All marketing campaigns need to have a social media elemnt
Social marketing builds relationships, promotes content and influences buyers before they are even interested in your offer. We all like to buy from people we like and trust. If friends recommend products to us we are more inclined to buy them.
Social media allows companies to show their personality and engage with prospects. A company can have followers on social media sites that grow to become their advocates. Then these "fans" do the selling peer to peer.
However social media alone may not do enough especially when it comes to selling B2B. Advertising works, but today it works best when it involves an element of social media. Combine the two and your campaign will have a broader reach and more effect.
"Marketing today is difficult. There are 200 million people on the US "Do Not Call" list. Over 84% of TV viewers admit to skipping commercials. 44% of direct marketing is never opened. Roughly 99.9% of online banner sare never clicked. Buyers wait until they have completed 60 - 80% of their research before reaching out to vendors."
Michael Brenner - Senior Director of Global Marketing at SAP
Why do I need social media marketing to sell to businesses?
Previously businesses sold through sales reps and sales events. They promoted with direct marketing and brand building. Then with the advent of the Google search in 1998 B2B marketing moved to pay-per-click (PPC) and SEO. We wanted to be found.
Then being found wasn't enough we need to offer white papers and downloads to get people on to our lists. Then we could nurture the prospect before trying to sell. Now today the SEO and PPC still has a place. In fact email marketing is still the most productive for actually getting sales.
However social media engagement drives interactions on the web. Through all the many connections businesses can create peer to peer selling rather than business to client. They can build valuable relationships and use them to promote sharing and engagement. This is why every marketing campaign needs to have a social element.
Stats Taken from "2012 Social Marketing Marketing Industry Resort" by the Socail Media Examiner:
• 59% of marketers are using social media 6 hours a week or more
• 74% of marketers reported that social media marketing has increased their site traffic
• 85% of marketers that the number 1 benefit of social media marketing is generating more business exposure
• 93% of B2B marketers use social media marketing to market their business
Social Media Marketing Basics
• Be social - make content interesting, engaging and fun - don't take yourself too seriously
• Combine social with paid and see powerful results
• You still need a good offer, and engaging web content
• Be sure and have a reason for them to leave their data
• Give value first (my motto) - give away as much as you can
• Social is 2-way so involve people in the conversation
• Peer to peer sharing is the best way to get your message spread and heard
Getting Started - a few questions to ask in planning...
This seems like a daunting task and it can be a bit overwhelming. If you already have social media you need to bring all channels in to line. You get a much greater effect if you have all channels running in concert.
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Decide where the content is going to come from and who will be responsible for the follow up conversations.
Know where your prospects are and go there. It's no use being on Vine if you are selling to the silver surfers. See the chart below.
Set clear goals, or you won't know if you have succeeded.
Ask if you have the resources to commit to this strategy fully and for the long term. Social media needs to be worked on over time.
Is your company website ready for the added attention? What will it do to engage with these new visitors and how will you capture their data?
Are you committed to have every advertising and promotional initiative include a social media element?
Next it's time to make a plan
Next you need to ask: Who? Where? How? What?
• Who are you targeting? Where are they in social media?
• How can you reach them and be successful?
• What do you want to achieve from this?
Once you know the answers you can build your plan. But first make sure that the stakeholders are fully committed. If you don't have buy-in for the team your plans will fizzle and fail.
Show the reason for taking this action. Not because everyone else is doing it but because it works. Highlight the numbers and statistics. Show the potential ROI of some effort verses the cost of traditional advertising.
Now you can choose your team. Who will be directly responsible for the campaign? There needs to be a moderator to control what is being said as the people speak for the company and we have seen too many examples of employees blighting the name of the businesses they work for.
Depending on the resources you can apply to this campaign you may have one or two people responsible for content on each platform. One of the great ways to build content on sites is to have them all interlinked. When I post on my blog the post goes to Tumbler, Facebook, Google+, Twitter and several other social bookmarking sites. In this way I can have a broader reach and have more people see the value that I am giving.
2 blog posts or more a week is ideal. They don't have to be huge but they do need to be helpful and engaging. Then you need someone to monitor and utilise each platform. Content is all very well but you need to engage with people who see it and be sure and have a 2 way conversation.
In an ideal world you should be posting on Twitter several times a day plus 4 or 5 good re-Tweets. Facebook needs a similar amount of attention as does Google+ and LinkedIn. Pinterest needs 3 to 5 posts a week, which can come from other platforms but a few original ones now and then are a bonus. Use pictures and video, engage with other pages and sites and get involved in the conversation.
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All this takes time and effort and most companies who start this do not see it through. The average time for a campaign to last is a month or less before other things take president and the people involved stop doing their tasks. That is why it is so important to get the staff to buy in to what they are doing. This is not a short term plan; they have to be in it for the long term to see any disenable result to the bottom line.
Create some ground rules and policy
• Define where you will have a presence
• Have a clear set of ground rules
• Will ideas be central / independent / team sourced
• Respect confidentiality of information (be discreet)
Content rules
• Entertain
• Inspire
• Inform
• Start conversations
• Teach
• Take part
Forms of content
• Infographics
• Pictures
• Graphs
• Slide share
• Video
• Podcasts
• Checklists
• White papers / reports
• Blog posts
• Micro blog posts
• Idea clouds
Top tips for success
Follow industry experts and leaders and emulate what they do and say. Develop your own angle and take the lead with your version of the story. See what is being talked about and join the conversation. Develop keyword lists from these conversations and then use them to take the conversation forward. Make all your employees part of the story not just those directly involved.
Interview experts for your blog. Invite guest posts and be sure and get invited back. Get out there and be seen as leaders and informers. Become the voice of your industry. In this way people will tell forward your message. It's like hearing a piece of trivia at the pub; if its good and sticks in your mind you will then tell it on to a different group of friends. And in this way it will spread.
Ideas and information needs to have authority and believability and it needs to be sticky so that it can be passed on easily. "Made to Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath shows how to make ideas stick with stories. Google "Story Selling" and you will see that there are any number of books and blogs on the concept.
Stories add clarity to an idea or concept and allow people to understand complex ideas from outside of their field of experience by comparing them to something they are familiar with. In this way they have understanding and the idea is much more likely to stick. Once it has stuck it can be told forwards.
Fortunately in social media we just have to click to pass a message on with a re-Tweet or re-post. But illustrations are a great way to help understanding. That is why Infographics have become so popular. 2013 is said to be the year of the video for marketing. This also have to do with stories and retaining information.
Sharing is key to success. So ask for people to share. A lot of people will not suggest that people share some information but it has been proven to work. A simple suggestion such as "if you found this article useful/helpful please pass it on" may be all you need to get traction.
Polls are great for this and get people to interact in a fun and easy way. It is also a fantastic way of finding out your prospects likes and dislikes.
Be sure and make sharing easy with social icon buttons and one click sharing. Some sites go further and have pop-ups and hover boxes to encourage sharing. Personally I don't like that as I find its too pushy and I don't want to be known for that.
Summary
Remember to monitor and measure every step of the way. Have clear goals and understand what success will look like. Measure the cost too so that you can understand the ROI of your efforts. This plan will take a while to work so stick with it and continually adjust and improve.
Some platforms may not work for your industry so you can drop them. Others may produce great returns so you can focus more resources on them to increase the returns.
If you have limited resources then don't try and do everything. Just pick a couple of platforms and focus on them. Always include a blogging, article marketing and PR. Then use the automated systems to send that content to your Facebook, Pinterest, Tumbler and Google+ pages. In addition check these sites every day and engage with people as and when you can.
One article can be re-written slightly and become a blog post. It may be adapted to become newsworthy and used as PR. This then forms good content for your social bookmark pages. Interact with them once a day and you will have a basic campaign.
When advertising be sure and include these basics as part of the campaign. If you have the resources add in as much of other platforms and channels as you can. Don't worry about what others are doing, do what is right for you.
B2B selling has become buying
There are many articles on the web in which it is suggested that the time of the hard selling sales man is at an end. People do not want to be sold to. They want to get informed and inspired. They want to do their research and get opinions. Then and only then will they go out and look to buy.
As marketers if we do our job properly prospects will come to us predisposed to buy. Our sales team merely has to take the order. In some cases it is more involved than that but social media engagement allows us to take people a lot further through the buying process before they come in to contact with our sales departments.
Prospects are doing research online, if they see an advert for your competitors product and like the idea of it they will do some research online. If you have a stronger presence and greater social evidence the chances are that they will buy from you. Thank you to the competition.
Reversely; if it is your advert that gets people's interest up and you do not back the advert up with social media you may end up sending clients to your competitors.
Remember that you need to work social media in to every aspect of your marketing. The more your audience want to engage with your content the more likely they will want to share and finally become your customer.
Help is at hand
There are many blogs and articles out on the web that can help you with your social media campaign. So if you are not sure look for help. If you want your campaign run for you then engage the services of professionals. But set clear targets and ask for results.
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