Social media is now well-recognized as one of the most effective marketing platforms for businesses. New-age brands are using social media for everything from product launches to getting feedback. Interestingly, even older, more traditional brands are acknowledging the value of social media in marketing and transitioning towards it. Because of these shifts, social media is also changing its methods for B2B marketing.
If you are a business owner looking to advance your B2B marketing, you might have been advised to create a social media account. Let’s take a look at how you can leverage the account to market your business.
Define Your Objective and How You Want To Measure It
Establishing goals at the very beginning will help you chart out the rest of your social media path. Whether your objective is networking through your business, spreading awareness, or increasing reach, be sure to define it clearly before you begin. An unclear objective often leads to people getting lost along the way.
Once your objective is clear, think about how you want to measure its success. Think about what metrics you might want to use—clicks, conversions, leads generated — and what insights can be gained from your choices. There are several available formats of creating media reports to display your findings. You might consider hiring a media planner for this purpose to ensure timely check-ins and follow-ups. Although it is important to look at media reports regularly, having a larger goal in mind can also help you create content that’s more relevant to your audience.
Use Social Media To Highlight Your Brand Identity
Social media is great to build a reputation, opening up many possibilities to change perceptions about your brand. If you’re an old brand, you can change your identity to a more relevant one. If you want to be a funny brand, then using social media will allow you to portray yourself that way. Remember: the way you present yourself online is how your brand will be perceived offline.
If you’re sure about your brand identity, highlight it on social media. If you want to transform it, go for it. It’s possible to spread awareness about your new identity fast through social media. In other words, create a personality for your brand, and if you already have one, use it. To really build a reputation, you will also have to earn trust online through social proofing. Adobe’s Marketo blog defines social proofing or social influence, as “a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous situations when people do not have enough information to make opinions independently.” Social proofing looks at external factors such as popularity and reliability which can then be displayed to express your brand’s positive reputation.
Think about social proofing when creating content to highlight your brand identity. Similarly, it’s important to know your audience and to create social media content that would be compelling to them. For example, if you want to reach out to a millennial audience, it might be a good idea to study and use current trends to capture their attention. Millennials tend to favor websites or social media experiences that are easy to navigate, quick to load, personalized, and look professional. While designing and executing e-commerce for millennials can be challenging, it can be extremely fruitful for your business, considering that this generation comes with a spending power of $10 trillion.
Know Your Platform
The objective of your marketing plan has to be in tandem with the platform you leverage it on. Some brands prefer going all-out on all the platforms and posting all of their content everywhere. Others stick to a specific platform and attempt to get more traction there. For B2B marketing, platforms such as LinkedIn are highly recommended and have shown good results. This is because, if you want to reach the businesses, you have to first go where they are.
That being said, it is not necessary to only deploy LinkedIn. It is always beneficial to be present on various platforms and use each one to target various audiences and meet specific goals. For example, if you’re looking to engage, Instagram, with its flexibility in terms of posting interactive content, might be your best bet. Twitter, on the other hand, is great to make short but important announcements, and Facebook is good for longer posts. Although the strategy you use in choosing the platform will be based on your objective, as a general rule, it is always good to create platform-specific content for best results.
Get Some Help. You Don’t Have To Do This Alone!
Newbies to social media may find the many possibilities of social media marketing utterly overwhelming. If you fall into this bracket, consider hiring a dedicated team to manage your e-commerce and online marketing.
Make sure your team has various people who understand a wide range of marketing aspects, from media planning to content strategy. Your team can help you widen your horizons and manage your online sales. In this day and age, where sales are moving completely online, a social media team is a long-term investment for your business.
Social media is perhaps the most useful tool for B2B marketing today. It is a fast-paced, smooth and fuss-free medium. It also amplifies your business from being just another business to one that can become a part of people’s lives. Define your objective and then decide your platforms before you begin your social media marketing, and then build your brand’s identity with relevant content and engaging online conversations. This will also get you more loyal customers. Finally, hire a team of experts to strategize and use your online presence to your utmost benefit. B2B marketing can be tricky and overwhelming at first, but with the right tools and information, it can be simplified.
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