If you have just started exploring social media opportunities for your business, you must have got bombarded with opinions both positive and negative about the scope. There have been uncertainties regarding whether social media could only be winning in Business to Consumer firms. But results and case studies show that even B2B companies show confidence in Social Media.
B2B marketers use their Social Media campaign to:
B2B marketers use their Social Media campaign to:
Companies spend a lot of time and resources thinking social media is that magic wand which will rake in the business leads as number of fans or followers grow. Nobody can make money by merely having that 4+ digit number of likes or followers. It doesn’t matter how many tweets you sent if you are not networked with your target market.
Some of the factors to keep in mind:
Social media is not free: Maybe the registration is free but it takes lot of resources including money, time and manpower to actually start getting the tangible results.
Measuring ROI: As mentioned earlier number of fans or followers doesn’t give any insight about number of customers. To convert the fans or followers into sales it takes lot of planning and research even before actually starting the campaign.
Networking with target audience: Even before you can solve your customers’ problems or queries it is important to figure out whether do you really know who are your prospects on the social media? And, do you know where they are? Only when you actually know your TA, build the methods to add them to your network. In parallel work on the content strategy to reach, entice and acquire your customers.
Answering the “why”: You have heard that the right way to do the campaign is engaging your fans and followers in a conversation. Well, it is possible only when you actually get inside the conversation which is already happening in their minds!
Know the difference between social media lead & traditional lead: Social media leads are often soft leads. The person may not be ready for taking your product or services at that point of time. But you always have the opportunity to convince him/her to be an email subscriber. This is when powerful email campaigns come into the picture. Once this soft lead is ready for the purchase after a long research cycle you may convert them into the actual buyer. This takes a lot of influential content to be on place and trust and brand building initiatives. Only when the lead shows the interest in your offering you may put him/her into the traditional sales process!
The most important thing before entering the social media would be to fix the flaws you already know about! If the service you give or the product you sell is not of good quality, it doesn’t matter how active you are on social media. Neither you will be able to effectively promote about your business.
With a long time view you will be able to do the good things and some awesome things using social media. But don’t lose the focus from the search engine optimizationSEO, events, online forums and traditional media. They are and will be the strongest platforms for B2B business generation!
