B2B social media marketing is a great way for your brand to grow and reach your target market.
B2B social media marketing may not be your first thought when you think of social marketing.
Digital is the future for B2B. Relationships that can lead to lucrative contracts could be built using social media.
Your company is missing out if it doesn’t have social media plans. This is one of the best ways to reach your target audience and grow your brand.
This is how to build a better B2B strategy using social media.
Table Of ContentsWhat is B2B Social Media?17 Stats to Inform your B2B Social Media StrategyHow do you create a B2B Social Media marketing strategy6 top tools for B2B Social MediaB2B brands with great social media
Get a social strategy template for free! You can use it to track your results, to present your plan to bosses, coworkers, clients, etc.
What’s B2B Social Media Marketing?
B2B stands for business-to-business. Social media marketing for B2B uses social media channels to market products and services to prospects and business clients.
You can use all social media channels in B2B marketing. A B2B strategy will however have a different content mixture than a consumer-focused plan.
Stats to help you plan your B2B Social Marketing Strategy
Let’s start with the basics. These are key numbers that will help you understand how B2B marketers use Social Media.
- B2B companies should allocate 25% to marketing.
- B2B product companies are expected to spend 14.7% in the next 12 months on social media.
- Service businesses that offer will invest 18.3%.
- 31.3% of Global Internet users use the Internet for business-related research.
- 22.7% of Internet users use social networking to do work-related research.
- 96% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn to promote their content.
- Next at 82%: Twitter.
- 89% of B2B marketers rely on LinkedIn to generate leads through social media.
- LinkedIn members account for 80% of business decision-making.
- Social media is the most used distribution method for B2B content marketers 89% use these social tools.
- Buyers from B2B spend 27% time researching online. This is compared to 5 to 6% for sales reps.
- In reality, 44% of B2B millennial customers would prefer not to interact with sales reps at all.
- 83% of Content marketers for B2B have begun to use promoted posts on social media networks and social media ads, an increase of 60% over last year.
- 40% of Content marketers from B2B increased their investment in social media communities as a result of COVID-19.
- 76% of B2B businesses use social media analytics to measure content performance.
- By 2025 80 all B2B sales interactions will be possible via digital channels.
- The U.S.B2B industry will spend an estimated 1.64 trillion on LinkedIn ads between 2021 and 2023, $ 1.99 million in 2022, $2.33 million in 2023, 2.003 billion in 2023, and 2.33 million in 2023.
How to create a B2B strategy using social media
For long-term growth and short-term gains, a solid B2B strategy plan will be essential.
60% of Successful B2B content marketers use content marketing strategies.
Let’s be the most successful person. Here are some ways you can build a B2B marketing plan for your business.
Align your business goals with your goals
A B2B strategy for social media should answer these questions just like a great strategy .
- What are your business goals?
- How can they benefit from B2B social media marketing?
These similarities don’t end there. B2B marketers use social media for different purposes. B2C is more “at the top” of the funnel. B2B marketers must focus their social media efforts on long-term goals.
The top 3 goals in B2B content marketing include:
- Increase brand awareness (87%)
- Building trust, and credibility (81%).
- Educate audiences (79%)
8 is generating revenue or sales.
The top three goals for social media lead generation are all important. Successful B2B marketers use content marketing to nurture subscribers, audiences, and leads (60%).
This blog article about goal setting will help set the right goals for your B2B social media marketing plan.
Your internal goals and objectives should be included in your plan. Account managers can use social media to learn more about competitor products and services, according to research published by the Journal of Business Logistics social Media can be used to enhance their knowledge of these products and services
Search for social opportunities
An effective B2B social marketing strategy will highlight potential opportunities.
Use the S.W.O.T. The S.W.O.T. framework. Framework to determine your strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities in your competitive environment.
Using social media to listen to what’s happening in your industry can be a great way of finding out.
Attention to customers
Marketers must be able to identify the target audience. Only half of all B2B content marketers ( 56%) use personas to guide content creation.
This will allow you to move ahead. Create buyer personas using social media marketing best practices.
Get a social strategy template for free! You can use it to track your results and to present your strategy to your boss or colleagues
Your company likely caters to different client types.
A design company could work with commercial, residential, and public clients.
B2B social media marketing should be the same. This will allow you to create real-life content.
B2B social media marketing is likely to become more personal in the future. ABM (Account-Based Marketing) brings together sales and marketing teams.
ABM works best when done via social media. You can track your most important prospects using social listening.
Use the right social media platforms
Customers should always know that you are there for them.
Nearly all B2B content marketers (96%) use LinkedIn.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
The paid post picture is nearly identical but not identical. However, Facebook surpasses Twitter and Instagram surpasses YouTube.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
There may be different verticals, markets, or products that require their channels.
- A news channel
- A careers channel
- A customer support account
Any account that targets a niche audience can be used.
A new angle on B2B content
B2B social media is about building relationships and starting conversations. Don’t let the reputation of boring content in B2B stop you.
Sharing technical information and new product specifications is okay.
Think about ways you can make your followers’ lives easier at work. Trends, tips, and strategies are all available.
Think leadership is crucial. 75% of buyers believe thought leadership is key to their success. 49% of decision-makers and business owners agree that thought leadership has made them successful.
We aren’t talking about purchasing officers or CEOs. It is vital to establish relationships with professionals in the industry at all stages of your career.
Engaging your employees is an easy way to get out of the boardroom. This will make it easier to recruit.
Video content has five times the chance of being viewed than other content, and drives fivefold higher engagement.
Analytics can help you measure the effectiveness and efficiency of your efforts
Nearly all ( 94%) of the most successful B2B content marketers have an indicator of their content performance.
This is an excellent idea. It makes sense.
What data and metrics should be monitored? This all depends on your business goals.
Do not ignore barometers such as customer satisfaction, qualitative reviews, and your net promoter score. You should also consider reducing customer support and recruitment costs. All this contributes to return on investment.
Be realistic with the effort required to quantify it and provide hard numbers
Top Social Media Marketing Tools B2B
Your business needs the right tools. It is important to ensure your brand uses the best B2B social media technology.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides a comprehensive picture of your B2B social media activities. This will allow you to adjust your strategy.
UTM parameters
You can use code to show your social ROI. Track the links you share using UTM parameters. To get more information about traffic sources, you can use these snippets in conjunction with analytics software.
Brandwatch
Brandwatch gives you a complete view of online conversations from more than 95,000,000 sources. Track mentions and competitor sentiment.
Next, your analysis can be used for everything from product development to business decision-making.
Salesforce
Salesforce integration with Kobe Digital allows you to integrate social insight into prospect and customer profiles.
This will help you build stronger relationships and connections with potential buyers. Contact lists can also be created based on social media data.
Sparkcentral
Customers who are high-value B2B customers often have high-value businesses. Provide them with the best customer service options to fit their business model.
Sparkcentral allows you to manage customer service through social accounts, WhatsApp, and live chat. View the context of all messages sent by important clients.
They’ll quickly get the most current and accurate information to answer their questions. It will also ensure that they return when it is time to renew their plans or upgrade.
Social media for companies B2B
Get advice from experts. These top B2B companies use social media to great success.
Adobe
Adobe shares real-life stories from employees and clients to enhance its social media content.
Adobe had to move its Adobe Summit conference from an in-person event make it digital. Adobe managed to make this happen in the spring 2020. They even beat their 300% pre-event registration goal.
Google does not operate as a B2B business. Search engines earn money by selling ads to other businesses.
Google thinks With Google provides valuable resources for marketers. This showcases insights from Google’s vast data and knowledge banks. These insights can then be shared by their social media accounts through informative graphics.
Slack
The social media channels of Slack will feature many customer success stories and product updates.
(We are willing to bet that the majority of B2B style guides don’t include the phrase “comin’ at you” or as many emojis.
The tone is consistent with Slack’s brand.
It’s easy to forget that Twitter does B2B marketing. Follow @TwitterMktg This is a great way to generate engagement.
IBM
IBM does a great job of tailoring content to different social platforms. Cross-posting is not an option.
Sometimes brands are lazy and share the same content on all accounts. IBM instead customized each post’s copy for each platform.
They did an amazing job of hopping on to a popular meme in a suitable way for their brand:
Gartner
Gartner uses live video to connect with its target audience. They use #GartnerLive to highlight highlights and interview, industry professionals.
Source: Gartner, LinkedIn
They also share helpful infographics. These infographics are attractive and can encourage LinkedIn connections to click through.
Kobe Digital makes managing all your social media accounts easy.