Is Social Media Right for B2B organisations?

1. Is Social Media Right For B2B Organisations? #f3seminars @factor3tweets 20 thSeptember 2011

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Established in 1996 by three founding directors

Cheltenham based. Fully independent

Member of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising

Broad base of clients and experience

Strong strategic links with media independent and PR partners

2 million annual turnover

Media schedule fulfilment (via media independent) circa 3m p.a.

16 members of staff

Understand

Vast subject, limited time

Specifics impossible in group situation

Covering principles of social media for B2B market

Both sides of the coin

Bad B2C examples

What is social media

B2B vs B2C usage

Dispelling myths

Case study

B2B rules

Common objectives

Case study

Practical demos

Company policy

Google + Summary

Mark Ritson , Marketing Week

Impressive pre-match coverage, ending at kick-off. No coverage of achievements

Marketing world under a spell

Traditional channels hardly covered

For every good campaign, dozens of bad ones not justifying existence

Mark Ritson , Marketing Week

Scoffs at notion low cost

You cannot demonstrate ROI at all

Marketing = making money

Social media makes no change to theway marketing works

Big brands only doing it becauseothers are. Nobody wants to appear out of date, out of touch

Example:Best Buy

Heralded launch into UK market purely via Facebook / Twitter

After 18 months, only 15,000 Likes, 5,000 Twitter followers

Example:Seat

Campaign To marry the obvious appeal of our character to the phenomenon of Facebook

Depite 30,000 annual sales, theybarely have 5,000 followers

Example:Ben & Jerrys

Ditched email in favour of social media

Justified: developing friendship & relationship with consumers is key for the brand

Despite 1,000,000 tubs sold per month only 5,500 Twitter followers

His conclusions:

Nobody talks about failures; no graveyard

The numbers rarely stack up. Even whenthey do, rarely compared with potential results via other channels

Good brand managers: media neutral

Forums

Message boards

News / Indi news site message boards

These outnumber social sites many 1000x

Social media been with net since beginning

Bebo, MySpace etc mainstream

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube truly

mass market

All created more tools for marketeers

Big push by industry, including social agencies

Any site that enables public communication

Building meaningful relationships you can

leverage now and into the future

Quality, not quantity of audience

People more likely to do business if in relationship

Personal user

Hobby/pastime

Brands say something about the user

Following isnt always engaging

Professional

No time!

Brands less relevant in affinity terms

Companies followed to enrich working life

Broader considerations

Role of decision making unit

Higher prices create barriers to entry

Tools are free, but...

Trial and error principles inherent

Highly time consuming

For B2B, rarely direct response channel

Incentivising response = ancillary costs

Businesses still do well without social media

100 bad examples for every good one

In general, no quick wins for B2B

Formulaic approaches still in infancy

Excelling in social media is not simply about the bottom line

Doing it badly is worse than not doing it at all

All traditional channels work the same way

Social media not necessarily promotional channel

As a marketing channel, same rules apply

Right message

Right audience

Right place

Right time

Not all of your customers have access at work

Neither is social media use part of many every day roles

Not all customers care about business on social media

Excluding those (above) not qualitative as a research tool

However, great tool for measuring social audience

Social media no more a saviour than any other marketing channel

Social media ineffective as sales channel, if sole purpose

To excel in social media requires entirely new paradigm

When deployed correctly it can empower your business

People dont want to be marketed to they want to be communicated with

Previously stated, professionals time-poor

Critical to be a PRUDE over content:

Pertinent Provide something significant and timely

Relevant Ensure it relates with your audience

Useful In audiences professional lives

Digestable It has to be easy to understand

Enriching Audience feels better with you in their lives

Content is key

Time is precious

It takes time to build relationships

you need friends to invite to a party, you need to invite the right people

Put yourself out there to build relationships

Once formed, relationships require effort

Too much contact stalker-ish

Engage and respond. Communication two-way

Relate first, sell second

Relationship more likely between equals

Increase website traffic

Brand awareness exercises

Deepen customer service

Form/change opinion

Develop thought-leader positioning

Create brand advocates

Establish/regain trust

Participatory business/product developers

Social bookmarking

Ensure tweets communicated through all social platforms

Keep key info on your site, force people to go there

Signpost to first phases of conversion funnels from landing pages

Critical to ensure brand values upheld at

all times

Create compelling reasons for people to engagewith your brand

Viral marketing YouTube videos excellent for B2B, supported by social audience

Brand building exercises have limited life spans due to deluge of content

Inherent in the medium

More ways to contact = easier comms

Customer support on public sites sends strong message

Differentiates you from the competition

Show deep, empirical research to back up your opinion

Be completely user-centric

Aim to achieve something specific with audience - e.g. get in front of top 100 listed companies.

Social media doesnt operate in a vacuum

Only successful as part of comms mix

Especially critical to ensure consistency of brand messaging

Social media is a complementary activity

Strategy absolutely key

Direction determined before jumping in

Better not to do it at all than do it half-heartedly

Keys to social success:

Appetite

Context

Resource

Practical demonstration

Make sure your employees are assigned to your company profile

Add your company website, blog, RSS and Twitter account

Go through your business card folder and invite your contacts to join you

Try and connect with new biz leads

Ask people to recommend your company services

Use groups and polls to gain insights from other LinkedIn members

Tweet each comment posted on twitter is referred to as a tweet

Retweet Repeating someone elses tweet to your followers (it appears as the originator)

@mentions a reply to a tweet or a mention in someone else's

Hashtag a hashtag is a way of categorising tweets and exposing yourself to a larger audience

Lists a grouping function, that allows you to bunch users together to see what theyre up to without having to follow directly

DM short for direct message, a private tweet which you can only send to people that are following you

Import & send invitations to your existing database

Advertise your social media presence (update website, emails and other comms)

Who are your target audiences?

What interest areas will your audience cluster around?

Brainstorm all possible iterations of keywords relevant for audience

Research target audience & keywords:

Socialmention.com

Twellow.com

wefollow.com

technorati.com

Klout also allows you to see which of your followers are the most influential on twitter

It is a good idea to target these influencers

Retweet, reply and engage with them to encourage them to do the same

Klout.com

Provides you with scores to measure:

Your online influence

Your network influence (Network indicates the influence of the people in your True Reach)

Amplification probability (Amplification indicates how much you influence people)

Your true reach (True Reach is the number of people you influence)

Manage LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter from one location

Both allow you to schedule updates/tweets

Built in analytics that allows you to customise reports

Critical if embracing as a business

Many employment contracts include social media clauses

IT policies need to consider role of social media in organisation

Time online must remain productive

Engaged audiences now part of product/service development

Rather than top-down development, now more a flow chart

Beta testing now not just a software term

Even without direct sales, social media helping build stronger sales

Vast and far reaching

Integration of separate Google services

Separates work life from personal life

Directly integrated with Analytics/Adwords

Transform the face of search

SEO not just based on backlinks

Recommendations in broad terms

Recommendations based on peers

Biggest reason social media can no longer be ignored

Hot debate, contentious, but cannot be ignored

Dont rely purely on the mainstream channels

People dont want to be marketed to, rather communicated with

Requires resource & Commitment

Social media strategies take time

Quality, not quantity of audience

Not strictly sales or marketing tool. Both, but none

Better not to do it than do it poorly

Be a PRUDE with content

Remember, its only a part of the overall mix

Social media strategy & policy

Communication strategy

KPI setting

Build engaging landing pages

Create buzz, grow community

Leverage existing audiences/influencers

Creation of blogs/content

Measurement

Training & ongoing support

Thank you!

Any questions?