B2B Marketing strategies on Social Media

Name: Rahul Sanjay Kumar

Admission No: HPGD/JL14/2951
Specialization Name: Marketing

Institute Name:
Prin. L. N. Welingkar Institute of
Management Development & Research
Submission Date: June 2016

WHY SOCIAL MEDIA MATTERS IN B2B MARKETING

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is undergoing a sea change. Traditional marketing
channels like television, the print media, and outdoor advertising no longer deliver the
return on investment they once promised - for a simple reason: your customers are
spending less than 25% of their time paying attention to these channels. Wondering where
all the action is taking place then? 3 / 24 Here's a clue:1 - More than 133 million blogs
indexed since 2002 - More than 10 million users create 1,500 new "tweets" every second
- Facebook user growth for the 35-plus demographic has grown to 12 million users in the
first quarter of 2009. Welcome to the world of Social Media. Where conversations,
interactions and consumer-generated content get mashed up into a heady mix that's
potentially marketing elixir. Remember the days when we heard of new brands and
products through either word-of-mouth, press reviews or advertising? Now, take all these,
add loads of opportunities for strong customer relationships, and what you have is social
media. In fact, over 90% of B2B buyers are already using Social Media tools, often to
research and execute purchases.

Social media defies organizational boundaries. And social media is not something you
would want your "agency" alone to run, like traditional marketing campaigns. No longer
are you bound to "media buys" and agency dictates. You are now engaging directly with
your customer. And far from shying away from or fearing it, you can now leverage it to
its maximum potential by understanding what your customers are saying, why they are
saying it and how their dialogue could impact your business. Listen to, learn from,
measure and engage in their conversations. Grasp their context and mindset, relevance
and sentiment, and you will be able to gauge your customer's passion in a new and multidimensional way. 1 Source: "Building the B2B Business Case for Social Media" by
Christina Kerley. http://bit.ly/2qr76x If that alone doesn't enthuse you enough to buy in to
using social media, there are some very pertinent reasons why social media can play a
very major role for B2B marketing in particular.
1. B2B relationships and transactions are typically high-touch and are mainly established
through direct interfacing with customers and relationship building. With social media,
you can interact with prospects and customers using an array of touch points. The twoway, typically synchronous real-time nature of these tools lend a highly personal
dimension to the relationship. And, unlike traditional B2C marketing channels (ads,
campaigns, etc.), social media allows more people in your organisation to engage and
build relationships with customers and prospects, thereby multiplying the high touch
effect.

2. The B2B market is far smaller than the B2C market. This fact alone impels expanding
your reach to identify new leads. Social media is well-placed to do just that. Just
monitoring online conversations alone can help you glean changing trends and needs and
pick out emerging opportunities a mile way before your competitors do. This could then
fuel new offerings and new revenue channels. With the expanded reach you also get to
identify companies with which to establish-revenue generating partnerships.
3. The remarkable thing about the B2B arena is how people in it actively network online
to share knowledge and build their network of industry contacts. Using social media, they
can now build professional communities online to share insights and solve problems, and
leverage upon these interactions to build brand, reputation and prospects.
4. B2B buyers rely heavily on third-party feedback in making purchase decisions. They
would also like to be part of the product or solution development process. They are also
likely to trust the opinions of colleagues using the products far more than that of the
company selling those very products. Social media channels are great avenues for
providing objective, thirdparty experiences and feedback, reduces buyer-side risk for bigticket B2B purchases.
5. Social media engagements are a good platform to consistently demonstrate thought
leadership. Thought leadership is fast emerging as a must-have in B2B marketing to have
real impact, lead and stand out. It helps strengthen your market positioning, enhance your
perceived value to clients, build trust and loyalty, and generate more business overall.1
Thought leaders can also expect greater recognition, demand and reach in the market.2
And what exactly is thought leadership? When you help people frame the way they think
about key issues or guide them to smarter decisions, by presenting insightful, compelling
and often provocative perspectives, that's when you are likely to be acknowledged as a
thought leader - the "go to" business (or person) for a particular interest area.
6. Social media is cost-effective. Some would say, the most cost-effective ever. That is
not to say it's free. It does require investment of budget, professional resources, and most
crucially, time. But all these combined is nowhere close to the cost associated with other
media. In tight economic times like these, it's social media that can be utilized most
effectively to gain competitive advantage. And as the cost of sales acquired through
social media is significantly lower, ROI and profit margins can increase.
7. B2B offerings tend to be complex and B2B purchase decisions are not by any stretch
impulsedriven or low-risk. Sales cycles are long and buyers will spend a lot of time on
upfront research. So why not be a part of that process? Social media offers unprecedented
and abundant avenues for knowledge sharing that can help educate prospects and

facilitate faster sales cycles. You get to communicate information and answer buyer
questions about your offerings more quickly. By providing this almost real-time, two-way
communications, you not only inform, but also build trust and credibility that can work to
increase sales in shorter periods. 7. 1 Source: "Ranking the Top 100 Global Brands"
www.engagementdb.com. July 2009 Furthermore, in lessening the confusion around your
offerings, the information exchanged and relationships built through these conversational
media can help position you as a trusted advisor and decrease the concerns associated
with high learning curves. In turn, these could help increase purchase rates of your
products, services and offerings.
Using social media for B2B marketing is not without its rewards. Socially engaged
companies are in fact more financially successful, according to one study.1 And
engagement refers to going beyond mere presence. It involves interacting with others,
setting off discussions, and responding in a timely manner during conversations. This can
be a challenging transition for traditional marketers used to having control over their
channels.
At the same time you would not want multiple interactions from people in your company
responding randomly without coordination. Keep in mind too the need for transparency
in all outreach activities. Lack of genuineness is a sure-fire way to slide down the social
media ladder. With these considerations in mind, let us take a look at how you can
kickstart social media marketing in your own company.

Strategy
The first thing an organization needs to do to kickstart their social media marketing
campaign is to draw up a social media strategy. The social media strategy is an extension
of the overall marketing strategy. It needs to be commensurate with the business and the
market you are targeting. This keeps your brand identity unified across the board. The
question is not how to make money from it, but rather, how you can use the various social
media channels to facilitate prospecting; and how you can cultivate relationships and
integrate ways of communicating and selling to buyers. To begin you may want to choose
to focus on a few of your overall marketing goals e.g. lead generation, customer
retention, establishing yourself as the experts, or increasing your brand awareness and
equity. Depending on your goals you may choose different social media platforms to best
suit your purposes.
Another key point would be to communicate this strategy to your entire organization and
involve everyone. Get everyone onboard and actively participating in blogging, tweeting
or interacting with your consumers on forums. Put together a roster to schedule
participation or set a weekly/ monthly minimum contribution from each person. This
enables your organization to be 'heard and seen' from all the perspectives.
38% of all media on the internet is consumed on social platforms so we as B2B
marketers need to be there.

RESEARCH:
Once you have your social media strategy in place you will need to invest some time on
research to find out where your audience spends most of its time. From LinkedIn, Twitter,
blogs, forums, to YouTube and Facebook there is an increase in users across all age
demographics. The Forrester report on Facebook demographics reports the increase in the
over 35 age demographic and predicts that 75% of its worldwide users will be out of
college.
When you have identified the platforms where your audience spends most of its time its
important to begin listening to your customers and find out what kinds of conversations
they are having about your brand. Some social media tools you can use to help you do
this would be Monitter, Social Mention, Google Alerts, Alltop etc. Many of these services
are provided free and let you listen in on the conversation about your brand by using their
sites to search using your brand name or a contextual theme.

From analyzing these conversations you will be able to identify and learn what your
brand perception is as well as that of your competitors, what drives your brand and
identify white space which possibly will provide opportunities for you to improve and
grow your brand perception. Listening to your customers and being critical in your
analysis of their conversations gives your organization an immediate advantage as you
can leverage on the positives in these communications and work on what your consumers
perceive to be the negatives of the brand. Researching into your brand conversations will
also help you to identify your evangelists and detractors and see how influential they are
based on their reader base.
BtoBonline reports that B2B marketers are making their presence felt on social media
platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Each of these platforms has
specific advantages over the others and you may want to use a combination of these for
your social media campaign. Twitter provides you with an avenue to engage and interact
with your consumers, both starting and joining conversations, by routinely providing
information, updates and even discounts to the follower base. BtoBonline further reports
that the use of viral video, through sites such as YouTube, is being primarily used for
customer/demand generation (58%) and the building and management of the brand
(35%). The primary objectives for blogs on the other hand are customer retention (33%)
followed closely by brand building/ management (29%) and customer demand/generation
(25%).

Use of social media marketing:

We asked a few questions to determine the survey participants' experience using social
media to market their businesses.
Use of social media marketing
We began by simply asking marketers if they use social media to market their businesses.
The overwhelming majority (97%) indicated they are participating in social media
marketing.

Social media is important for my business:

A significant 92% of marketers said that social media was important to their businesses.
This is an increase from 86% in 2013, where only 49% strongly agreed and 37% agreed.
Years using social media marketing:
We asked participants how long they've been using social media marketing.
Fifty-six percent of marketers surveyed have at least two years of social media marketing
experience.
Note: For a detailed demographic breakdown of survey participants, see pages 4849 of this report.

Measuring social media ROI:

We wanted to understand marketers' ability to measure their social media activities, so we
asked them to rate their agreement with the following statement: "I am able to measure
the return on investment (ROI) for my social media activities."
Only about one in three (37%) agreed they are able to measure their social activities.
However, this was an improvement from 2013, where only 26% indicated they could
measure ROI.

Analyzing social media:

We wanted to understand marketers' ability to analyze their social media activities, so we
asked them to rate their agreement with the following statement: "I regularly analyze my
social activities."
A significant 68% of marketers surveyed analyze their social media activities.

Effectiveness of Facebook marketing:

We asked marketers if they agreed with the statement: "My Facebook marketing is
effective."
Only 43% of marketers feel like their Facebook efforts are working, an increase from
37% in 2013. However, most marketers either don't know or indicated that their
Facebook marketing is NOT working.
B2C marketers were far more likely to agree or strongly agree (50%) than their B2B
peers (34%). Larger businesses were much more likely to agree that their Facebook
marketing efforts were effective. For example, 52% of businesses with 1000 or more
employees agreed, compared to only 34% of the self-employed.

Mobile-optimized blogs:
We asked those marketers who had blogs to rate their agreement with the following
statement: "My blog is optimized for mobile readers."
Forty-three percent of marketers surveyed have a mobile-optimized blog, up from 28% in
2013.
B2B marketers were a little more likely to have their blogs mobile-optimized (50%),
when compared to B2C marketers (38%).

Integrated social activities:

We asked marketers to rate their agreement with the following statement: "I have
integrated social media into my traditional marketing activities."
Eighty-three percent of marketers agreed that they had integrated their social media and
traditional marketing activities, slightly up from 79% in 2013.

GUIDELINES:
As a good social media campaign involves all parts of your organization, from sales to
PR to technical support, its unrealistic to assume that everyone will know just how to
dive in and start working on making your brand social. It is helpful and indeed important
to set some basic rules for your staff to follow when blogging, tweeting or responding to
comments on forums. The guidelines should cover how the post/tweet/response should be
written. It is important to keep in mind that the one of the key objectives of any social
media campaign should be to add value for your consumers through the information you
distribute. The use of social media is not to preach to or only advertise to your audience
but to engage and participate with them in conversations. When responding your staff
should speak in the first person, be mindful of the tone of what they are posting, and have
care to exercise their best judgement when responding to negative comments.
Some guidelines used by companies already using social media are:

IBM:
- Don't pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don't alter previous
posts without indicating that you have done so.
- IBM's brand is best represented by its people and what you publish may reflect on
IBM's brand.

BBC:
- With conversations, participate online. Dont broadcast messages to users.
- With moderation, only police where we have to. Trust our users where we dont.

Kodak:
- Be external. You dont have to be 100% internally focused. Link to other blogs, videos,
and news articles. Retweet what others have to say.
- Post frequently. Its a lot of work but dont post to your blog then leave it for two weeks.
Readers wont have a reason to follow you on Twitter or check your blog if they cant
expect new content regularly.

SAP:
- Separate opinions from facts, and make sure your audience can see the difference
- Be engaged and be informed. Read the contributions of others. Know what the current
conversations are and what people are saying in order to see if, and how, you may be able
to contribute a new perspective. Participation is the fuel of social computing.

Intel:
- Always pause and think before posting. That said, reply to comments in a timely
manner, when a response is appropriate. But if it gives you pause, pause. If you're about
to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, don't shrug it
off and hit 'send.' Take a minute to review these guidelines and try to figure out what's
bothering you, then fix it. If you're still unsure, you might want to discuss it with your
manager or legal representative. Ultimately, what you publish is yours - as is the
responsibility. So be sure.
Perception is reality. In online social networks, the lines between public and private,
personal and professional are blurred. Just by identifying yourself as an Intel employee,
you are creating perceptions about your expertise and about Intel by our shareholders,
customers, and the general public-and perceptions about you by your colleagues and
managers. Do us all proud. Be sure that all content associated with you is consistent with
your work and with Intel's values and professional standards.

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The experience factor:

There's a direct relationship between how long marketers have been using social media
and their weekly time commitment.
For people just beginning with social media (less than 12 months of experience), 51%
spend 5 or fewer hours per week.
However, of folks who have been doing this for 2 years or longer, at least 65% spend 6
hours or more per week on social media activities.

Age factor:
There's a direct relationship between a marketer's age and the time spent marketing with
social media. The younger the marketer, the more time he or she spends on social media.
Of those spending more than 40 hours per week doing social media marketing, 68% are
under the age of 40.

Benefits of social media marketing:

The top two benefits of social media marketing are increasing exposure and increasing
traffic. A significant 92% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have
generated more exposure for their businesses. Increasing traffic was the second major
benefit, with 80% reporting positive results.
Most marketers are using social media to develop loyal fans (72%) and gain marketplace
intelligence (71%).
Changes since our 2013 study: Marketers reported increased benefits across all
categories since 2013. The largest increases were developing loyal fans, which increased
to 72% from 65% in 2013, followed by increased sales, which jumped to 50% from 43%
in 2013.

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Some questions that naturally emerge from the above chart might include, "Can I achieve
more benefits by investing more time in social media?", "Are marketers who've been
using social media for years gaining even better results?" and "Is there a difference
between B2B and B2C?" The following charts address these questions.

Improved sales:
It takes time to develop relationships that lead to sales. However, a large percentage of
marketers who take the time find great results.
For example, more than half of marketers who've been using social media for at least 3
years report it has helped them improve sales. More than half who spend 6 or more hours
per week find the same results and 74% of those who spend 40+ hours earn new business
through their efforts.
Conversely, 50% of all marketers taking this survey report social media has not helped
them improve sales (see prior page). This may be because they lack the needed tools to
track sales.

Increased exposure:
With as little as 6 hours per week, the vast majority of marketers (95%+) indicated their
social media efforts increased exposure for their businesses.
Nearly all marketers (93%+) who've been employing social media marketing for one year
or longer report it generates exposure for their businesses.

Grew business partnerships:

The more time marketers invest in social media, the more they gain business
partnerships. More than half of marketers who've invested at least 1 year in social media
marketing report that new partnerships were gained.
More than half of those investing as little as 6 hours per week in social media were able
to build new partnerships.

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Marketers selling to other businesses were more likely to achieve this benefit (61%) than
those selling to consumers (54%).

Generated leads:
By spending as little as 6 hours per week, 66%+ of marketers see lead generation benefits
with social media.

More than half of marketers with at least one year of social media experience were
generating leads with social platforms.

Improved search rankings:

Improved search engine rankings were most prevalent among those who've been using
social media for one year or longer, with 58%+ reporting a rise.
At least 60% of those investing a minimum of 6 hours per week in social media
marketing saw improvements in search engine rankings.

Increased traffic:
A significant 84%+ of participants found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6
hours per week invested in social media marketing.
And those who've used social media for 1 year or more reported substantially better
results (79%+ reported benefits) compared with those with less experience.

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Success using Social Media:

The organizations that succeed using social media are transparent and genuine with their
reader base.
One way to do this would be to start your own community through blogs and forums. Its
important to remember that the organizations that succeed using social media are
transparent and genuine with their reader base. They offer information that has value for
their consumers and welcome the participation of these consumers on how to better
improve the products and services offered as compared to the brands competitors.
Cultivating your own community is also a great asset as these online conversations can be
used as focus groups for new offerings as well as enhancements on the brands current
products and/or services.
When publishing and creating your brand content its useful to create and maintain the
social identity of the brand as a stand-alone. This is easy enough with a blog or forum
where the branding remains that of your organization but with multiple contributors.
For those brands that want to leverage on Twitter you can use applications like Co-Tweet
or HootSuite to manage your organizations Twitter account and allow multiple
contributors. Brands that have video content can use applications like TubeMogul to push
their video content to multiple user generated content (UGC) sites such as YouTube
amongst others to track views and other consumer engagement metrics.

Steps to succeed using Social Media:

Every organization which has successfully launched a social media campaign has used a
combination of social media platforms to achieve their objectives. This is due to the fact
that every organization has multiple marketing goals in varying degrees of importance. It
is also due to social media platforms differing in their functions as content and
conversation platforms which serve their purposes as stand-alones but are most effective
when used in combination.

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LAUNCH:
HP devised a creative strategy when launching their Z-series workstations which were to
directly compete with Apple who were the dominant players in that arena. HP's social
media strategy was to identify the biggest influencers within agencies who were heavily
interactive and participative in online technology and hardware conversations. HP also
created a character, the superhero Mr Z, to anchor this campaign. HP loaned the 12
selected influencers a Z-series workstation and got them to use and talk about their
experience of using the product in creative ways. These 12 individuals were asked to
make short animation clips which were posted to YouTube. Blogs on the z-series
experiment were created both on the agency websites and independent blogs. The
winners had their clips on the Mr Z website and HP continued the conversations on this
product via Facebook and Twitter.

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