How
B2B Use Social Media To Drive Sales
 Guest article by Shannon Suetos from Resource Nation
Social media is nothing new, and many companies have seen great results
when implementing a social media strategy to their online marketing
tactics. With that being said, it does seem the B2B industry has
been more reluctant to integrate social media into their marketing plan.
“You have to deal with the reality that traditional methods of
marketing and trying to contact customers have lost effectiveness,”
says Sean Trundy, COO of UVeritech Fraud Fighter, which offers fraud
prevention services, to DM News. “It's really hard to reach people by
phone now — everybody screens. It's difficult to imagine that print
advertising can be effective at the cost. You have to figure out where
the eyeballs are and where people are finding information.”
According to Umberto Milletti, the CEO of InsideView, which brings
intelligence gained from social media and traditional sources to
enterprise and B2B sales, “7% of Americans (17 million people) actively
use Twitter and 41% (about 99 million) maintain a Facebook profile.
Additionally, more than half of active Twitter users follow a company,
brand or product.”
LinkedIn Profile Manager
LinkedIn is a great way for sales people to find and contact
people. You can directly email exactly who you are looking for at
a company if they have a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn now has their
own CRM type of system called Profile Organizer which, “allows you to
save profiles, organize contacts into folders, and add your personal
notes on each,” reports Mashable. Profile Organizer won’t be
replacing any of your CRM systems, but it can be a good aid to the
system you have in place.
Salesforce
Back in March of ’09 Salesforce teamed up with Twitter to, “make it
easy for companies to connect with customers from within the Salesforce
Service Cloud,” according to the Twitter blog.
Now, a little over a year later, Salesforce Chatter has become
public. To summarize, “chatter was basically designed to be a
“Facebook for Enterprise.” It takes the fundamental communication and
collaboration features of a consumer product like Facebook but
implements it on an enterprise level. The end result is social platform
for business communications that hooks into the existing Salesforce.com
platform seamlessly,” reports Christina Warren.
NetProspex
BtoB Magazine is reporting that the, “database list-building company
NetProspex Inc. has introduced a new b-to-b social media platform
integrated into its directory of 14 million business contacts to enable
marketers to target prospects based on their social media presences.”
Named Social Step, the new social media site will allow users to
analyze social media activity of customers and prospects.
It is too early to know the direct effects that Social Step will have
on the B2B sales market, but it looks like social media is seeping its
way into all markets. What steps have you taken on for your
social media strategies?
Shannon Suetos is an expert writer on telemarketing based in San Diego,
California. She writes extensively for an online resource that
provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for
small business owners and entrepreneurs such as b2b telemarketing at
Resource Nation.
When implementing any type of marketing campaign it is
wise to first take a step back and decide how to develop your campaign.
Many companies are have made the executive decision to go forward with
social media—they just aren’t so sure what to do.
Decide where your target audience is engaging
Tackling a social media campaign is much like, if not
exactly like a traditional marketing campaigning. The first order
of action is to decide where your target audience is. You could
have the latest and greatest product or services in the world, but if
your core audience isn’t hearing the message there is no benefit to
your company.
According to a
study conducted by Chitika
(a full service online advertising network) broke down the users of
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Digg.com. This study concluded
that:
- 47% of Twitter users are there for news
- 52% of Myspace users are there for video games or
celebrity/entertainment
- Digg was spread out between news, tech, and video
games
Once you have decided on where your target audience is,
you can then go to develop strategies for each site that best fits your
company.
Social Tone
The tone of your campaign should be less formal, and
more conversational. This is not to say you should throw out all
social etiquette—but rather a “business casual” approach. People
like talking, especially about themselves, but make sure in your
campaign you provide information not only about your services, but
current events or even industry news.
Staying away from topics such as religion and politics
is a good idea as well—especially if you have many clients from diverse
backgrounds. Staying neutral will keep your clients happy and
keep you out of hot water.
Define Goals and Measuring Results
Going back to traditional marketing tactics, you need to
have a clear objective and measurable goals in your social marketing
campaign. Knowing how effective your tactics are can also help
you determine your social media ROI and help you decide what tactics
work and which don’t for your company.
TwitterFriends
determines what they call a conversion quotient, which measures how
effective your tweets are on Twitter by looking at how many @ replies
you receive as well as re-tweets. The goal of Twitter for
business owners should be to get as many @ replies (gains you exposure)
and re-tweets (helps get your link/links exposed). Once you know how
effective your efforts are you will be able to decide on the best
social media outlets for your business.
Another great
tool to use has been developed by Email
Data Source. This tool will allow marketers to measure Twitter's
impact on the traditional brand marketing perspectives of reach,
frequency and effectiveness. This tool seems similar to
TwitterFriends in the sense it will help you understand what type of
people are re-tweeting you, but explains it in a more traditional
marketing way. This is a great tool for marketers who aren’t
familiar with Twitter yet.
Getting Creative
This is always the fun part of any marketing campaign.
There are many types of tactics out there that are useful for brand
awareness and fun for the customer as well. Many companies are
using quizzes to do this.
Jennifer Stolte, marketing director for Celestial
Seasonings (who implemented a Facebook quiz earlier this year) says,
“Social media is something that’s really growing. So many people are
online, especially on Facebook, so we’re excited to step into the
water.”
Another company doing social media right is Dunkin
Donuts. Jesse Greco, founder of
PRBreakfast Club says,
“It’s the small things that they [Dunkin Donuts] truly excel at.
They know how to keep consumers engaged and interested on a daily
basis and they have a way of making you feel like you’re special, even
as just one of their millions of consumers.”
In the end it is up to you how you are going to run your
campaign. The main things to remember is research and use
measurable means for your tactics. The world of Internet
marketing is evolving fast, and it is up to you to keep up.
Shannon Suetos is a writer based in San Diego,
California. She writes extensively for an online resource that
provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for
small business owners and entrepreneurs such as
payroll services &
small business services at
Resource Nation.
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