This Is Why Social Media Is Essential in the B2B Sales Process

Published on: 07 September 2018 Last Updated on: 29 October 2024

Social media has been the cornerstone of B2C marketing for a long time. However, when it comes to B2B marketing and sales, it is only fairly recently that social media channels have started to dominate.

And while most B2B marketers now realize the enormous potential of this type of marketing, only true experts have figured out that simple presence on social media is far from enough. To raise awareness of your business, you need to be social on social media, which is, after all, very logical.

In other words, you need to initiate relationships, interact with people in a personal way and absorb your customer’s feedback. But apart from this, you also have to showcase your expertise in a humble way, listen to the voices and trends in your industry and keep an eye on competitors.

Marketing your business on social media can help you generate leads, improve website traffic, increase sales and create a brand identity with your target audience.

That being said, the sooner you realize that investing time and money in social media is necessary, the better results you will get. However, this type of marketing, just like crafting a Sales Enablement Strategy, takes time and skills.

Let this article be the first step on your journey to improving your B2B social media marketing. In it, you will find out the reasons why social media is essential for B2B sales and the tips on how to improve your sales through social media channels.

Why is social media so important?

Have you heard of social validation? Social validation is a basic human necessity and its presence has but skyrocketed thanks to social media.

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s report from 2017, as much as 83% of B2B marketers use social media as their preferred marketing channel. And even though increased brand awareness is one of the main goals of social media campaigns, it is far from being the only impact of this type of marketing.

As the matter of fact, social media is right at the top when it comes to the factors making the biggest impact on purchasing decisions, closely following industry analysts and web search. Therefore, it is obvious that social media is essential for B2B sales.

If you want to increase your B2B sales, you need to use the following social media platforms:

Facebook

Without a shadow of a doubt, Facebook is the number one platform. It is important for creating a community, marketing, and advertising, as well as influencing decision makers.

As a platform originally intended for business purposes, LinkedIn is as influential as Facebook in some segments.

Twitter

Twitter is the final element of the social media triad, but slightly less important than Facebook and LinkedIn.

You may be wondering why Instagram and Snapchat are not on this list. And indeed, these two platforms, especially Instagram, are great for marketing. However, they are more effective for B2C marketers.

Benefits of social media marketing for B2B sales

To give you a clear picture of how social media can increase B2B sales, we will list some of the main benefits of social media marketing.

– Firstly, it builds brand awareness and visibility.

– It serves as an effective distribution channel for your business’ ideas, content and offers.

– You can create PR opportunities, brand loyalty, SEO, as well as positive web mentions by building brand advocates.

– Social media marketing drives new leads into the funnel when combined with whitepapers, fact sheets, eBooks and other content offers.

– Have you tried to use social media to increase the number of email subscribers? If you want to add more people to your mailing list, this will do wonders for your business.

– Moreover, this type of marketing is great for B2B customer feedback program and understanding the needs of your leads, customers, prospects, and advocates.

– Social media marketing can greatly improve your SEO results through third-party links, mentions, and interest in your content.

– You can build trust with your buyers by educating them and helping them understand the major factors that influence their purchasing decisions.

– Social media is perfect for B2B loyalty rewards programs and customer care.

Challenges of B2B social media marketing

There are always two sides of a coin. In spite of the numerous benefits of B2B social marketing, there are also certain challenges that B2B marketers face on a daily basis when it comes to social media.

When in Rome…

If consumers use social media for connection and entertainment, your message needs to address these requirements.

In other words, you shouldn’t slip into business jargon on Facebook or post silly memes on LinkedIn. Apart from that, you should try to establish a deeper connection with your customers by finding out what they read, what they comment on and who they follow.

This will help you better understand your prospects and existing customers, and tell them what they want to hear and how they want to hear it.

Being present 24/7

When your audience needs guidance or asks a question, you should be there for them. It is all about responding when they reach out for help.

The challenge here is to anticipate such moments and be ready to shine. Create a list of tips, reviews, product demonstrations, and video tutorials, and promote them through paid search and social advertising.

For this and similar reasons, you should constantly use social media for real-time marketing, an increasingly popular method which allows you to engage with your customers instantly.

Cherishing your influencers

Finding your perfect influencer and starting a conversation with them is one of the keys to a successful social media campaign.

To choose the right influencer for your brand, you need to study their audience, understand why they engage, what is their reach, style, and many additional aspects.

Getting serious about selling on social media

Once you have put in a lot of effort toward entertainment and connection, you need to sell. After all, that is the main goal of each business.

To grow your website traffic and nurture leads, you need to match your marketing efforts and sales goals. When you engage with the knowledgeable, empowered and well-connected customers, you practically close the gap between the social world and the business world.

The elusive ROI

Oh, the infamous ROI… This is definitely among the top challenges for all marketers, not only in the B2B field.

To get a satisfactory return on investment, you always need to give your customers new and fresh content on social media, as well as attend to their needs and join conversations with influencers. Then, when everybody starts listening to what you have to say, seize the moment and make the final move.

It is all about timing. With the right timing, you can sell everything, even ice to Eskimos.

The future of B2B sales

Everybody is wondering what the future of B2B sales will look like. So far, we can identify three main trends.

The buying process will become easier

In essence, a more open approach to purchasing is obviously emerging, as well as a multi-channel unified experience closely resembling the B2C experience.

Moreover, along with those two, the need for highly personalized interactions will result in increasing buyer trust and lead to more data becoming available.

The focus will shift to long-term customer value

Businesses will have to focus on customer needs and customize their selling approaches, Also, adding value to products and services will be an indispensable part of every sales process.

In addition, selling will become more intelligent. In other words, sales teams will need to educate customers about their needs and engage with stakeholders and decision makers to discover and highlight those needs.

Data and analytics will play a major role in creating customer value

The days of guessing in sales have long gone. To create value for customers and interact with them effectively, social media marketers will have to use data and analytics through:

– science and sales

– AI and the virtual experience

– sales and the social business

In many of these strategies, social media will play an important role. From the multi-channel approach and market intelligence to education and connection, B2B sales will be impossible without social media platforms.

Finally, from a technical point of view, it is evident that outsourcing social media is becoming increasingly popular. This is a strategy that can be very effective, especially for small businesses. However, if you decide to do this, we advise you to be careful and avoid the most common social media outsourcing mistakes.

How to Sell More on Social Media

Now that you have learned why social media is so important for the B2B sales process, you probably want to know how to use social media to increase sales.

Here are the five useful tips on how to sell more and better on social media.

Choose the right social network(s)

Not all the platforms will work for all businesses. When choosing the best social media channels for your business, you need to consider several factors:

– your niche

– your audience

– your goals

For example, according to a study by Google and Millward Brown Digital published in 2015, the number of decision makers aged between 18 and 34 years increased by 19% in only two years (from 27% in 2012 to 46% in 2014).

This is why you need to find out the favorite platform of your customers and tailor your message to them, the network and your brand.

Remember – no business jargon on Facebook or crazy memes on LinkedIn.

Be active on LinkedIn

Whatever other networks you choose, keep in mind that LinkedIn is a must. When it comes to B2B marketing, this platform is essential and you can’t risk not using it.

To shine on LinkedIn, you will have to be very active. This means that you should:

– use LinkedIn’s Saved Search feature in order to create a search based on your ideal customer profile and be notified each time such a person signs up

– join and participate in LinkedIn groups to build your network and referrals

– connect with potential customers to start conversations

Contribute to existing conversations

This goes for all the social media networks you are active on. When you contribute to conversations about your brand and interesting topics in your industry, customers see this as adding value.

The best way to do this is Twitter and its search function, but you can use other networks too.

Share relevant content

More and more B2B buyers search for information on services and products on social media. Your answer to this should be simple ‒ sharing relevant content.

This is another way to add value, and you can do it by providing white papers, product sheets, case studies, webinars, comparison worksheets and so on.

In addition, you can share useful blog posts, infographics, tutorials and other types of content. In a nutshell, you can share anything that you think could help your customers.

Use the right tools

Finally, using social media for marketing purposes without different kinds of tools is practically impossible. There are so many aspects software tools can improve and so many ways they can help you rock your campaigns that not using them is a real waste of time.

Using effective social media marketing tools will help you find more relevant content, schedule your posts, measure and analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns, as well as use that data to improve your future campaigns.

Wrapping up :

Social media networks are becoming an essential part of every B2B sales process. However, in order to sell more on social media, you need to understand all the benefits and challenges of this process.

This is definitely not a one-time activity. Rather, think of it as of a long journey that includes a lot of small steps. It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock your B2B social media campaigns.

But if you take all the steps that we listed, you will find that the results will follow. This is one of those journeys that you have to enjoy if you want to reach your destination.

Read Also :

How Social Media Can Boost Up The E-commerce Industry

Content Rally

Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

View all posts

Top 4 ways to use Tik Tok for Business

Tik Tok is counted amongst the most trending social media platforms, which has crossed over 1.5 billion downloads with 500 million worldwide active users. The app contains explicitly video content of 15-60 seconds, which the user can record and add different effects provided there itself. There has been a race of creating excellent and engaging content on this platform, which has generated a good source of income for influencers and users. This platform gives some great features to connect with the target audience and build trust amongst themselves. In this article, we will see the top 4 ways to use Tik Tok for business and can also buy TikTok fans to be popular worldwide. Here are the Top 4 ways to use Tik Tok for Business: 1. Influencers for Tik Tok Earlier Instagram came with the concept of IG tv with gave a much bigger platform to influencers, celebrities, and many more to engage with their audience. These types of live streaming and video content let the influencers explain about the product and show the usage. The target audience could also find the relevance of products from the comment section by seeing other customers' reviews. The target audience has much more belief about the influencers as they have vast knowledge about the specific niche and keep experimenting with different products and services to know the best among them. The influencers must maintain consistency and keep posting videos regularly to keep up their presence amongst the audience. It will help to spread the chain while making the video content go viral. The influencers must showcase their knowledge on a specific niche to showcase them as an expert. 2. Create unique content Copy-pasting other ideas might not influence your target audience much. The audience would like to see something more new and unique and not the one they have seen a thousand times before. Creating new content makes them believe that you have more additional knowledge about the product and services, and you know much more personally about it. This will build up your trust upon you, making you count under the group of reliable influencers. Secondly, seeing different styles and tricks can make them inspire you to believe in yourself as an idol and trust your words. Try to engage more with customers by replying to their queries in the comment box or streaming live. This communication arouses belief in the generosity of the product, and the buyers gain more confidence towards using it. 3. Focus on video quality and effects Users get attracted to good content quality consisting of beautiful background locations, perfect lighting, and glamorous appearances. Tik Tok equipment is available worldwide, so if you want to indulge in a professional thing, you must go for the camera stand and ring light. Ring light adds much more brightness irrespective of the camera quality to make something more transparent, visible, and bright. If you can afford HD cameras, then it would help to enhance it more. So even if you lack strong content, the great picturization will cover up the flaws. Besides this, you can show your mix match skills and create a whole new track by extracting new lines from the song fitting into the situation. There are multiple effects available in Tik Tok to make it more funny or creative. If you have to note great to do, follow the new trends and effects to keep updated. You can add pets and kids in your video, as they have the most significant demand of users due to their charisma. People love watching their innocence and moves. 4. Include Hashtags Hashtags help identify video content of specific niches and making it viral by going with the trend. Please make sure you turn on the share options in your video so the users can even take it into other platforms make it more accessible. The features like beauty mode add more perfection to your face making it representable on the screen. There are different contracts and screen colors also available apart from it. Make your account private, so more people request to follow it while leading to gain followers. You can also come up with new hashtag challenges to involve the audience around you having a fun time while advertising your product. You can also use the discover page by paying to sponsor for making a particular hashtag challenge for you. You can also add the logo of your product in the filters to promote your brand and let other users use it to spread it worldwide. Conclusion Business marketers have been seen to take advantage of Tik Tok for promoting their services. This helps spread knowledge about their products to a large number of customers, especially youngsters while boosting their business growth. The youth are most active on social media rather than television and are more active in experimenting with new products. Read Also: 12 Best Tiktok Tools on the Market This Year The most downloaded app in September is China-based TikTok app Where can you seek support if you need to promote your page on TikTok in the shortest time possible?

6 Best Practices When Buying Instagram Followers

In today’s digital age, more and more people are using various social platforms, and tapping into that market can bring desirable results to your growing business. And among the popular platforms, today is Instagram. Setting up and launching a professional account and profile is one thing, but managing it and growing your following is another. Also, it’s essential to note that you need a significant number of followers to achieve a successful social media marketing campaign. After all, how can you promote your products and strengthen your brand effectively if nobody can see the content you’re posting? Fortunately, there are various ways to increase your following. Aside from word-of-mouth marketing, where your customers can recommend and refer you to people they know, growing your account organically, you can also buy Instagram followers. Perhaps, you’re a business owner or a marketing manager looking for ways to boost your company’s online visibility by buying followers. If that’s the case, this article can be for you. This post will outline some of the best practices when buying Instagram followers. 6 Best Practices For Buying Instagram Followers 1. Lay Down Your Plan Before embarking on the journey to buy Instagram followers, it’s advisable to take a step back and write down your goals first. Your goals should be geared towards why you require these services. What do you want to achieve? Knowing what you want to gain will help you vet third-party apps and service providers better. And more so, the goals will act as a checklist to ensure that your chosen provider meets all your business’s needs and requirements without any exception. As part of the planning process, set performance standards and metrics too. The standards you set will help you determine if the said app and service provider are meeting your needs after working with them for a while. Also, ensure that the standards are quantifiable for easier measuring. For instance, one could depict that by buying Instagram followers, you expect your lead generation to grow by 15% within four months. Should this not happen, make the necessary adjustments, including seeking another provider. 2. Choose A Suitable Provider Many providers sell Instagram followers; while some are viable, others are quacks. And as such, you must be careful in your selection process to ensure you get quality and working services. As you choose where to buy Instagram followers, it’s best to select one who has enough experience providing these services. The more years in the business, the more likely you’ll work with an expert. But, aside from the years they’ve been in the business, you should also look into their success rate. You can ask for the contact details of those who they’ve worked for in the past. You can call these clients and inquire about the provider’s proficiency and whether or not they reached their target. Furthermore, you can also check the review and feedback section on their website. Work with a provider with a good track record; you’ll be more or less assured of getting quality services and value for your money. 3. Consider Provider’s Support Services When working with a service provider, customer support is essential. You want to work with someone readily available to listen to your needs and concerns and address them promptly. Therefore, you need to assess your preferred provider’s customer service. Take note of their response rate; how fast do they pick up when you call them? Do you have to wait for several rings before they pick up your call? Utilizing Instagram followers for your business can take a downhill very fast; a lot could go wrong within a few seconds. The provider needs to be readily available to assess things and rectify things. It’s also advisable to work with a provider who offers 24/7/365 support, as social media knows no night, weekend, or holiday. 4. Avoid Being Carried Away By Low Prices In most cases, you’re likely looking to spend as little as possible on the services you’re seeking. While economical, however, when you put the cost as the main focus in your selection process, you might get low-quality services. As such, it’s best to compare the prices a provider offers to you and the services you’re getting; the two should go hand-in-hand. In no situation should you be paying for more, yet you’re receiving fewer services. On the other hand, some vendors might offer high prices, yet their services could be low-quality. Some may take advantage of the situation since, today, most clients are avoiding providers offering low prices; the high price is bait. Therefore, consider asking for quotes from several providers and compare the prices. With the comparison, you’ll have a better idea of how much it’ll cost you to buy Instagram followers. This can guide you better even as you consider other factors. 5. Focus On Quality Over Quantity You’re most likely buying Instagram followers to create brand awareness and gain visibility. And perhaps, you may be thinking that the more followers you get, the better; however, this isn't always the case. With the rise in the business of buying Instagram followers, some providers could sell fake followers to their clients. So, instead of real followers, they’re using bots that act as followers. Should you work with a provider that uses bots, Instagram management will likely ban your account. As a result, this could take you several steps back, if not to the drawing board. Using bots might seem tempting, but don’t fall for the trap. Go after quality, not quantity. Therefore, before settling on a given provider, ensure they use real followers. It’s rather to take a slow but sure journey than make it rapidly and make mistakes. 6. Consider Your Budget Once you’ve done the whole vetting process, it all goes down to costs. Can you afford the services? This is where your budget comes in; how much are you willing and able to pay for these services? Compare the price you’ll pay with your budget. It’s always good practice to stick within your budget; you don’t want to overspend and hurt other aspects of your business that require financing. In addition to your budget, it’s also advisable to inquire about the payment options available. For instance, is it monthly or bi-weekly? Be sure you can manage with the payment plan available. If you can afford to pay the fees every two weeks, go ahead; if you can only manage it monthly, choose one that adopts this option. Conclusion Buying Instagram followers as your marketing strategy can do wonders for your business if you do it right. This article discusses the best practices you should implement as you adopt the said marketing strategy. Considering them can help ensure you grow your Instagram account the right way, a way that won’t bring future issues. Read Also: Is Instagram Algorithm Easy To Beat? Picuki Reviews – Popular Instagram Editor & Viewer What Is The Zefoy App? – How To Get Free Followers & Likes On TikTok How To Improve Your Social Media Branding By Getting More Instagram Followers And Likes

How to Use Pinterest for Business

Pinterest is one of the most popular social media platforms that widely makes use of images. The site it full of amazing photos and you could be wondering how you can use it to promote your brand. Here are some tips on how to use Pinterest for business. 1. Add Save Button to Your Website If you would like your visitors to act, you must allow them to do so with a lot of ease. When you add a save button to your site, people will be able to pin your content with a single click. This will take place even if you have not installed the Pinterest browser. It will significantly increase the number od content that pinners save from your website. If you choose the automatic buttons, there will be a clickable Pinterest save button on all the images that are on your site. You can also use hover buttons that only appear when a person hovers the mouse over the images. The last option is to add the Pinterest save button to a particular image on your website. 2. Pin Consistency Pinners suggest that you pin at least one thing every day especially during the peak season. For most U.S-based brands, the peak times are in the evenings and over the weekend. The other element that Pinterest highlight to be crucial is consistency. In case you want to post huge number of posts during the week, it is good to divide them up so that you can post a few each day instead of posting all of them at once. If you want to create pins that will coincide with an upcoming event, season, or holiday, be careful to start posting them approximately 45 days in advance. 3. Pay Attention to Great Visuals Pinterest is a largely visual platform and hence you have no choice but to create high-quality imagery. Make sure you have clear, well-composed, and well-lit photos. In case you lack the skills, the time or the tools to create the images by yourself, we have thousands of stock photography sites that have high-quality photos that you can use. Think of the most creative ways of showcasing your brand and products visually. From recent studies on the performance of 50,000 pins that are promoted, Pinterest discovered that lifestyle images tend to outperform the product images. For example, style and fashion pins displaying products that were in real life use had 30% more clickthrough and 170% higher rates of checkout that the ones that were showing the product alone. 4. Don’t Neglect the Words Yes, Pinterest is a highly visual medium but you cannot create serious engagements with great visuals alone. Make good use of the description field by telling viewers what they will exactly get by clicking through the linked content that is on your website. Use relevant keywords so that your pins can appear in the search. However, do this in a helpful and natural manner and don’t practice keyword stuffing. 5. Use Rich Pins Where Appropriate The term rich pins refer to enhanced pins that utilize metadata that is pulled from your website to offer additional information on what pinners will get by clicking on a certain pin. You can find Rich Pins for articles, products, recipes, and apps. Therefore, you will get them for almost all the content you would like to pin or expecting other users to pin from your site. 6. Go Social Pinterest is a social network and not a billboard. Therefore, people will not engage with your pins unless you get engaged yourself. Follow accounts or board from the non-competitive but relevant brands within your niche. Be keen to actively like and also engage with pins that are related to your industry. You may also involve your brand evangelists and employees. You can invite these individuals to contribute to your Pinterest group boards. 7. Improve Results by Using Analytics Pinterest analytics offers critical insights about the kind of content that performs well on your network. Therefore, you may tweak and advance your Pinterest for business outcome over time. You will be able to observe the most popular pins and the ones that drive the highest amount of traffic. You can focus on the specific metrics that are particular to your specific business. You will also view the boards where your pins are included in and this will help you to understand how people are thinking about your products and business. You will get some new ideas on the best way to position your efforts on Pinterest. You will also get some tips on the interests and demographics of people who are interacting with your pins. It will give you valuable insights that will assist you to precisely target your strategy to the right audience. 8. Try the Pinterest Promoted Pins Pinterest ads or promoted pins is an excellent way to allow more people to see your pins. It also helps in creating new exposure to your brand. Promoted pins can give you an exposure that go beyond the payment you make. To know a promoted pin on interest, you will find the word ‘promoted’ below it. However, when a pinner saves the promoted on their personal board, it will become the regular organic pin. Therefore, it strips off the promotional label. 9. Make the Pins More Accessible Pinterest is highly super-visual and relies heavily on images to establish meaning and context. Therefore, users who have low visibility, certain disabilities, or need screen-readers will struggle to use this platform. Therefore, you have to pay more focus on the text. You can use several strategies to make your pins more accessible. It is a good thing to connect with a long list of members from your target audience. Your primary goal should be to make your content accessible to all users. One strategy would be to add context through the descriptions. You can also use strong typography and incorporate color contrasts. Lastly, make sure that you use large texts so that people with visual problems can read with a lot of ease. This article should have answered your questions on how to use Pinterest for business. Read Also: 9 Ways To Use Pinterest To Promote Your E-Commerce Store How To Market Your Personal Injury Law Firm On Pinterest