Social media and B2B marketing
I’ve heard lots of people say that they understand why B2C marketers would use social media, but don’t see the fit for B2B. If you think that, go read what Shel Holtz says on the subject:
Social media actually makes more sense in B-to-B companies than business-to-consumer firms.
…
The benefits of social media to B-to-B companies is simple: It’s all about relationships. B-to-C companies nearly always need to get their messages to large, amorphous groups of people; the companies have no relationship with the vast majority of those people. In most B-to-B environments, companies know exactly who their customers and prospective customers are. Social media provides B-to-B companies with a channel to have conversations that you’d like to have one-on-one with every customer and prospect, but just can’t.
He’s right on the money with this. I think some of the confusion comes from marketers still learning just what social media are; people often start with the idea that social media is just people putting up MySpace pages or chatting on Twitter, and their idea of social media marketing is participating in these existing spaces.
But online social media are much broader than that, and social media marketing includes creating communities as well as participating in them. B2B marketers can put a lot of energy into social media without ever touching Facebook, and that’s approrpriate. Creating customer forums, starting blogs and podcasts on business or technology topics, participating constructively in specialty communities, scanning the blogosphere and Twitter for conversations about their brand… these are all activities that make much more sense than trying to create a community around a flavor of soda.
Shel gives some good examples (Sun, IBM) in the post. If you’re not sure how whether you should be thinking about social media in your B2B marketing - or if you’re trying to sell the idea within your organization - go read and take some notes.
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John,
I agree with your comments. And I think the resistance to social media is even stronger in very focused industries. Sun, IBM, FedEx and the like have very broad prospective targets. The manufacturers of material handling systems, aluminum extrusion equipment, or airplane engines feel as though they know their audience so well, there’s little to be gained by networking–there’s nothing more to say! But as you (and Shel) suggest, the familiarity and credibility you gain in the marketplace with such participation can help a great deal, even if difficult to quantify. (It also can reach influencers whom you may not have even identified as influencers!)
By the way, don’t even sell Facebook short! Here’s a little post about an unlikely B2B participant planting its flag in that turf!
Hey John, just stumbled across you and Maureen via a Blogger search for bloggers interested in some of the same things I am. I agree completely with this advice - businesses work together based on trust, which develops from positive impressions and grows based on positive experiences together. The social media sites and tools out there make it easier to build those relationships - or harder, if used foolishly (or, in some cases, not at all).
As a marketer almost exclusively using social media for B-B outreach I agree 100% that it is probably a perfect medium for developing business relationships. For one thing, intent is inherent- you wouldn’t engage on a site like this, for example, if you weren’t interested in the social media space. So being in the right place indicates that we’re ‘qualified’ to talk to each other.
If you are interested in what I’m saying and you click my link then you should get taken to a place that interests you. This is far less likely to happen in a consumer conversation.
The mindshift a B-B marketer has to make is that you are engaging one to one, not trying to find a trove of ‘leads’ for sales to annoy. The good news is that your conversation is one to many so one connection can result in many additional ones from places you’d never think to look.
In the last two months I’ve been participating in conversations around social media measurement and engagement via comments, blogging, Twitter etc. During that time, with very little traditional marketing, we’ve signed up over 500 users for our freemium version of our product, a B-B service.
This stuff works if you respect the conversation.
Martin,
Your comment states it very well. While everyone knows there’s a “sales” component to the whole thing when marketers are involved, social media seem to remove the intense pressure and allow for a more normal relationship. (By the way, I particular enjoyed your reference to a “trove of leads for sales to annoy.”)
I’m not in the “sales” side of my organization at all, but I believe that my interactions with others has helped us in that regard.