Digital Marketing | The Life of Ryan

Using Display Advertising in a B2B Environment to Drive Conversions

Ryan Metcalfe on May 10, 2016May 12, 2016

Display advertising is very commonly used in a Business to Consumer (B2C) environment, but you don’t see it applied as much in Business to Business (B2B) marketing. This could be because display advertising tends to be more of a direct response format, rather than a branding tool (De Bock, K. 2016), where people look for that click through rate, and try to measure conversion against cost to measure return on investment. As a result display advertising in a B2B context, doesn’t get used very often. But according to King, K (2015), this doesn’t mean that B2B firms shouldn’t use it, the following blog suggests how B2B firms can use display advertising to drive a conversion.

Use display advertising to gain brand awareness

If display advertising is used successfully in conjunction with accurate retargeting, a B2B company is able to limit their ads to those who have met the segmentation requirements and/or visited the website site. As a result, this can make the company appear a larger and more professional firm from a branding perspective, and makes people and other firms aware of the business. Specific targeting and having the right buying mechanisms in place is key here because an advertiser needs to be interacting with the right audience in the right places (Thorson, E & Duffy, M 2012). For example, below is an image of some B2B display advertising that is on a blog about display advertising, ensuring the potential customer is interested in relevant marketing:

Taken from here

2. Ensure creative is clear

It is important to ensure the brand creative is clear and concise. Marketing to a B2B consumer, the ad needs to show how the product or service offered can benefit the firms they are selling to. Once an ad has gone through rigorous targeting and segmentation filtering, to be placed in front of the right person, it is vital that creative is eye catching and delivers the message that your consumer wants to see (Plummer, J. et al 2007). If the ad hasn’t gone through retargeting and the first impression of your company is from this ad it is vital that you portray your company accurately to this potential consumer. Include elements such as:

Company colours and fonts
Company logo
Message containing benefit to customer
Strong call to action

These stages help the association between the brand and its marketing. If they click on an ad and bounce from the landing page, the continuity of the branding will resonate with them if they see another ad (Taskiran, N. et al 2015). Additionally it is important not to clutter the creative with a list of features, it is a small space and display ads aren’t meant for long attention. Again looking at the image example above “Curious about display advertising” and “retargeting: what’s your strategy” outlines what the ad is about clearly, engaging the consumer with concise messaging. The call to action is then nice and obvious, detailing what exactly the consumer will get if they click the ad.

3. Follow up with retargeted marketing

If someone clicked on an ad but didn’t convert it doesn’t always mean that they aren’t interested in the product or service that was offered. B2B environments have long sales cycles and thus need frequent reminding that your product or service is out there. The prospect has already seen your site and has some familiarity with your brand. You don’t necessarily need to state what you do. You just need to give them a quick reminder of what your product or service entails as a reminder. Once again the message here can be refined based on the users journey from the previous click through (Taskiran, N. et al 2015).

Problems with B2B display advertising

There are many problems with display advertising for business to business firms and this could suggest why it is not a commonly used form of marketing for B2B companies. For example, as stated above, the B2B consumer cycle is much longer than the average B2C consumer cycle, where compulsive buys are more frequent (Johnson, N 2015). Results don’t happen right away and prospects need to be nurtured since there are many more decisions that need to be made than that of a single person. A business has to decide as a whole. By running a continuous and constant campaign a marketer is offering continuous exposure, and this is more likely to be rewarded with higher results. Additionally it is important that display strategy is accurate. The people that your ads are targeting need to be highly specified in the segmentation data and selected to ensure their interest in the product or service being offered. Its important to remember that display advertising is not only about brand awareness as different messaging, with differing call to actions will hopefully lead to increasing conversions.

To Conclude…

Display advertising can be a useful method of marketing for all B2B firms on more than just a brand awareness level. Display advertising can drive conversions but the advertiser must remain aware of the issues that surround this method of marketing. Results will take time and there may not seem to be an immediate return on investment. However, ensure targeting and market segmentation is accurate and this will drive conversions for the product or service being marketed.

Further reading:

Debunking The Myths Of B2B Display Advertising

The Complete Display Ads Overview For B2B Marketers

Why display ads matter for B2B companies webinar

References

De Bock, K (2016). Advanced Database Marketing: Innovative Methodologies and Applications for Managing Customer Relationships. New York: Routledge. p212.

Johnson, N (2015). The Future of Marketing: Strategies from 15 Leading Brands on How Authenticity, Relevance, and Transparency Will Help You Survive the Age of the Customer. New Jersey: Pearson Education.

King, K (2015). The Complete Guide to B2B Marketing: New Tactics, Tools, and Techniques to Compete in the Digital Economy. New Jersey: Pearson Education.

Plummer, J. et al (2007). The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from the Advertising Research Foundation. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p84-85.

Taskiran, N. et al (2015). Handbook of Research on Effective Advertising Strategies in the Social Media Age. USA: Business Science Reference. p109.

Thorson, E. & Duffy, M (2012). Advertising Age: The Principles of Advertising and Marketing Communication at Work. Mason: South-Western. p41.

The Evolution of Online Display and the Importance of Programmatic Buying

Ryan Metcalfe on May 10, 2016

What is Display Advertising?

Display advertising is described by Miller, M. (2010) as “banner ads in all forms”, including video format, standard banners, brand awareness banners, interstitial banners and interactive expandables. Each can be used to promote different messages from multiple touch points along the consumer journey. But the evolution from when the ad space was just bought and sold between advertisers and publishers has been huge. Technology has completely digitised the business into a much more efficient purchasing process.

The ad exchange was created to give an opportunity for advertisers to buy and sell specific audiences rather than unspecific packaged impressions by the thousands (which the ad network previously offered, Shiffman, D. 2008). Sellers would make their audiences available on their platform; buyers would then pick their audiences and then bid on them. As technology improved and this method of ad purchasing became more apparent, both buy and sell sides realised that they could make the process more efficient. The below graphic shows how the industry is now set up in layman terms:

A problem arose when it came to companies competing in these real time bidding auctions. Some firms didn’t have the technology or knowledge to carry out these transactions. It was vital that ad space was being bought correctly and on sites that wouldn’t damage the brand. To manage this process, Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) were created, where constant optimisations used data to create more efficient purchasing decisions for the advertisers (Busch, O. 2014). Of course the publishers had the same technological and knowledge limitations so Sell Side Platforms (SSPs) were created to optimise the selling points for these different publishers.

So now we go onto look at how programmatic buying has changed the way media is purchased through the ad exchange.

What is programmatic buying?

Put simply, programmatic buying is the use of automated technology to faster and more efficiently trade digital media (Smith, M. 2014). Real time bidding (RTB) was just the start of programmatic buying. It has now evolved into much more than purely auctions on the Ad Exchange, with advertisers and agencies now being able to use programmatic techniques to transact, not only unreserved inventory, but reserved inventory as well (Busch, O. 2014). Programmatic meant that marketers could bid to show a different add to a different user based on data collected about that user. This data is collected from cookies that are placed in the text information when data from a web page is downloaded to the users computer when they click on the site. Improving this data pool to refine the programmatic process has made it the ideal tool for online marketing, giving advertisers the ability to serve the right ads to the right people at the right time, what all marketing should strive for. On top of this audience segmentation targeting, it has allowed digital marketers to set budgeting parameters like what they are willing to pay for an impression, creating another efficiency this time in monetary value.

Programmatic has had a huge growth rate by a 70-80% uptake as marketers begin to embrace new formats for online display (Yuan, S. et al, 2013). Once there are more engaging formats to choose from, there becomes more opportunity for the industry to become smarter about their marketing and develop a consumer journey through display. From a branding perspective this higher impact inventory hasn’t been there until recently, until these ad formats came along there’s been more of a direct response focus using standard units which are not very engaging. However, mixing these branding formats with RTB is where a problem starts to creep in.

What issue does programmatic buying create?

The technology and data that is the backbone of programmatic tends to be obsessed over too much, losing focus on what is really going to drive click through rates and engagement from the user (Busch, O. 2014). Ads can become subject to lacking creative ideas as firms can lose focus on attracting the customer.

Programmatic has been more frequently used at the end of a consumers journey because it’s where measurement is more accurate; but with the development in accuracy shown in the blog about attribution modelling, return on investment can be measured more efficiently higher up the consumer journey. This creates a challenge for creative agencies as programmatic reaches into the brand space, it is going to deeply affect the way they develop ideas and profoundly affect the assets they produced. The granularity of targeting that programmatic allows means that there is an increasing quantity of assets that needs to be created to benefit from this targeting. The difficulty for creative agencies is developing these assets to the same quality but just in larger quantities to really maximise the opportunities that this kind of audience targeting generates.

To conclude…

Has programmatic buying and real time bidding brought about the end of creativity? It depends on the creative strategy implemented. Media agencies have to work more closely with creative agencies and these creative agencies have to become more agile. If a brand wants a creative unit turned around in 24 hours, it has to become possible to turn it round in this time without losing quality. Creative quality is key. After all, what’s the point of having the right ad in front of the right person; at the right time when the ad looks so bad it doesn’t drive engagement

For further information, you may find the following of interest:

Define It – What Is Programmatic Buying?

A super accessible beginner’s guide to programmatic buying and RTB

10 Things You Need to Know Now About Programmatic Buying

References

Busch, O (2014). Programmatic Advertising: The Successful Transformation to Automated, Data-Driven Marketing in Real-Time. 2nd ed. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. p75.

Miller, M. (2010). Display Advertising. In: The Ultimate Web Marketing Guide. USA: Pearson Education.

Shiffman, D (2008). The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today’s Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture. California: Hunt Street Press. p177.

Smith, M (2014). Targeted: How Technology is Revolutionizing Advertising and the Way Companies Reach Consumers. New York: American Management Association.

Yuan, S. Et al. (2013). Real-time bidding for online advertising: measurement and analysis. Data Mining for Online Advertising. 13 (3)

How Should B2B Companies be Using Email Marketing

Ryan Metcalfe on April 21, 2016April 21, 2016

Introduction

A business to business (B2B) firm involves the exchange of goods, services and/or information between two or more businesses. The issue is how we, as marketers, can translate this into an email marketing strategy and campaign.

The difference between business to consumer (B2C) and a B2B marketing is in a B2C a marketer needs to understand the emotions of a consumer in order to convince them to buy your product. This is in contrast to a B2B environment where the professional relationship revolves around logical reasoning to persuade purchasing decisions. This, as a result, means a marketer must be more in-depth with their marketing initiatives and must focus on things that matter most to a business, such as time, money and resources.

Email marketing is an essential part of B2B marketing strategies. Email marketing campaigns build relationships with business prospects and gather important data. It is a cost effective, measurable method of marketing that can be highly personalised, and allows behaviour to be tracked and then future activity to be constructed to reflect this behaviour. However, this is only when it’s used effectively. Due to the fact that email marketing is viewed as “incredibly cost effective” (Nussey, B. 2004) there is a tendency for it to be used chaotically at times. If an email campaign sent to 1,000 individuals leads to 10 responses, why not just send out 10,000 emails? That generates more responses? Great. Let’s send out 50,000 more. It’s a slippery slope to slide down, where the saturation of sending emails out in bulk leads to a less targeted audience, undermining and endangering the integrity of the campaign. This coupled with the fact that some of the poorer quality email campaigns generate shocking bounce rates (King, K. 2015) highlights the importance of getting the campaign out in an effective and efficient manner.

5 Elements B2B firms should be focusing on

The elements suggested within this section loosely follow the customer marketing lifecycle suggested below by Gilligan, C (2012) where we are under the assumption that external market environments covered by elements 2 and 3 are already accounted for.

This leaves identifying target audience, attracting them, nurturing them and then optimising based off of data collected. Formulating the suggestions as follows:

Ensure the campaign is targeted

As mentioned in the introduction section, a sporadic and untargeted approach is not an appropriate strategy. According to The Internet Marketing Academy (2011), email campaigns should be targeted to specific audience segments. This would be carried out by using behavioural data and the right selection criteria to ensure the activity is highly targeted and highly relevant, then marketers can use email to speak to a captive audience.

Content needs to be varied and creative

As Nussey (2004) suggested, email is cost effective, yet this is no excuse to under budget your creative. Content needs to be engaging every time it is created, this is crucial in maintaining the interest in your market. Once you are segmenting and targeting your audience deliver them media that is engaging to each segment this way you don’t waste your audience’s attention. This means ensuring your data is absolutely accurate and acted upon.

Have a back end data strategy and act on the findings

Having high quality email data is the foundation of building high engagement rates and thus greater return on investments. Enabling data that has real depth allows the marketer to be responsive to the findings they have at the end of each campaign. Constant optimisation leads to a refined strategy where people are seeing this varied and interesting content (as per point two), which is specific and targeted towards them as individuals. As with much in life it’s about quality not quantity and according to Buxton, M (2014) this has only become easier with technological advances in email service providers.

Integration with other channels

As in the B2C world, email in the B2B environment is best used and works most effectively, as part of a multi-channel, multi-disciplinary marketing approach (Roberts, M. & Zahay, D, 2013). This involves links to social media channels and content marketing pieces such as blogs and videos. Once again this increases engagement with not only the marketing activity but the company as an entity.

Nurturing current clients and prospects

Over time email marketing campaigns can build relationships. By checking in with clients every now and then, businesses keep the lines of communication open and gain helpful feedback (Janzer, A. 2015). It’s also a good way of making clients feel like there are real people behind the branded email messages and this more human element generates additional engagement. On the other side of the purchase lifecycle, nurturing the leads involves creating a emails that are sent out over a period of time that are specifically designed to get people who are on the fence to be interested in your business.

Problems with B2B email marketing

There has been significant development in the reliability of spam filters provided by email service providers meaning more and more B2B email marketing head straight to junk folders where they are rarely acted on, and are most definitely ineffective. Research conducted by email marketing consultants Return Path (2015) has found that deliverability rates have fallen to a record 83% since the second period of 2011. This suggests that it could be important to re-examine the utility of email marketing as an efficient marketing platform within modern B2B marketing.

Email marketing has a significant and often inherent association with spam due to the nature and growth of the platform, with the continual use of batch and blast methods of email campaigns by uninformed marketers. Businesses are sending too many emails and consumers don’t have the time to read them, whether they are other businesses or individuals. Ultimately this leads to diminishing effectiveness of reaching leads and current consumers in B2B email marketing as people simply ignore or junk these messages.

Conclusion and consideration

Email campaigns are fundamental to any B2B marketing strategies. Email marketing is a fantastic way to start conversations and build relationships over time, adding value across the customer lifecycle. However, there is a method and thought process that needs to go into them as a “batch and blast” method is not effective enough to compensate for the requirements of specific targetB2B markets. On top of this, the future has to be considered and a potential re-examination of how email as a marketing tool may have to be conducted. There needs to be an increase in sophistication and more focus if email is to survive as a marketing platform; without it email utility could decline.

References

Buxton, M & Walton, N (2014). E-commerce Platform Acceptance: Suppliers, Retailers, and Consumers. New York: Springer. p88.

Gilligan, C & Wilson, R (2012). Strategic Marketing Planning. London: Routledge.

Janzer, A (2015). Subscription Marketing: Strategies for Nurturing Customers in a World of Churn. New York: Cuesta Park Consulting

King, K. A (2015). My library My History Books on Google Play The Complete Guide to B2B Marketing: New Tactics, Tools, and Techniques to Compete in the Digital Economy. New Jersey: Pearson. p77.

Nussey, B (2004). The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing. New England: SMTP Press. p58.

Return Path. (2015). Deliverability Benchmark Report Analysis of Inbox Placement Rates in 2015. Available: https://returnpath.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2015-Deliverability-Benchmark-Report.pdf. Last accessed 20th April 2016.

Roberts, M. & Zahay, D (2013). Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies. 3rd ed. Mason, OH: South-Western. p175.

The Internet Marketing Academy (2011). Email Marketing. Online: The Internet Marketing Academy & Ventus Publishing. p19.

Using Attribution Modelling to Generate More Efficient Digital Marketing

Ryan Metcalfe on April 14, 2016April 15, 2016

What is Attribution Modelling and why do we need it?

Aimlessly spending marketing budget on digital marketing can be very costly to a business. Fifield, P (2008) admits that although in marketing there will always be leakage in spending it is important to identify where this is so it can be minimalised. According to Banasiewicz, A. (2013), actions taken on successful tracking and analytics of big data is the key to this. But how do you analyse all this data at your disposal? Attribution modelling!

Attribution modelling is how you attribute value to the different channels that contribute to conversions or sales on your website (Ryan, D. 2014). This can then be used to make better decisions with your digital marketing efforts. The models are the sets of rules which are used to determine how the conversions and sales are attributed to different touch points along the conversion path.

First of all let’s create an example scenario with “company ABC” which illustrates the need for a more rigorous attribution modelling system by outlining the issues with the previously used last click attribution (LCA) model. LCA uses information taken from the piece of marketing that, as the name suggests, was last clicked on before the customer converted (Phillips, J 2014), where a conversion is defined by the company. A conversion can be a newsletter sign up or a complete sale for example. The effectiveness of the marketing is then directly attributed to that last piece of marketing and the complete online customer journey is disregarded and forgotten about. Marketing analysts looking at an LCA model would then look to weight the marketing spending towards this “more effective” channel. Let’s look at the implications of this:

Below are four channels of online marketing that company “ABC”, for example purposes, are using. Then below each of these are the value attributed to them via a last click model based on their conversion, which for ease we will count as a sale.

From the above it looks like PPC marketing is the most effective means of generating sales. However the consumer’s journey has not been completely considered at all. The method of working out how marketing spend should be assigned should not be as black and white as solely looking sales figures drawn from the last piece of marketing interacted with. Certain marketing methods are used to purely generate consideration for the product or service and thus are unlikely to immediately generate a sale yet are still important to the customer journey (Schönhoff, A 2014).

Below I have created an example of a consumer’s purchasing journey which should more accurately show that there is more to be considered than just the last click a customer makes, and also demonstrate the value of the entire marketing plan as a whole. The boxes are colour coded to reference the channels above that the marketing activity stated is part of.

As you can see this user journey has a lot of touch points from a digital marketing perspective and using the LCA model all of this customer’s conversion would be attributed to PPC as it was the last piece of marketing they clicked before converting. A good way to view a customers journey is to use Google think, an excellent tool to understand how certain acquisition channels assist conversions in your industry and how the length of the customer journey impacts the final sale.

The clicks and impressions achieved via display, social media and email marketing must have aided the conversion to some extent so we need a way to analyse that and see how they form part of the sale. We do this by observing our data through multiple attribution models and deciding which works best for the data available. Other models include (Phillips, J. 2014):

First click – where the entire value of the sale is attributed to the first piece of marketing in the conversion path
Linear – where value is evenly attributed across every element of digital marketing in the conversion path
Time decay – where more value is given to the most recent piece of marketing to the final conversion and consecutively less to the rest of them with the least being the piece of marketing furthest from the conversion
Position based – where value is attributed based on position of the marketing. For example more value is attributed to the first and last interaction in the conversion path than those in the middle

However, the point is not to choose the best model and stick with it, but rather to use all of the models to gain an insight into the conversion path and then efficiently weight digital marketing spend based off of these decisions.

Are there downsides to Attribution Modelling?

Attribution modelling can’t answer all of our digital marketing needs exactly and generate the perfect model of where digital marketing budget should be spent. Kaushik, A. (2013) says that “A lot of that [problems with attribution modelling] is because of all the stuff we don’t know. There is lots of missing data. And as if that were not enough, there is lots of unknowable data”. This suggests that there is only a certain level of efficiency in this current digital climate that can be reached.

On top of this, firms rarely put all of their money into digital marketing. Offline marketing can’t (yet) be attributed to individuals and linked back to their online activity. This allows potential for other marketing channels to impact the online journey of the user and thus skew results of their online consumer path.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a successful attribution modelling system can help a company generate a more refined digital marketing strategy, aiming toward a maximised return on investment across all digital marketing channels. A lack of information may make it impossible to generate a perfect model that tells a firm precisely how their money should be spent, but using a window with multiple models allows for a more efficient budget allocation. This shows us that no single model is better than the sum of them all combined.

References:

Banasiewicz, A (2013). Marketing Database Analytics: Transforming Data for Competitive Advantage. New York: Routledge. p3.

Fifield, P (2008). Marketing Strategy Masterclass: Making Marketing Strategy Happen. Hungary: Elsevier. p203.

Kaushik, A. (2013). Multi-Channel Attribution Modeling: The Good, Bad and Ugly Models. Available: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/multi-channel-attribution-modeling-good-bad-ugly-models/. Last accessed 12th April 2016.

Phillips, J (2014). Building a Digital Analytics Organization: Create Value by Integrating Analytical Processes, Technology, and People into Business Operations. New Jersey: Pearson. p157.

Ryan, D (2014). Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation. London: Jellyfish. p77.

Schönhoff, A (2014). Does Multi-stage Marketing Pay?: Creating Competitive Advantages Through Multi-stage Marketing. Berlin: Springer Gabler. p25.

What is Content Marketing and How to Effectively use it in a B2B Company

Ryan Metcalfe on February 1, 2016

In my last blog I looked at Social media and the value it has to a company that is in a B2B market. In this blog I will look at what media we need to create and why we need to create it at each stage of a buying funnel that a consumer will go through in order to purchase your product or service. This is called “content marketing”.

Quite often you hear the argument that people look at a lot of the case studies that are used as great examples of digital marketing but ask “how does this apply to my business, when my business is a B2B (business to business)” due to the examples being used coming from business that sell to the consumers (B2C). There’s a lot of resistance in the B2B world about how to use digital marketing, as B2B companies are generally slower moving than typical B2Cs. However, digital marketing can be very simple for a B2B once they get the correct mind-set of what they are trying to achieve. This ties into how we think about content marketing. Traditionally you see an awful lot of businesses using digital marketing to try and push out sales messages, for example, looking to send out information on special offers, new products or services. Odden, L. (2012) says “B2B firms often experience much longer sales cycles involving the creation of more content that serves to educate and nurture prospects into qualified leads and customers”. This gives us two elements we really need to think about when content marketing:

How do I engage with my audience when they are not ready to purchase my product/service, or are not already aware of it?
How do I engage with people in the active research stage of product/service purchase? Depending on the product or service this can be days or years between research and purchase.

For the first point we need to focus on our key element of content marketing. We need to look at what content we can provide that will service and engage with a B2B audience no matter what stage they are at in a purchase cycle. Didner, P. (2014) suggest examples such as best practice guides, videos, podcasts etc. We need to prove that our business is providing value to that individual/business when they are at the top of the sales funnel, driving traffic to our website even when they aren’t at the point of purchase.

For the second point we need to find ways to engage with people over that period of time when the consumer is ready to purchase. You need to answer questions the consumer has surrounding the product or service, for example, how it works and how it could be integrated within their business. The purchase doesn’t always have to happen online, but the primary objective of the digital marketing strategy in a B2B environment is how can we drive that call? How can we drive that lead generation?

We have to identify the buying stages of our own customers, creating content to tick the boxes of what people need at each stage. Ideally you then need to maximise the content marketing at the top stages of the sales funnel. We do this by going through the process of creating content, optimising it for search engines, engaging with it through social media and finally we are measuring that primary objective of generating a lead using online analytics tools. The example of the sales funnel below by Stonham, M (2011) is a good indication of the process that buyers go through when purchasing a product and content marketing in a B2B environment can be and should be used over the period of the first three elements.

Content and digital marketing as a whole is important for B2B companies, but it’s not about broadcasting sales messages. It’s about engaging around the right content and demonstrating knowledge and place in the market. Pulizzi, J (2014) says it’s about providing the right content to help people make informed buying decisions and the tracking what works and what doesn’t then iterating around that process.

In conclusion, B2B companies need to take a step back and ask themselves how can they apply it, how does it fit in with the user journey and how does the content I’m producing provide value to the audience, not only when they are looking to purchase the product or service, but when they are only potential consumers?

References

Didner, P (2014). Global Content Marketing: How to Create Great Content, Reach More Customers, and Build a Worldwide Marketing Strategy that Works. New York: McGraw Hill Education. p4.

Odden, L (2012). Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing. London: John Wiley & Sons. p17.

Pulizzi, J (2014). Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break Through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less. New York: McGraw Hill Education. p10.

Stonham, M. (2011). The Sales Funnel – what’s all the excitement about?. Available: http://www.wurlwind.co.uk/the-sales-funnel-whats-all-the-excitement-about/. Last accessed 30th Jan 2016.

How should B2B Companies View Social Media, and What is the Right Way to Use It?

Ryan Metcalfe on January 27, 2016January 31, 2016

Why do you think social media changed everything? Because it created a new way of thinking…

First of all, B2B marketers need to actually think what they need social media for and not just mindlessly post their latest tweet or upload a fresh new Facebook status without knowing their direction. Velocity partners (2014) put it like this: Don’t get me wrong, we love social media as a listening post, a community builder and vector for content. But the key word in the term ‘social media’ is ‘media’. It’s a medium for something. And that thing is ideas. If you have a good idea, social and other media will help spread it like wildfire. And on the flip side, if you don’t have an idea at all, social media can expose this. B2B marketing is a profession of ideas.
When it comes to social media, business to business (B2B) companies work in a different way to your regular business that sell products and services to consumers (B2C). According to Power, R (2014) there are three key elements that B2B’s achieve using social networks, and these are as follows:

1. It offers an opportunity to boost customer acquisition by expanding a brand’s reach, add scale to campaigns and enhance conversion through recommendations.
2. It can help form deeper relationships and advocacy through improving customer service, brand reputation and even product and service quality.
3. It also provides the opportunity to access a huge market to test, trial and crowd source new ideas about your products and services.

These all need to be deeply considered when producing a strategy surrounding social media marketing. The size of the industry a firm works within will be the determinant of the size of market which it has access to. A business needs to efficiently target their consumers by selecting the right social network for their business and business structure. Why is there emphasis on selecting the correct social network? Edwards, V. (2015) suggests that “The decision regarding which social media channels to adopt … is as important as any other marketing initiative”. Social media should be used in a way that supports digital marketing efforts with regards to PPC, content marketing and SEO. As a platform, Social media gives businesses access to immediate community interaction of those purchasing and using their product or services delivering what can be described as real time qualitative data (Kietzmann, J. et al. 2011). However, for a small B2B business focusing around telecoms adoption and implementation this data can be relatively low and perhaps ineffective. So what can we suggest they do? And which social media network should they adopt?

A small B2B company that focuses on services needs to seek out online communities that are interested in the same thing as they are selling due to the need to target a niche audience of technological minded people who deal with communications systems in their place of work. Why? Simple, a large social media campaign on a medium such as twitter, attempting to acquire new customers could see a lot of leakage in media spend. Although you may be able to target individuals who like pages like Avaya and Cisco, you cannot assume how they would need/use the services you provide. For more specialist individuals, in firms around the world who would be more efficient to target, communication system forums and Linked In would likely be more effective platforms. Ying, W and Weizhen, L. (2015) state “since the advent of social media websites that allow the sharing of user-generated content (UGC), virtual communities have developed in exciting new directions. As a result, rich, high-quality content has become essential for firms seeking to maintain a competitive edge in this environment.” It is the individuals creating and looking at this content in these virtual communities that are the people to target.

Think content strategy before social strategy as community is a new B2B staple and content promoted over social media is indeed a great way to foster it. The graph above shows the social platforms that content marketing is shared across, demonstrating the most used channels. Community and community interaction are key. We should all be building communities.

References

Edwards, V. (2015). Determining the right social media networks for your business. Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. 3 (3), p217-22.

Kietzmann, J. et al. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons. 54 (3), p241–251.

Power, R. (2014). Creating a social media strategy for B2B audiences, products and services. B2B Social Media Marketing.

Velocity Partners (2014). B2B Marketing Manifesto. Richmond: Digital pdf. 3-6.

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