B2B Social Media is for the Long Haul
Wed, Aug 10, 2011
We are way beyond the bright shiny object syndrome of social media for B2B companies. While surveys of adoption and success vary widely, many have begun using social media tools and approaches to market their businesses and communicate with their customers. Companies have developed pilot programs, created social media presences around events and even built social campaigns around product campaigns. That is not the best way for B2B marketers to use social media.
For many B2B organizations, the sales process, or more correctly called the buying process, is a long one. It can be 6-9 months, with some cycles as long as 12-18 months for very complex products with many decision makers on the customer-side. Supporting the various points along those cycles has always been the role of B2B marketing. Social media can help with that. It doesn’t change the process. While it may be easier to bring people to the top of the funnel with social media, or it may be possible to bring more qualified leads to the top of the funnel, the type of selling required for many B2B companies is still relationship-based with people and companies that buyers like and trust.
Some B2B marketers get confused by what they see being done their B2C marketing brethren. Much in the consumer advertising world, especially in categories like consumer packaged goods and consumer electronics is about the right now. This is very different than the real-time of social media. The right now of consumer advertising is about seeing an ad, or some other campaign marketing tactic, which could be a Facebook landing page or a promoted tweet, and being able to go to a store (bricks and mortar or online) and buying it. These calls-to-action are about making a purchase, not about expressing interest. This means that no matter how much consumer brands talk about things like engagement and authenticity, they are still practicing interruptive-based advertising to get you to make a purchase. Right now.
We are all consumers, and are bombarded by these sorts of messages every day. It is hard not to internalize some of that and try to replicate it. Be strong. It is not how B2B marketing works. And it is not how you should use social media to connect with your customers and prospects. As we have written about before, many B2B customers reach out to companies express their interest in a product or a service after doing quite a bit of research. This puts them further along in the buying cycle. Simple, generic product messaging is not what they need. Not on social media. Not via email. Not on your company website. They need information that can start to build the buying relationship.
Again, social media can help build those relationships and set the groundwork for building deeper relationships after the sale is completed. Social media customer service is a reactive approach to serving customer needs, and may be more effective in a mass consumer environment. Maintaining contact with B2B customers through public channels, and providing public information to them by whatever means, like blog posts and online videos, is one approach. Another one is to encourage LinkedIn recommendations. And you can even include your customers in testimonials that you publish online. There are social aspects of email too. This is how you use social media to build and maintain long-term relationships with B2B customers.
So as you are planning your next social media campaign, step back and consider if it is the best approach. Does it support a long sales cycle or does it promote the right now feelings of consumer marketing? Can it also transition into a long-term relationship with the customer or does the connection stop once the contract is signed? As always, I would be interested in your thoughts below.
Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen or on Google+.
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This is an excellent post about the reality of B2B social media communities. As someone responsible for B2B social media it’s helpful to hear my experiences and philosophy echoed here. It’s about the relationships!
You have gained another follower!
Sue
Very good, very thoughtful advice.
Couldn’t agree more!
Content marketing in B2B context will be information that assists prospects in their buying decision. There is no shortcut.
Sue: Thanks for the comment. Glad my thoughts resonated with you, and matched your experience. I have been a B2B marketer for almost my entire career, and it has always been more interesting to me than B2C marketing.
FM: Thanks.
I saw this tweeted by it’s title, and steeled myself against yet another lonely tale of sterling success from one end of the bell curve. Happily, my expectations were not met.
This is absolutely right. For B2B, SM is just another tool in the large tool shed we have always required for the process (in my case, in Business Intelligence). Absolutely the touches in the buying cycle have changed in the last 6 years, as, I would argue in my case, has the profile of the buyer. But SM is not the be all and end all, and day to day struggle to distinguish the B2C hype from B2B value is clouds of burnt rubber from spinning wheels.
Understanding the buying cycle and the buyer is far more important than understanding Twitter or Google+.
That said, I now have someone new to follow on Twitter. Thanks Jeff.
Hi Jeffrey,
Great article!
I have spent the majority of my career in B2C marketing, but just accepted a position at a B2B agency where my primary focus will be social media. Having spent some of my early career selling consulting services to Fortune 500 companies, I can’t help but agree that this approach is the best application of SM for a product that requires a long sales cycle.
Ultimately, though, the goal of any B2B or B2C SM campaign is to speak to your customers’ needs. So, as a supplement to this, I would urge everyone not to forget that “supporting the sales cycle” does not mean “use new tools to spam clients as part of a sales process”.
- Thanks, Andy
Richard: I love, love, love your comment that you read the title and expected to be disappointed, yet you encountered a thoughtful post that did not meet your expectations. Hope we continue not to meet your expectations.
Andy: Thanks for the addition. Good luck with your new position. Here’s a post from our friend Michael Brenner that addresses some of this a little deeper on the client side: http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/strategy/the-role-of-marketing-in-b2b-what-should-it-be
Thank you very much for this very interesting article. It is exactly what I am experiencing actually when it comes to Social Media in a B2B company (and especially in the Customer Services). B2B customers rely a lot on established 1:1 connections with people inside the company. They will not tweet or write on a Facebook wall about their personal questions regarding one companies (customer) services. They prefer a more secure environment and preferably as often as possible a 1:1 contactperson where they can talk directly about open issues their questions. I will be an interesting case to connect those customers for example in a closed and company owned community (type yammer.com). Goolge+ Plus with their circles might be another option for the future.
And: it all depends on the business you’re in! Some Plattforms might work for some businesses, others won’t. Therefore we need to go out and talk, listen to our customers first. They will tell us what is best for them