Social Media and Its Role within B2B Marketing

For many B2B marketers that still drive around social media instead of through it, they still want to know if it truly works and how they can measure their return on investment (ROI).

According to a recent survey of marketing professionals from BtoB Magazine, nearly 60 percent see lead generation as their toughest online marketing challenge, with many viewing social media as one way to chip away at that problem.

Current numbers indicate the many of those responding to the survey mostly utilize email (57 percent) for their online channel that led the most qualified leads in their direction.

A decent number, however, indicated that some other form of online channel proved to be their largest driver of leads, with 13 percent identifying social media. Those responding from agencies were more apt than marketers to note that social or search proved their best utilized marketing channel.

As it turns out, both B2B marketers and agencies believe that social media especially has room to spread for their companies. Following e-mail, social media was viewed to be the most widely utilized marketing channel. Some 55 percent of respondents identified their social efforts as being early but still showing promise.

In order to best utilize social media in your B2B marketing efforts, whether just starting a small business or revamping your company’s marketing techniques, consider the following:

  • Make sure you optimize social media landing pages;
  • Make sure you are active on a number of social media pages, i.e. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter Google+ to name a few;
  • Make sure you are utilizing the necessary keywords in order to drive more traffic to your site;
  • Make sure to see how related businesses are engaging in social media. While you do not want to copy their efforts, see for example who they follow and/or share information with and vice-versa. The more you network without spamming, the better your chances of effectively using SM to enhance your B2B marketing efforts;
  • Make sure you engage in social media conversations. It is important that you are not just a follower but also are active in the online conversation. By doing so, you will come across as more of an authority figure on different topics, meaning someone is more apt to consider doing business with your company if they view your marketing efforts as productive and not just more spam;
  • Lastly, make sure you are not persuaded by the company suits to not employ SM because they may have a hard time getting a true picture of its return on investment (ROI). One of the tired old arguments regarding social media is that it is oftentimes hard to get a true read on its ROI. Trust me; there are analytic tools at your disposable that will assist your marketing team and/or you in reading and analyzing the numbers.

For B2B marketers that have not been fully utilizing all social media can offer them, they may very well come off as anti-social to potential customers.