technology space. We have strategized and executed several social media initiatives
and have seen tremendous success.
We all know the stats as well –
-
57% of purchase decisions are made before a customer
ever talks to a supplier (Source)
-
80% of business decision
makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an
advertisement. (Source)
-
94 percent of B2B buyers
conduct some form of online research before purchasing a business product (Source)
And yet, many B2B companies fail in their social media
efforts or are not able to derive the desired results. What could be the
reasons? Are they not serious about their efforts? Are they putting in efforts
at the wrong place? Are they clueless about what to measure and what not to
care about? Or there are some other reasons?
Here is my take on why the social media initiatives of B2B
companies could fail –
No Strategy
“Strategy is thinking about a choice and choosing to stick with your thinking” —Jeroen De Flander
Strategy – probably the most overused word in the business
space today. To me, the above quote summarizes the meaning of strategy. It
helps you tie together your goals into plans and helps you achieve those goals.
Organizations, when they start their B2B social media efforts, need to think
hard and formulate a coherent strategy – what do they want to achieve, how do
they plan to do it, what are the available resources, should it be done through
in-house team or outside agency, how to engage the subject matter experts, how
to monitor, and how to measure the ROI – all such aspects form the components
of a solid strategy. Hiring an experienced marketing professional cannot be
termed as the strategy :-)
Lack of Consistency
“If you want to be taken seriously, be consistent.”
Pretty hard-hitting, isn’t it? It,
however, is absolutely true in case of B2B social media. If you start with an
assumption that you want to “try”
social media for three months and then decide whether you would like to
continue or not – I would say don’t even start thinking. B2B social media
requires influencing multiple decision makers (right from CFO to technology
director), the sales cycles are long (something running into months) and the
decisions are not taken based on one article (social media is part of the
overall sales funnel and not the only channel) – considering all these aspects,
it is extremely important that you start your initiatives with a long-term
plan. Have a mechanism to monitor the response and results at regular intervals
and do ongoing tweaks.
Too Much Focus on Technology
"Our business is about technology, yes. But it's also about operations and customer relationships." - Michael Dell
Sure, you are into technology business.
Your team has technology ninjas who are extremely passionate about technology
and can give an hour long talk on the latest tool. But do you know that not “all” of your target audience may be “always” interested in your technology
understanding? Businesses need to understand that technology is just one of the many tools to solve business problems – businesses
care about solutions to their business problems. I have seen that many time,
technology companies go overboard with their passion for technology and talk
only about that instead of focusing on how that technology is going to help in
solving a business problem. The B2B content which the company publishes needs
to focus on answering the questions of the target audience – it is less about
you and your knowledge and more about customer questions and answers to those
questions.
Incorrect Choice of Platforms
"Do what is right, not what is easy.”
The world’s most active social platform
with the largest user base may not be right for you. B2B social media is more
about education more than emotion. It is about building thought leadership than
creating just another blog. It is about providing answers to the buyer’s
questions than talking about the greatness of your product and service – all such
things make B2B social media different than B2C. While you are still
interacting with humans, the purpose is different and, hence, the choice of
platforms also differs. It is not possible to send a “friend request” to your
prospects but you can certainly “follow” or “connect with them” – getting the
difference? The choice of social platforms can make or break your social
strategy. You will end up doing a lot of “social activity” without any results.
Talk to B2B social media experts or read up to understand and know which could
be the right platforms for your business.
RoI Misconceptions
"When you say RoI, do you mean Return on Investment or Risk of Inaction.” – Paul Gillin
B2B companies often make the mistake of
thinking that the R in RoI is always Revenue – actually the R in RoI is Returns.
You will be able to achieve the RoI from your social media initiatives only if
you know what to measure, how to measure, and when to measure. Enhanced
awareness amongst your target audience, visits to your website, thought
leadership, social conversations – all these are valid returns from your social
efforts. When you measure the RoI, ensure that you look for qualitative as well
as quantitative metrics. Qualitative metrics could include interactions with an
influencer, valid product feedback, appreciation by your prospect on your
content and so on. Quantitative metrics could include visits to your website,
visibility on social platforms, the number of interactions, the number of
downloads of your eBook or whitepaper, and so on. It is important to keep
monitoring these metrics and tweaking the strategy based on the results.
Lack of Synergy with Sales
Stop trying to sell with marketing, instead use marketing to help customers buy.
B2B organizations need to ensure that
there is a very tight integration between sales and marketing – these two teams
HAVE TO work in alignment and not in isolation.
The sales and marketing strategies need to work together for acquiring
customers – essentially because the sales cycles are long, evaluation periods
extend in months, building trust takes time, and building thought leadership
takes even longer. Marketing needs to understand the sales campaigns and needs
to align itself according to those – for example, if your sales team is
focusing on a particular industry vertical in a particular quarter, your social
media presence has to reinforce your knowledge and expertise in that sector
through blog articles, webinars, eBooks, and social promotion. Similarly, the
sales teams need to leverage marketing and the social channels to build
connections and engage with prospects on social channels.
Completely Ignoring Executive Branding aka Personal Branding
“Your personal brand is a promise to your clients… a promise of quality, consistency, competency, and reliability.” – Jason Hartman
Be it B2B or B2C, finally, people connect
with people and people trust other people. Thinking that you don’t need a
“face” in the online world is one of the most common mistakes which most of the
B2B companies make. Companies need to ensure that all the external facing
profile - be it the CEO, your sales director, your marketing head, managers who
interact with the client or sales execs who interact with the prospects – need
to have a strong online presence. It is absolutely critical that the top
management has a strong online brand – they need to demonstrate their values,
the expertise of the company, and build trust in the minds of the prospects, customers,
suppliers, or future and present employees. Unfortunately, this is often the
most ignored aspect – especially by the top management of technology companies.
Believe it or not, it has a strong impact on the overall company brand as well.
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