Usage:

• 86% of B2B firms are using social, compared to 82% of B2C. (Source)
• B2B firms aren’t as active in their social media activity with only 32% engaging on a daily basis compared with 52% of B2C firms. (Source)
• More than half (53.5%) of marketers surveyed said they currently use social media as part of their marketing strategy. This is up from 2009, when 45.0% of marketers said they used social media for marketing. (Source)

Forecasts:

• Annual growth in US B2B online marketing spend is forecast at 8% in 2010 and is set to reach 14% by 2012. (Source)
• B2B advertising spend on social media and lead generation sites is forecast to grow at an annualized rate of 21% and 17% respectively to 2013. (Source)
• Online accounted for 7% of the B2B marketing mix in 2008. This is set to reach 12% by 2013. (Source)
• Two thirds of B2B marketers believe that online must be complemented by traditional marketing activities. (Source)
• Only 50% of B2B marketers formally analyze metrics to judge ROI – but those that do find online marketing more effective. (Source)
• B2B marketing spending on social networking sites is predicted to rise 43.3%. (Source)
• Forrester predicts B2B interactive marketing spending to reach $4.8 billion by 2014 – almost double that estimated for 2009 ($2.3 billion). (Source)
• B2B social media marketing spending will grow from just $11 million in 2009 to $54 million in 2014. (Source)
• US business-to-business (B2B) advertising and marketing spending will increase by 0.8% this year, to $129 billion. (Source)

Executive Interest:

• 36% of B2B execs surveyed said there was low executive interest in social media in their company, compared with 9% of B2C marketers who said the same. (Source)
• 46% of B2B respondents said social media was perceived as irrelevant to their company, while only 12% of consumer-oriented marketers had the same problem. (Source)

Focus:

• According to an eMarketer study, B2B online marketers focus on lead generation (38%), retention (34%) and awareness (28%).  (Source)
• The top applications for the use of social media for b2b marketers are thought leadership (59.8%), lead generation (48.9%), customer feedback (45.7%) and advertising on sites (34.7%). (Source)

Channels:

• Asked to rate the effectiveness of specific social media sites in their marketing efforts, more than one-half of respondents said that Facebook was “extremely” or “somewhat” effective. Somewhat fewer said the same of LinkedIn, and just 35% considered Twitter effective. (Source)
• In contrast, when Hubspot surveyed B2B companies in North America about lead generation through social channels, 45% rated LinkedIn effective, compared with just 33% who said the same of Facebook. (Source)
• Methods generating the highest B2B ROI are topped by advertisers’ own websites, followed by conferences, exhibitions and trade shows; direct mail; search engine keywords; and e-marketing/e-newsletters. (Source)
• B2B advertisers see cross-media marketing as most effective; 78% combine three or more major marketing methods. (Source)

Measurement:

• 34% of B2B marketers said they were not measuring social success at all versus just 10% of B2C respondents. (Source)
• Website traffic, brand awareness, engagement with prospects and engagement with customers are the leading metrics used to measure the success of social media for B2B companies. (Source)

Resource Allocation:

• 60% of B2B firms have no staff dedicated to social media compared with 54% of B2C players. (Source)
• Just 10% of B2B firms use outside agencies or consultants compared with 28% of B2C firms. (Source)

Budgets:

• B2B product marketers were spending an average of 3.4% of their marketing budgets on social media in February 2010, and B2B services marketers were spending 6.5%. Respondents expected those proportions to reach 7.4% and 11%, respectively, over the next year. (Source)
• B2B marketing spending on social networking sites is predicted to rise 43.3% in 2010. (Source)
• 39.2% of B2B marketers say they plan to boost their marketing budgets in 2010, 47.5% plan to keep them flat; and 13.3% plan to decrease them.  Among those that plan to increase budgets, 11.1% plan to raise them by more than 30%; 18.8% plan to increase them between 20% and 29%; 31.1% plan increases between 10% and 19%; and 39.0% plan to increase budgets less than 10%. (Source)
• Within online marketing, the top areas that will see spending increases include Web site development (70.7% plan increases), email marketing (68.6%), search marketing (62.3%), social media (60.3%), video (50.7%) and webcasts (46.0%) (Source)

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While failure may be part of a social media test program, here are four things that will almost guarantee failure of your social media programs. We can even assume that there is a social media strategy with a content strategy, and it is integrated with the marketing plan, and these failures will still occur.

Siloed Social Media Practitioners
No matter if you work internal for the company or are providing social media services through an agency or as a consultant, you must be connected to the rest of the marketing or communications team. And this is true whether you are providing strategy or content for the organization. If you don’t know what is going on in other parts of the marketing organization, you cannot effectively do the job you were hired for. There is nothing worse than focusing your approach around a given project only to find it has been delayed.

Solution for Success: A 30-minute weekly meeting or phone call to cover a top-level overview of other projects. This is most important if you work remotely or outside of the organization.

Lack of Engagement
After establishing accounts on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, you only tweet out your own content. You set up automated tools to gradually grow your followers, but you do not engage with them. As Twitter has become more about providing value by sharing links, it is too easy to only push out content, and only retweet others rather than seek out potential conversationalists and engage with them.

Solution for Success: Review your own tweets on a daily basis and revise your approach to include engagement. These things are cyclical, and you may want to do this on a regular basis even after you have gotten used to engaging with your growing network. If you have a Facebook fan page, make sure you visit it at least once a day to ask questions, provide information and respond to comments.

Rely Only on Social Media
Social media is part of a marketing mix and usually cannot drive sales by itself. No matter how great a blog post is, how engaging tweets are, and how helpful you are on LinkedIn, other tactics must be used as well. Social media can do a lot of things, but for certain B2B niche products or services, it is better in a support role, rather than the star.

Solution for Success: Continue to invest in traditional communications, but always include links to social sites to build those communities. A customer who is a heavy Facebook user will notice a Facebook logo on your printed catalog and become a fan. Make sure you provide content to keep him interested within Facebook.

Don’t Give It Enough Time
Building a community takes time and making drastic, knee-jerk changes too quickly without allowing natural growth will ensure your failure.

Solution for Success: Give your plan the time it deserves to grow and succeed. Set expectations at the beginning that it will take time to show results. Evaluate various metrics on a weekly basis to see if you are reaching your goals. After two months of data, you can evaluate how the program is going. You may need to make major changes to your tactics, but you have the metrics to show what kinds of things worked and where your focus needs to be.

What are some lessons you have learned about social media failures?

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