Exploring the B2B Marketing Office

Social Media - Should You Be Doing It?

Dec 20th, 2011 Steven Lauder

A lot of people immediately think "Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn" as soon as social media is mentioned. However social media is a much wider area, incorporating blogs, forums, message boards and social bookmarking. Regardless of how you intend to begin in social media, ALL successful social campaigns come down to one critical issue: desirable, digestable and interesting content, or incentive.

This means a content and communication strategy is paramount. Many companies (large and small) "do" social media and see how things go, to work out how they can use it for competitive advantage. However, without the anchor of a clear strategy, it is very easy for many hours to be consumed, only to end up being blown around in the wind, directionless, and without any tangible benefit to the marketing impetus or the bottom line.

Growing a social media presence is a four stage process:

Communication (creating quality content, or genuine incentives to join your community, such as discounts and special offers)

Dissemination (getting it out there by all targeted channels, building your audience. This can be done via offline as well as online promotion, and is a great use for QR codes)

Engagement (similar to online PR - creating unique interactive content, competitions, experiential marketing that gets the community talking, and sharing with other friends/colleagues)

Participation (utilising your audience, creating offline events that the community come together to participate in, working harder to make your audience real 'brand ambassadors')

The fundamentals

Social media is a channel, just like email, TV, direct mail or any other. What cannot be stressed enough is that the place you lead people to is a quality environment. If you had very important people coming to your office for a meeting or to your house for dinner, you would make sure that your house/office was immaculate. You would make sure everyone involved was pre-briefed to be best dressed, on best behaviour, and to ensure that whatever the intended outcome of the meeting/social occasion was, everyone was working towards achieving that goal.

The same is true online. You can grow a Facebook fan base, or drive people to your website, but are you making the best impression? Are you fully geared to driving the intended action, whether it be a sale, a sign-up for the next stage in a process, an event, an opportunity to benefit from becoming a brand ambassador? These are just a few examples of desired outcomes.

Display advertising on social sites

We have noticed that of late, Facebook and LinkedIn have stepped up a notch in selling their advertising opportunities to businesses. We have heard horror stories of huge budgets being poured into display advertising on social sites by companies who were ill-advised, had a poor strategy, and threw too much money at the advertising without first having proof of concept.

This makes the above points far more pertinent and also highlights the need for testing strategies on a small scale before going out all-guns-blazing. Display advertising has its place; not only on social sites but all across the web... but compelling a click is only the first step. What you want people to do after clicking is equally important, and remember; you only have someones attention for a matter of seconds. Make your point, make it fast, and compel them to move on to the next step in engaging with you.

Taking lessons from the past

Social media is the latest trend. Several years ago it was email marketing. Several years before that, it was SEO and pay per click. These trendy, or fashionable, marketing channels come and go in terms of the current "big issue" and the next big thing is always around the corner.

Every time something shiny comes along and agencies, or channel providers start heralding the fact that "everyone is doing it, and you are missing a gazillion opportunities if you are not involved", there are always winners and losers.

After several months of businesses buying in to these channels, opinions are ALWAYS polarised, and the response you get will depend on who you talk to. One camp will say "We have done email, and it did not work", or "we tried pay per click and got our fingers badly burned".

There will be another camp saying "we increased our sales by 200% through this... it is incredible!". This highlights something I always do my best to stress to clients, and I am sure I will raise this point many times over in my blog posts, but I will bang my drum:

Technology is just that. Technology on its own does NOT guarantee competitive advantage, or guarantee an increase in the bottom line. It is the way technology is used that compels the response.

The golden rules

In nearly every instance, whether online or offline, whether a channel is right for your business or not comes down to the same marketing principles that have driven success or failure for decades:

Know your audience. Know their habits. Know what they do, what they read and where they go. Choose these prime spaces to capture their interest. Whatever you say, make sure it commands attention, is compelling, and motivates the desired response.

When you look at these golden rules of advertising, regardless of the medium, it highlights the points made at the beginning of this article. You need to be considered in your approach, and that means having a clear strategy before jumping in with both feet.

Applying the above to social media, your immediate thoughts may well be "well everyone is on Facebook, so it is a no brainer". What you should really be asking is what your audience are doing on Facebook? Are they purely maintaining their personal social relationships? Are they using it to network with other professionals? Do they actually care about work when they are on Facebook?

If work is the furthest thing from your audiences mind when interacting in that space, then do not expect them to be clambering hand over fist to engage with you if you are a B2B business.

If on the other hand you are a B2C brand and people wear your brand as a statement of who they are (such as Apple or Superdry for example), it is easier to build an audience, because people want to display that affinity to their peers.

To summarise

Social media is the latest, shiniest and newest way to market to your audience, although social media in the truest sense of the term has been around for a long time... should your business be "doing it"? Whoever you talk to, everyone will have an opinion. Those looking to make a quick buck will always tell you to go for it, because whether you win or lose, they win.

Just because the bandwagon is rolling does not mean it is going to roll on by. Do not bow to peer-pressure. Consider your position, do your homework, test several strategies on a small scale and see if you find one that works for you... then decide how much you want to invest in it, or if you want to invest at all.

Oh and by the way, do not believe that in some way, since social media has come along, email, SEO and PPC are in some way less valid channels; in fact they are MORE valid as they are all tried and tested, making it easier to give a yes/no answer to the question of whether you should be doing it or not, and how you should be doing it too.