How Does Social Media Marketing Helps In B2B Sales

Whenever I hear the word social media marketing, I always think about what else can the internet serve us to do our business so effectively.

If we do not get in-depth with it, the surface level definition would be - to make an account and start posting about our business.

We are not talking about general user accounts we are talking about our business, so we have to get in-depth of it. Social media marketing comprises of strategies and ways of marketing.

In simpler words, it can refer to the process of using different social media platforms to gain popularity, traffic, engagement and of course; sales.

Why do we need social media marketing?

Okay, let’s get it straight, this is not the age when people spend time listening to the radio and watching television. To be honest, the age of billboards and newspapers are gone as well.

People are happier and delighted by services like Netflix, Amazon Prime; they are reading the news on apps and even if unintentionally they are watching ads on YouTube.

What does this tell you?

People have gone digital on an exponential rate in the last five years. An average user spends around 128 minutes a day on social media platforms.

As a business, you should be where your audience is. If you do not want to indulge in social media marketing, it is entirely your choice, but then you cannot complain about having low business opportunities and decreasing sales figures.

Social Media Marketing In B2B Businesses.

When we talk about B2B in social media marketing, video content is the new-age technique to let your clients explain what you are as a business and what is that you can offer.

B2C is always said to have loose ends with content; creating content with a casual tone, but in B2B, marketers tend to speak more formally and exhibit professionalism.

B2B companies have an arsenal of content strategies they can implement to drive sales.

CTAs, lead magnets, video marketing, sponsored posts on social media platforms with regular content updates, links to company blogs & articles, testimonials to share on social media pages, list of clients, services & products, office addresses & contact details, registering to local directories, influencer marketing, and whatnot.

One more interesting factor that determines sales in B2B businesses is the CRM cleaning, Marketers understand how important it is to have a good CRM database as it directly or indirectly helps in driving sales and decision-making process.

Let's discuss each of them and see how they drive sales for B2B businesses -

Video Content

Videos have made YouTube the second most used social media platform. Netizens are falling in love with video content; people demand video content as it is a more helpful, interactive and subtle way of infotainment.

7 in 10 B2B buyers watch a video sometime during their buying process.

Watching how a product operates is more meaningful content to customers than reading reviews. On YouTube, you will find video marketers have started posting unboxing videos. Where they unbox a newly launched product step by step, explaining each aspect and quality of the product.

This same follows with services; people are using the power of the internet to speak about the problems & issues they face regarding any services they subscribe. One minute videos, live stories all are one or the other form of video content.

B2B companies can use this as leverage to paint the big picture of their sales.
Make Your Customers Your Advocates

If you can create a piece of content which is creative, thought-provoking and unique, people on social media will go gaga over it. They will like it, comment on it, share it from their profiles and will also discuss it among their friends and family. When this happens, you will witness a tremendous rate of engagement, helping you in brand building and attaining goodwill and brand recognition for your product & services.

By regularly posting engaging content, you start building trust in the eyes of your customers and target audience. Thus, after a point of time, they become your brand advocates. They share all your posts and content start driving more and more organic traffic to your business. Which ultimately contributes to gain qualified leads and enhance sales.

Posting good and unique content on social media enormously pulls organic traffic, but the essential feature is it allows us to communicate with our customers directly.

Influencer Marketing

It holds separate importance and is technically a whole different branch of social media marketing.

Have you been on Instagram recently? Even if you do not follow anyone and have a fresh account, you will be suggested a few profiles and posts to start exploring,

From my personal experience in every ten posts, you will find one video of a TikTok artist, and it is not limited to that,

People have started their own pages and YouTube channels, where they post poetry, movie reviews, vines, book reviews, workout & yoga videos, bodybuilding tips.

When they attain a certain level of fan following, they referred to as social media influencers. Due to their huge fan following, they are often called social media sensations as well.

Companies often reach out to them for their product promotion. They are sent a sample of the product and ask to shoot a video or create content emphasizing the product and letting people know about the product and its features and credibility.

This process is not as easy as it looks. B2B companies have to go through a lot to have them on board. Influencer marketing professionals are need of big data sets to contact them and keep appending to keep the list updated with fresh and accurate data.

If you are facing trouble in getting the accurate data it’s better to get in touch with an end to end data solution company providing data mining services

Influencer marketing professionals start by making a list of influencers they can contact with but before that, they have to define their target audience, see which influencer will be more beneficial for them.

Creating a customer persona is quintessential, every influencer has a different audience depending upon what type of content they post. Once they are shortlisted as per the brand objectives, they are contacted through emails for collaboration and if both the parties agree, the influencer gets on board with the company to promote their products & services through his or her channels or social media accounts.

The revenue model for such collaboration differs from company to company and influencer to influencer. It may happen that the company will ask the influencer to create content and promote based on the barter system. In many cases, if the influencer is immensely popular he or she may charge a good amount of money for it.

Many times influencer do it for free for making long term relationships with the company.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the strong pillars of digital marketing. 42% of B2B marketers say they’re effective at content marketing

By definition, content marketing is nothing but free media content posted on various social channels in exchange of attention from your customers or target audience. Marketers have been reported that effective content marketing is what providing them qualified leads.

LinkedIn is the most-used social media platform amongst Fortune 500 companies.

The content could be anything -

Blogs
Podcasts
YouTube videos
Infographics

When people come across these content on the internet they also end up registering the brand posted it. Content marketing is all about seeking attention and utilizing it to the fullest.

The content may serve three purposes -

Entertainment
Information
Infotainment (a creative melange of both)

It is not necessary to cater to all social media platforms, but I would advise you to do it because we really don’t know where a good business deal might come your way. Each business has its own set of audience and it is not necessary that you may find it on a specific platform only.

When we speak about B2B business we just cannot forget to mention LinkedIn

For better content marketing strategies it is important for you to perform data appending at regular intervals of time making sure that fresh data is always available to you and you can make better decisions on the basis of it.

Inbound Marketing

We all hate ad breaks while watching television, we don’t like to listen to commercials on the radio, why? Because it’s not our purpose at that point. The ad could be some important information or resourceful to us, but we don’t buy it. Simply because we are not in the right mood for it.

What is the value of that ad then?

In the opposite example, let us suppose you want to know about something, buy something, browse about a piece of information, price, feature, address and you come across an informative video, podcast, blog or video, you immediately start watching them gets entertained by them and its of high value to you, the chances are high that by the end of the podcast or video, you will love to subscribe to the company's newsletters and email notifications for further updates.

From both the above situations, which one would you consider choosing?

The second one, precisely.

This is called inbound marketing, not advertising about your product in different mediums but creating quality content instead to work like a magnet to pull the maximum crowd for your business.

The best part of inbound marketing is you mark your presence on multiple social media platforms and with regular posting of good & useful content, your presence becomes stronger. Also, you are speaking directly with your target audience who came across your content while browsing for relative items and subjects. Hence the rate of engagement is higher in inbound marketing.

Collaborations

I love this technique of social media marketing, collaborating with popular YouTube channels to promote your business and reach out maximum crowd. We do follow YouTube videos on a daily basis, we all are aware of popular YouTube channels like Filtercopy, AIB, TVF for their engaging and entertaining content. But have you noticed one thing?

All of those videos have a product placed inside it. Clicked something in your head?

Brands like Pepperfry, Furlenco, Zoomcar, Early salary, Groww are to name a few. You will always find these brands placed somewhere in the videos strategically so that it fulfills the purpose of product placement also indirectly encourages you to check out their website and look into their services.

Customer Feedback

Last but not least, social media marketing keeps you close with your customers. People often try to connect with company officials on social media platforms for queries, doubts, support, feedback, and even complaints. If you will be present on social media, you will be able to answer them directly and this will build a good image of your company in front of them that you are always available for them.

Replying to comments.

Answering to customer problems.

Letting them know about your visions, sharing ideas and much more. Trust me there is not a single person who doesn’t like to be heard and attended pleasantly.

All these seem to be small practices but have a great response. These are small things which will separate you from other companies. I hope you know how social media marketing is important cannot be ignored even if you are in B2B business.