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Taking your B2B social media efforts to the next level

Posted by Sheera Eby on June 12, 2013

Social media has become the tactic du jour for most business-to-business marketers. According to HubSpot, approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision, 43% of companies have found a customer through LinkedIn and about a quarter of marketers say they’ll be investing more in social media this year.

 

 

B2B marketers have always found networking a productive vehicle in driving business. We’ve all heard the old adage, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

 

As social media has exploded over the last couple of years, marketers have tried to take advantage of “a lower-cost vehicle to get the word out.” So many marketers have entered this space that the noise is creating barriers to being heard.

 

So how can B2B marketers transform their B2B social media strategy to break through the clutter? By using techniques that targeted marketers have been using for years: relevancy, personalization and targeting.

 

With the ability to measure every social interaction and understand the context of these social interactions, I’d argue that social media is currently on the path to becoming an awareness medium. But we have a chance to get it back on course. By employing data and targeted mechanisms, social media can be transformed into a customized, behavior-based channel.

 

That is the premise of social customer relationship management (SCRM). SCRM uses social media marketing services and techniques to enable companies to communicate and engage with customers and prospects. SCRM provides a platform for creating meaningful ongoing dialogue with prospects and customers, and most important it is a measurable form of social media marketing.

 

B2B marketers have an opportunity to be leaders and in the forefront of transforming B2B social media into B2B SCRM.

 

The foundation of SCRM is creating a unified database that can marry engagement with behavior and other marketing data. Technology has enabled us to deliver a true two-way dialogue and not be limited to only understanding aggregate information about “social chatter.” The first step in taking a B2B social media strategy to the next level is data analysis and identifying how to segment and group customers based on behavior. Tools allow us to look at engagement at an aggregate and individual level.

 

Here are three easy steps to consider in evolving your B2B social media strategy into a more targeted B2B SCRM strategy.

 

1. Find meaningful ways to drive engagement.

Similar to all B2B social media efforts, the first step is to drive users to engagement through a number of techniques. Deliver meaningful, relevant content that engages your audience. Test and learn through deploying a range of content delivery devices, including blog articles, videos, polls, infographics, ebooks and white papers.

 

Once the engagement devices are built, it is critical to tailor user-centric posts in a number of social outlets to drive engagement. The goal of SCRM is to generate an interaction, whether it’s reading web content or blog articles, leaving comments, generating a review or downloading a white paper or ebook. The way to elevate B2B social media efforts to the next level is to ensure current activities continue to inform communications going forward. Tracking what content is driving the highest level of engagement and which types of users are interacting with different content ensures the evolution to SCRM.

 

2. Apply social behavior to deliver relevant communications.

Once users engage, leverage behavior to develop targeted relevant communications. This is the biggest differentiator that transforms B2B social media marketing to SCRM, and it’s the real magic. Applying behavioral information to personalize outbound and follow-up communications takes the entire customer experience to the next level.

 

Leverage interactions to inform ongoing communications streams, including segmenting customers for follow-up post-engagement from social media marketing activities. This distinction is the cornerstone of SCRM. Technology and analytics provide the ability to identify engagement on a user level and categorize users for future communications follow-up.

 

3. Start small, but aim big.

Most B2B marketers have limited resources, and have to consistently prioritize everything on their plates. One of the quickest and easiest applications for B2B marketers is to marry email efforts into the social media marketing strategy. Leverage social behavior target content for lead nurturing.

 

Analyze content that drives engagement, social sharing, comments and reviews, and information downloads. Create groups within the sales funnel and target those prospects based on what content they find engaging, and related information that can help deliver relevant messaging. Target these groups with a series of lead-nurturing messages based on their behavior.

 

Once you’ve mastered email, broaden the integrated efforts and leverage direct mail, landing pages, personalized URLs (PURLs) and other targeted tactics.

 

Today it’s all about ROI. And that’s a topic that many marketers are still wrestling with in relation to social media. Tying a B2B social media strategy to the sales funnel, and in particular lead nurturing, provides a set of tangible, measurable outcomes. One of the key metrics is the ability to move leads to a “sales ready” state. Leveraging this type of process for evaluating social investment ensures a clear understanding of social ROI.

 

Social media marketing has transformed marketing over the past five to 10 years. The next evolution of B2B social media strategies is going to be creating a more individualized social experience. B2B marketers will need to elevate their use of data, segmenting and personalization to break through the clutter. Users are getting inundated with messages, and trends we have seen in email and direct mail are going to be applied to social media. One-size-fits-all messaging in social won’t meet user expectations.

 

Topics: Digital Marketing

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