Nov 30, 2021

Hidden Benefits of B2B Social Marketing (and the Tips and Tools that Drive Them)

Many B2Bs mistakenly think of social media marketing as a bailiwick for B2C marketing. But today, more than ever, social networks are one of your best B2B marketing tools. A social marketing strategy is a crucial part of your content strategy. It drives brand awareness among buyers and decision makers and decreases the length of the sales cycle while increasing web traffic, leads and conversions.

According to IDC:

  • 75% of buyers use social media to make purchasing decisions.
  • 84% of CEOs and VPs use social media to support purchasing decisions.

To help you develop a smart social strategy to elevate your B2B brand, let’s discuss a few lesser-known benefits of B2B social media marketing and social marketing tips you can add to your toolbox.

Take Advantage of High ROI

One of the most compelling reasons for B2B companies to use social media is for its high ROI. Facebook Ads have a 9.11% conversion rate while LinkedIn Ads have a 6.1% conversion rate.

Leverage social ad campaigns. Boosting or sponsoring a social post is an easy and inexpensive way to increase the reach of a high-performing post—however doing so isn’t going to leverage that high ROI. A boosted or promoted post has a much lower conversion rate than an ad. Ad campaigns, on the other hand, can be optimized for the greatest ROI. 

Use Facebook Ad Manager and LinkedIn Ad tools to develop ad campaigns that have sophisticated audience targeting and more opportunities for placement. Optimize your ads with A/B testing.

Tip: With Facebook Pixel, which is code you add to your website, you can retarget website visitors.  A link shortener like bit.ly or PixelMe allows you to retarget prospects who never make it to your website, but who have clicked on a link. This is called link retargeting.    

Incorporate Social Selling in Your Social Marketing Strategy

Brand awareness is the critical first stage in the B2B customer journey, and social ads are the perfect way to build awareness. At the same time, you must support brand awareness with strong organic content that nurtures the customer throughout each stage of the journey. And social selling is the ideal way for B2Bs to reach, nurture and convert prospects.

Social selling is a modern sales approach that’s replacing the traditional cold-call approach to generate leads. Social selling enables brands to locate, connect with and nurture prospects, turning them into clients. When brands increase outreach to buyers and decision-makers, they convert lukewarm prospects into warm leads and warm leads into clients.

Successful social selling relies on the insights gathered from long-term social marketing strategy:

Listen to your target audience. Know what they like, who they follow and what they’re talking about.

Tip: Join industry-related groups, follow industry-related hash tags, or use a social listening tool like HubSpot or Hootsuite to learn what your target audience and competitors are discussing.

Post meaningful content. Now that you know what your audience is talking about, post educational content to your website and share across social media, in your newsfeed, in social ads and in social groups.

Reach out to prospects. Use social groups and hashtags you’re following to recognize prospects. Identify prospective buyers and decision-makers you’d like to reach out to and use your LinkedIn connections to gain an introduction.

Invite engaged non-followers to follow when they comment, like or share a post in Facebook. This is an often-overlooked tool in Facebook that not only adds prospects to your audience but also adds engagedfollowers. Increasing engaged followers means your organic content will get more engagement. When a post gets more engagement, Facebook shows it to more followers, thus increasing reach and brand awareness, which leads to more engaged followers.

Inviting non-followers who engage with your content

Tip: Connect with engaged non-followers on Facebook by setting an autoresponder that sends a message in Facebook Messenger to users who comment on your posts or ads. Once the user responds to your message, they are added to your Facebook contacts. This allows you to build and grow a relationship with prospects. As an added perk, you can create lookalike audiences with your Facebook contacts. 

Build brand authority. Become a thought leader, addressing the issues your prospects are discussing with meaningful web content.

Tip: Leverage social media notifications and listening tools to engage in group conversations and trending topics where your business has expertise, providing helpful answers, links to expert content and videos.

Use Social Marketing to Increase your Google Rank

Did you know that social media strategy indirectly affects your rank on Google Search? Put simply, the Google algorithm considers a brand’s social reputation and authority when ranking a website.

Your reputation/authority on social media is determined by your number of followers, the content you post and the engagement between you and your audience. It’s also determined by the social conversations about your brand and the tone or sentiment of those conversations.

Increase share of voice. To leverage your brand reputation across social media, you must track and increase share of voice. Share of voice is how much of the conversation your brand dominates across social media. Gaining the share of voice is a social marketing long game; you must have an active presence on social media, posting helpful and sharable content.

Tip: Use tools, such as HubSpot, Sprout Social or Marketo to track brand mentions, sentiment and share of voice. Share of voice metrics tell you where you rank in comparison to industry competitors that dominate social conversation. With this information, you can monitor the leaders’ social content to find out what is successful with their (your) audiences and optimize your social strategy accordingly.

Leverage YouTube videos. A marketing strategy that includes YouTube videos can also boost your Google rank. This is because Google prioritizes YouTube videos in search engine results. YouTube is one area where your content and social strategies should overlap.

Tip: Embed YouTube videos in web pages that contain related content to strengthen your SEO and increase your rank in search results. Optimize your videos, using keywords in filename, title, description and video content. Be sure to include a transcript with your video for ultimate SEO.

Leverage the Algorithm

Social network algorithms determine which posts a user will see (or see first) depending on post relevancy. Basically, an algorithm anticipates what a user wants to see based on posts the user tends to engage with and shows the user more of the same.

Facebook’s algorithm has decreased organic reach for businesses to 5.2% as part of their pay-to-play model. While organic posts only reach a small percentage of your followers, certain types of posts have greater reach. So it’s important for brands to understand what types of posts resonate with their audiences and to optimize organic posts accordingly.

Know your best performing posts. Social network analytics will tell you which of your posts (and ads) perform the best. Post more of what your audience likes to see, and your reach will increase.

Know when to post. Analytics will tell you the best day of the week and time of day to post based on the times your followers are connecting. This is an important analytic to track as the best time to post can be affected by seasonal changes and events.

Post stories and static posts (where appropriate). In general, Facebook stories have a much higher reach than Facebook posts. The opposite is true for Instagram. However which type of post will resonate best with your audience depends on how your audience prefers to digest content and will change over time. Always test a new approach and check your analytics regularly.

Post social videos. Social videos drive engagement and get more reach than static posts. As was mentioned earlier, sharing YouTube videos can improve your search engine results, making it a great network to drive website traffic.

Tip: Learn about the algorithm for the social networks you use: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter.

Leverage Your Staff

Some of your workforce (particularly your executives and sales teams) has superb professional profiles and a great rapport with their followers (your clients), making them the perfect micro-influencers. When a follower (e.g., one of your employees) shares a post, your reach increases by their reach. Be sure to alert your staff when you’ve posted new content.

Tip: Provide your employees with social media support in the form of images, videos and pre-written content formatted to different social networks, making it easier for them to post to their own accounts. 

Bottom Line

To increase market share, B2B agencies need to up their social marketing game. By developing a social strategy that incorporates social ads, organic social posts and a social selling model while leveraging the algorithms and employee’s social contacts, a B2B business can gain brand awareness, authority and social voice. With these advantages, brands can decrease the time to conversion as well as market share.

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