It pays to be seen! The advantages and risks of using paid social advertising for your B2B Company.

Ok so we now know the benefits that creating and sharing content over social media can have for a business to business company (as I am sure you have read my previous blog post located here!).

But while social media can be a great way of disseminating information there is absolutely NO guarantee that this great, engaging, innovative content that you have been working so hard to create is even being seen by anyone, let alone your target market.

Come in paid social advertising.

Now I know what you are thinking. Targeted social media advertising is best kept to the business to consumer marketers. Right? Wrong.

In a survey undertaken by Omobono, 79% of B2B marketing specialists rated social media as the most effective marketing channel with 38% stating that they would spend any leftover marketing budget on social media advertising (2016).

And so, with so many B2B companies now jumping on the social media bandwagon so to speak it is important for any company now to fight through the growing noise of an overcrowded social media feed. Thus, ‘paid social advertising has basically become mandatory for any business seriously looking to generate leads via social.’ (Sobal, A. 2017).

So let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages paid social can have for your B2B Company and some of the risks when not used effectively.

Advantages:

• It is highly targeted

The cost of a billboard in Time Square is reportedly between $1 and $4 million per year (Edwards, 2012).

And well, it looks great, but what is it really doing? Of course millions of people are seeing it every day but are they the people that you want to see it? And is this effecting their buying decisions?

Well the answer to the above is who knows.

Paid social advertising on the other hand allows you to target your ads so specifically that it is actually quite amazing/terrifying- I’ll let you decide on that one.

‘Typical targeting includes targeting by interests, job titles, keywords, geography, demographics’ and many more depending on the platform you are working on (D’Aguiar, 2016). This allows you to drive reach to users who are more inclined to respond to your content.

For B2B companies, targeting by job role, country and company would be the most beneficial for really reaching people that could be interested in your products for their company.

• It is highly measurable

Biechele identifies measurement as the most important factor to consider when pursuing paid advertising with a set budget stating that ‘Having a means to measure the success of your desired outcomes… will help you optimize your campaign and get the most out of your budget’ (2017).

In the past, measuring the effectiveness of social media advertising was reported as being one of the most difficult factors by marketers.

Luckily for you that has all changed, with Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook now providing detailed metrics making it extremely easy to track your key KPI’s and ROI.

Source: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-advertise-on-linkedin/

As well as providing real time data of your campaigns overall, it also allows you too continually monitor and optimise your activity and use A/B testing to determine which type of campaigns cause the most buzz for you potential customers.

Temraza Haute Couture, an Egyptian fashion house, launched a Facebook campaign that accrued 20,000 video views and increased sales by 55% in 6 months. This was achieved by usingFacebooks targeting tool to reach their niche audience and metrics to identify the most popular posts and provide their audience with more of the same! Overall the Facebook campaign developed Temraza into a global brand (Felicitas, A. (2017).

Below is an infographic of the benefits that Castrol Moto acheived through using paid social advertising.

 

Source: https://contently.com/strategist/2014/08/07/3-things-content-marketers-need-to-know-about-paid-social/

Risks

• It comes at a cost

Now, all forms of advertising cost money, and in comparison to traditional advertising social media is significantly more cost effective (D’Aguiar. 2016).

Using pay-per-click allows you to only pay for the interactions that you get from your ads.

But you can be wasting your money if you are not using paid ads effectively. From choosing the right social media platform for your company to not spending time to optimise the campaigns you run.

Bob Dearsley, Chief Executive at The B2B Marketing Lab, states that ‘In the B2B world, Twitter and LinkedIn are both highly effective mechanisms to drive people to your website’ (Schultz et al. 2012).

In contrast, according to Cawsey and Rowley Facebook is the most cost effective platform due to its large audience size (2016).

It all comes down to the needs of your company and where you are most likely to reach your customers.

Below Sobal sets out the most used channels B2B marketers use (2017).

Source: https://www.weidert.com/whole_brain_marketing_blog/ranking-the-best-paid-social-options-for-b2b-companies

 

• It requires your full attention

Social media is immediate, which while this allows you to measure the results in real time it also means that your social media ads require daily monitoring which can be costly and extremely time consuming.

In an article by Hootsuite they suggest that due to the dynamic nature of social media ‘You should regularly be rotating your ads, replacing them with fresh or timely content’ (2015).

As well as optimising your ads in this way, ‘B2B companies must also invest in creating engaging content for both organic and paid social media distribution’ (Andersson & Wikström, 2017).

Adding to the cost of paid social.

Creating a content plan and developing a strategy to manage your social presence is key or you may not see real benefits (Martin, 2015).

This normally requires hiring an individual or team devoted to content and social marketing which for some is not within budget. However, hiring interns or outsourcing this to a third party are lower cost options.

To summarise

Social media is a dynamic and rapidly growing space providing companies amazing advertising opportunities. Although no one loves ads, social media emphasizes reaching the right audience with great content, of joining the conversation rather than interrupting it. Its strengths are in its targeting power, cost and effectiveness. And while you may encounter skepticism from higher-ups or other colleagues, social media education can usually put those doubts to bed.

References:

Andersson, S. and Wikström, N. (2017). Why and how are social media used in a B2B context, and which stakeholders are involved?. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 32(8), pp.1098-1108.

Biechele, T. (2017). Answers to Paid Advertising on Social Media. Nonprofit Communications Report, [online] 16(1). Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/doi/10.1002/npcr.30841/full [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Cawsey, T. and Rowley, J. (2016). Social media brand building strategies in B2B companies. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34(6), pp.754-776.

D’Aguiar, S. (2016). 4 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Paid Social Media Advertising | Just Media, Inc.. [online] Just Media, Inc. Available at: http://www.justmedia.com/2016/06/4-reasons-why-your-company-needs-paid-social-media-advertising/ [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].

Davey, N. (2017). Using social media marketing in B2B markets? | Smart Insights. [online] Smart Insights. Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/b2b-digital-marketing/b2b-social-media-marketing/b2bsocialmediamarketing/ [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].

Edwards, J. (2012). Here’s How Much It Actually Costs To Buy One Of Those Times Square Billboards. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-it-costs-to-advertise-in-times-square-2012-12?IR=T [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].

Felicitas, A. (2017). 4 Inspiring Facebook Advertising Success Stories | AdvertiseMint. [online] AdvertiseMint. Available at: https://www.advertisemint.com/4-inspiring-facebook-advertising-success-stories/ [Accessed 23 Feb. 2018].

Hootsuite Social Media Management. (2015). Pros and Cons of Social Media, Search, and Display Ads. [online] Available at: https://blog.hootsuite.com/display-ads-search-ads-and-social-media-ads/ [Accessed 23 Feb. 2018].

Martin, A. (2015). How to incorporate paid social into your marketing [online] Bizjournals.com. Available at: https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/marketing/2015/08/how-to-incorporate-paid-social-into-your-marketing.html [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Omobono (2016). What works where? The state of B2B digital marketing in 2017. [online] Available at: https://omobono.com/application/files/2114/6945/8783/What_Works_Where_2016-9.pdf [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].

Schultz, R., Schwepker, C. and Good, D. (2012). Social media usage: an investigation of B2B salespeople. American Journal of Business, [online] 27(2), pp.174-194. Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/doi/abs/10.1108/19355181211274460 [Accessed 15 Feb. 2018].

Sobal, A. (2017). Ranking the Best Paid Social Options for B2B Companies in 2017. [online] Weidert.com. Available at: https://www.weidert.com/whole_brain_marketing_blog/ranking-the-best-paid-social-options-for-b2b-companies [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].