It’s about tar­get­ing the right few, not the undif­fer­en­ti­ated many

Many B2B com­pa­nies ask me whether social media is right for them. This post is all about why social media and B2B go hand in hand.

Social media is all about con­ver­sa­tional mar­ket­ing, and that’s why it works so well with a B2B strat­egy. Social media is not about the masses. It is about reach­ing your tar­get audi­ence. Lis­ten­ing before sell­ing and hear­ing before talking.

Often busi­nesses like to mea­sure a social media campaign’s suc­cess by the num­ber of fol­low­ers its Twit­ter account has or the num­ber of fans their Face­book page has. How­ever, these mea­sures are not nec­es­sar­ily the signs of a well-executed social media campaign.

Social media is all about the few rather than the many. The com­mu­nity you build up is ide­ally made up of the peo­ple who are most inter­ested in your brand. If we apply the 80–20 rule here, we are speak­ing of the 20 per­cent who make up 80 per­cent of your business.

I find that B2B and B2C social media cam­paigns are quite sim­i­lar in that they both tar­get the opin­ion lead­ers whether they be the con­sumers or the busi­ness exec­u­tives. These influ­encers lead the way for the rest of their followers.

B2B strat­egy, just like B2C strat­egy is all about net­work­ing — con­vers­ing with the right peo­ple, at the right time. The more in tune you are to things that are hap­pen­ing in your net­work, the more you increase your chances to be at the right place, at the right time.

Accord­ing to eMar­keter, in 2010 these will be the results for online mar­ket­ing spending:

As you can see, web­site spend­ing is fore­cast to rise 71 per­cent and social media spend­ing will increase 60 per­cent in the next year.

It is appar­ent that com­pa­nies are under­stand­ing that they need to: 1) cre­ate a social pres­ence within social net­works, and 2) cre­ate a web­site and/or blog that reflects an active online presence.

Why B2B com­pa­nies use social networks

As to the rea­sons most B2B com­pa­nies are using social net­works, eMar­keter had the fol­low­ing results:

As you can see, com­pa­nies turn to social net­works to show their lead­er­ship in their field, to find new poten­tial cus­tomers by com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the com­mu­nity, to receive cus­tomer feed­back and give cus­tomer ser­vice. There’s no bet­ter tool these days than Twit­ter to han­dle real-time cus­tomer ser­vice issues, and many brands do this beau­ti­fully, includ­ing Com­cast­Cares, Dell, and Star­bucks. They also adver­tise and do mar­ket research via social networks.

What about the rea­sons that com­pa­nies use social media?

The top rea­son B2B com­pa­nies (just like B2C com­pa­nies) use social media is to gen­er­ate aware­ness about their brand. The sec­ond top rea­son is to engage with cus­tomers on an ongo­ing basis. And the third top rea­son is to engage with top influ­encers on the Web.

Mon­i­tor­ing online con­ver­sa­tions and respond­ing to feed­back is an extremely impor­tant ele­ment of social media, which only 14 per­cent of com­pa­nies seem to understand.

B2B com­pa­nies that are not using the social tools they have avail­able today will find them­selves at a major dis­ad­van­tage against other B2B com­pa­nies that are using LinkedIn, Twit­ter and sim­i­lar net­works to extend their reach and cre­ate bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the brand and their cus­tomers and poten­tial customers.

Next time you doubt whether social media is right for B2B com­pa­nies, think about what B2B strat­egy is all about: It is about the rela­tion­ships and part­ner­ships you build with your col­leagues, and there’s no bet­ter way to do this today than through social media.

Image credit: Stick­yMes­sageAyelet Noff is founder and CEO of Blonde 2.0, a con­sul­tancy spe­cial­iz­ing in help­ing brands use social media tools such as social net­works, the blo­gos­phere and social soft­ware to cre­ate brand aware­ness, recruit employ­ees or achieve any other goal. See her busi­ness pro­file, con­tact Ayelet, fol­low her on Twit­ter or leave a com­ment below.

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