What Matters in B2B Social Media Marketing

1. Social Media as part of Digitization 
2. The significant difference between B2C and B2B in marketing
3. Depicting complex B2B topics on Social Media
4. Granular targeting for B2B niche audiences
5. Opportunities for B2B companies in Social Media Marketing
6. Which software can support you in B2B Social Media Marketing

Many commercial brands like Lemonaid, About You or Oreo feel quite at home on the seat carousel at the social media playground and can't get enough. All according to the motto: Faster, higher, further! Meanwhile, many B2B companies continue to stand on the sidelines of the action, wondering how they can get in on the game.

Admittedly, the successive growth of social media over the last few years has created more and more digital touchpoints with customers. It's easy to lose track. Basically, however, it's not about filling the most seats on the carousel, i.e. using channels, but about playing the social media platforms relevant to a brand, and strategically clever. But let's take a step back and start at the beginning.

In this article, content strategist, Melanie Kröpfl, and the co-founder and managing director of Social DNA, Nemo Tronnier, explain everything you need to know about B2B-Social Media Marketing, what opportunities B2B social media offers and which social media tools can support companies.

Social Media as part of Digitization 

You are certainly aware that entire sectors had to bow to the pressure to change due to digital transformation. A prominent example of this is the music industry: The internet and the switch from physical to digital sound carriers opened up new access to the target group. This was more direct, did without traditional trade, and eliminated labels as middlemen who sometimes took a cut of the profits. This led to a significant shift in power. The internet, and especially social media, made it possible for artists to sell their music themselves. A new market emerged, rewarding artists who have the talent to market themselves and their music.

The digital progress and the use of social media thus dilute the traditional multi-tiered distribution path in many industries or completely replace it. According to the "E-Commerce and Mail Order"-Study of IfH Cologne already in 2018, 50 percent of all purchases in the B2B sector took place online. This trend has continued since then.

This brings changes in marketing, from which social media as a marketing discipline clearly benefits, as it offers B2B companies a low-threshold opportunity to establish first direct contact with potential customers. With the right strategy, B2B brands and their products and services can be marketed just as effectively through social media as everyday consumer goods. So why do we distinguish between social media for B2B and B2C? Let's take a closer look at this.

The significant difference between B2C and B2B in marketing

The potential clientele of a company that sells toothbrushes includes almost the entire population of Germany. A toothbrush is one of the goods of daily life. The question of color probably keeps us longer in front of the purchase shelf than the actual price tag. But if we work for a company that sells custom-made heavy transporters, we are moving in a very small niche.

The B2B product is usually much more complex than a toothbrush and the acquisition costs quickly move into the range of tens of thousands of Euros or more. In addition, the number of people involved in the purchase process increases. This can lead to purchase decisions being drawn over several weeks or months. This makes targeted addressing of potential end customers at the right time within the customer journey all the more important.

Depicting complex B2B topics on Social Media

The buzzword "customer journey" just mentioned brings us to the first advantage of social media for business-to-business that we would like to discuss. As described above, B2B products are often more expensive and complex than the B2C range. This is exactly where the granularity of social media becomes an advantage that B2B brands can use.

After all, content that needs explanation is consumed much better bit by bit. Or do you have the time to study a billboard on the highway that explains the structure of a drive rod? A short explanatory video on Facebook, a carousel post with individual components to swipe through on Instagram or a slideshow on LinkedIn are much better suited for this, aren't they?

Granular targeting for B2B niche audiences

Another advantage is the targeted targeting of customers along the social media customer journey. A popular tool in this context is the social advertising funnel. You can imagine this like a funnel, which is wide open at the top and becomes increasingly narrow towards the bottom. The same applies to the contents used for this.

In the beginning, marketing managers often rely on attention-grabbing content, which is aimed at a rather broad target group. Once the user's attention has been piqued, they are ready for more specific content pieces. For example, a user becomes aware of your product through the broadcast of a campaign and decides to follow your company profile. As a result, he regularly gets interesting posts displayed in his feed and learns more and more about the company and the products offered.

An advertisement tailored to the followership prompts him at a later point to request an information brochure, which he forwards to the purchasing department. Content can thus be adapted to the various participants in the buying process (buying center), such as decision prepares, middle managers, executives or buyers, and disseminated specifically through social advertising. The business platform LinkedIn, at least in terms of targeting, is clearly ahead when it comes to social advertising. The social network offers very granular options in addition to general parameters such as country, language or gender. These relate, for example, to the industry, a person's position or their professional experience.

Even approaching employees of the direct competition is possible, if the company is big enough. If that's not enough, you can narrow down your target group further and work with a so-called AND linkage. For example, a person then has to have a degree in chemistry and work in the pharmaceutical industry to have content played out. These differentiated targeting options in the audience play-out form one of the strongest arguments for social media in the B2B area. As a result, the generally smaller and specific B2B clientele can be reached optimally. In addition, people on LinkedIn are already moving around the platform in a professional context and are therefore more open to purchasing offers.

Opportunities for B2B companies in Social Media Marketing

The relevance of social media in business-to-business should be clear at this point. Some B2B companies like ThyssenKrupp or Liebherr are also bravely leading by example. A social media strategy is developed internally or together with an agency. This deals with marketing goals, defines the target group and channels, and in individual cases handles crisis management or guidelines for employees and their private profiles.

Offers are gathered in parallel to find the best social media tool to centrally manage the numerous channels and launch the publication of posts. Here we have shown the 7 best social media tools in comparison. When implementing the strategic basis, we repeatedly see how priorities of individual topics are weighted incorrectly and the actual effort is underestimated. For this reason, we would like to address three points below that in our opinion deserve more attention and offer further opportunities for B2B brands.

B2B Social Media Match

Making full use of a channel's potential

A mistake that is still made far too often in the social media area is that too many channels are served at the same time. This almost always leads to the full potential of a channel not being exploited, resulting in losses in reach and engagement and driving up the cost per result for promoted posts. To serve a platform in a channel-appropriate way, in the case of LinkedIn, this means, among other things, getting the best out of the range of formats, cleverly setting relevant topics per hashtag in the text, and mentioning other people where they fit.

In addition, upcoming events should be set up as an event on the channel, participation in LinkedIn groups, active community management, and publishing job ads on the company profile. As you can see, it already takes sufficient capacities for the operational implementation to do justice to a channel. This is accompanied by necessary internal coordination between individual contact persons in the specialist departments, which brings us to the next point.

Promote internal knowledge transfer

Not only is the decision making for a purchase in the B2B sector more complex than in the B2C sector, but also the products and services themselves. If an agency is commissioned as support for the internal marketing department, an extensive introduction and close coordination between the two parties is required. An agency brings expertise in marketing, but is not necessarily specialized in one industry only. A large part of the preliminary work for target group-oriented content must therefore already be done in the company, through cross-departmental cooperation and involving the expert employees.

Such may look like this, for example, that selected experts such as product managers participate in the editorial meeting once a quarter and contribute their expert knowledge. A step-by-step guide for your Social Media Editorial Plan can be found on OMR Reviews. Basically, many of the topics dealt with in the B2B area require a transfer of knowledge between professionals, so that in the end social media content with real added value for the target group can be created.

In practice, powerful tools like Falcon.io help to map internal approvals across departments at a central location or also in consultations in community management. Best Practice Community Management tips and helpful tools we introduced in this post.

Entering into active dialog with the community

Just as important as the close exchange of experts within the company is the active dialog with the target group on the channel. It is a fallacy to think that social media management ends after the information has been Canva Proconverted into the appropriate format and then published. For the target group, relevant content triggers interactions and, in the best case, stimulates exchange of views.

As a company, actively approaching its target group is the supreme discipline in social media marketing. Particularly highly specialized B2B companies benefit from the exchange with experts within their community. Active listening with the help of Social-Media-Monitoring-Tools like Talkwalker and community management on the channel itself can centralize suggestions and suggestions for improvement for new innovations and product development. In addition, the impulses of the community of interest on social media provide the best basis for further, target group-specific content, thus closing the content cycle.

Which software can support you in B2B Social Media Marketing

On OMR Reviews, you will find numerous tools that can make your work a lot easier in B2B Social Media Marketing. And that with experiences and ratings from other users who can support you in the selection of social media software.

As a small teaser, we have created a small tool list for you:

• Talkwalker: The platform combines market-leading social analytics and AI technology with expertise in unstructured data and a global team of insights analysts and data storytellers.
• Falcon.io: On OMR Reviews one of the most popular Social Media Tools for medium and large businesses.
• Canva Pro: As a web-based design program, it offers many different possibilities to quickly and easily create professional graphics, such as advertisements, visuals for social media posts or presentations.
• Hootsuite: A social media all-rounder, which is suitable for planning, creating and analyzing social media campaigns on all major platforms.
• Fanpage Karma: The analysis tool for social media helps you to communicate in real-time, to analyze profiles or to identify trends.