B2B Monday Myth: Social Media Advertising for B2B Brands Isn’t Important
by MGB2B
The Myth: There’s No Need For My B2B Brand To Advertise On Social Media
The Truth: B2b Advertising On Social Media Has A Number Of Benefits Which Encourage Prospects To Move Through The Sales Funnel.
B2B brands have finally come on board to social media, and many boast a large posting presence. But when it comes to social media for B2B brands, this is often where the buck stops. It’s a misconception that social media advertising is a playing field for B2C brands only. Unfortunately, that type of thinking keeps new leads from getting into your prospect stream. Now more than ever, there’s compelling reasons why platforms like Facebook offer serious lead generation simply from social advertising. The number of benefits of social media advertising for B2B brands is undeniable – and we’ll break them down for you.
B2B Buyers Are On Social Media
It takes a number of touch points before a buyer is ready to make purchase decision. The more visibility your brand has, the better. These B2B buyers are absolutely present on social media. If you want to place your brand in front of your target audience, this is where you need to be.
If you ignore social media advertising, you’re missing out on a crucial chance to interact with your audience. Remember that behind every social media account is an actual human, and emotion goes much further into the B2B buying decision than you may think. While promoting business value may seem like the logical angle to take, you may find that other strategies that create a personal connection could reign supreme when reaching people on their own networks.
Targeting Options
There are robust capabilities across every social media platform that allow your brand to reach relevant audiences. The nature of social media allows us to analyze different behaviors and actions of users. Then, we can target our ads to those who do what we want. While there are different tools on each social platform, most allow you to segment your audience by age, location, gender, and occupation.With Facebook, you can even target by events, which is helpful if your brand is participating in a trade show or conference. And Twitter allows you to advertise based on intent, using interest and keyword targeting, to create meaningful campaign insights.
It’s Cheap
Social media advertising for B2B allows you to set your own budget, so you can spend exactly what and where you’d like. Whether you choose a long-game strategy or short-term bursts, you can customize your social media advertising campaign to fit exactly your budget.
Flexibility Of Message
When you release a print ad, you’re stuck with what is published. Not so with a social media advertising. Change your message as frequently as you’d like. This is especially helpful if your campaign is evolving, long-term, or if you’re unhappy with the insights produced from your original ad. Plus, with the many audiences active on social media, you are able to change your message for different targeted segments.
Social media advertising for B2B brands is just as necessary as it is for B2C. Utilizing platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn allows businesses to reach and segment their target audience, maintain message flexibility, and stay within budget. Not only does this build brand awareness, but also generates new prospects.
Continue ReadingLive Video for B2B: Why It’s Time to Get on Board
by Emily Swet
It’s official. Now that YouTube has finally joined it’s compadres and has begun offering live video, it’s time to start thinking about how your B2B brand can leverage it. If you haven’t started using the live video features already available from Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook Live or Periscope, it’s not too late to start. But why should you incorporate live video for B2B into your marketing strategy? And more importantly, what kind of content do you need?
Think Big Fish, Small Pond.
When it comes to live video, B2C brands have robustly adopted this tool as part of their strategy. B2B brands, however, have been historically slow on the uptake. Translation? Your brand has an opportunity to stand out against your competitors – the sooner, the better. If adding yet another social media tactic to your brand strategy seems overwhelming, there’s something you should keep in mind. This lull won’t last forever. The first B2B brands to begin using live video will reap the biggest gains on reach, engagement, and return. Fortunately, adding live video is nowhere near as daunting as it sounds.
With live video, your followers can comment and ask questions in real time. And live testimonials both build trust and increase your conversions. Watching live video with other consumers creates a sense of community amongst your audience that they associate with your brand. The in-the-moment nature of live video encourages feedback in real time, and can be compellingly shareable. And because live video is off-the-cuff, your B2B stands to gain a level of familiarity with your audience that’s hard to attain through more traditional marketing tactics.
Lights, Smartphone, Action.
The good news is live video is easy for any marketing department to produce: all you need is a decent smartphone, and you’re ready to roll. And there’s no shortage of ideas for live video for your B2B brand. Still need some inspiration? Here are a few to get the ball rolling:
- Ask The Expert: host an interactive live interview with one of your company’s experts and open the floor for a live Q&A.
- Up Your Customer Service: livestream a video dedicated solely to customer assistance and quality assurance.
- The Big Reveal: build some buzz for a new product or service with a live video revealing your new offering.
- Testify: interview a satisfied customer and get a live testimonial.
- Take Your Clients With You: live stream from major industry events and conferences.
- Go Behind the Scenes: show your customers your company, introduce them to your employees, and give your B2B some life.
Live video may seem daunting at first, but with a little practice, it will become as easy as any other tool in your social arsenal. And with live video taking increasing ownership of internet traffic, the time to start using it is now.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: I Don’t Need a Social Media Editorial Calendar
by MGB2B
The Myth: I don’t need a social media editorial calendar.
The Truth: A social media editorial calendar can help your brand get ahead, and stay ahead, of the online chatter.
The continuing rise of social media for B2B brands means that the online platforms are not only here to stay, but they’re now some of the most dominant tools marketers have in their arsenal. Despite being a valuable asset, social media can also prove to be one of the most difficult tools to effectively manage. Due to this, utilizing a B2B social media editorial calendar can help marketers plan their content, maintain a steady online presence, and target key audiences. In fact, the use of an editorial calendar has proven to be so helpful that 56% of B2B marketers now say they’re using them.
But, there’s a lot more that goes into planning your brand’s editorial calendar than simply slotting posts in at miscellaneous days and times. Keep in mind that social media is just that: social. Your calendar should be carefully designed not only to target your audience, but also to engage them.
Here are 3 tips to maximize your B2B social media editorial calendar, and drive engagement:
- Develop and utilize categories for your posts. Building your editorial calendar requires ample research and planning. Make sure that your posts are as varied and diverse as your audience (while keeping true to your brand’s voice). As you develop your calendar, devise specific categories for your posts, such as holidays and campaigns, and decide which types of content you’ll be sharing, like videos and blog posts. Do you want to wish your followers a Happy Pi Day? Do you have tweets for a specific campaign running throughout the month of February? Do you share your blog posts to LinkedIn on Wednesdays? Managing these types of content helps to diversify your social media presence, and your audience will be thankful for it.
- Find out when your audience is online. One of the key features of your B2B social media editorial calendar is timing. You’ve developed a strategy and created content, but when do you post it all? Conduct some research on your audience. Are key market segments online most during their lunch break, or right after dinner? Do they interact more with content on weekdays as opposed to the weekend? Experiment with a variety of posting times, assess resulting engagement, and schedule accordingly.
- Be consistent, but tweak for each channel. The most important part of social media presence is maintaining your brand’s voice. This being said, you can still create a uniform narrative for your brand while tweaking your content for each channel. Moreover, some platforms are more prevalent among certain audience than others. Finding ways to craft your message to fit the channel and its audience can help target those demographics more effectively. For example, try scheduling an open-ended post on LinkedIn to spark discussion, but a tweet directing users to your website on Twitter.
The constantly active and ever-changing world of social media means that planning is becoming more and more vital for marketers. With news and updates continually rolling across your timeline, it’s important to develop a calendar and stick to it. Having a plan in place is a surefire way to prevent poor performance, and also allows you to focus on the here and now. Need help getting your B2B social media editorial calendar started? Drop us a line.
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