Today, a large proportion of businesses are on social media, and this should include your B2B tech and telecoms business. Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a critical part of a marketing strategy. However, it is often overlooked by B2B marketing teams in favour of more expensive, traditional marketing campaigns. This is often due to the misconception that the more money invested in a campaign leads to more business.
In reality the statistics show something different. In 2019, Buffer found that 73% of marketers they surveyed said that social media marketing had been very or somewhat effective for their business. So, when executed correctly, SMM can have a huge impact on your business’s success.
We’ve put together four ways B2B companies can utilise SMM to benefit their business.
- Promoting Your Business
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen traditional methods of networking reduce, and a huge shift onto online communication. McKinsey and Company found that the pandemic accelerated the global digitalisation of customer interactions by 3 years, at 58% in July 2020 compared to just 20% in June 2017. Now more than ever, if you want your business’ name out there you must invest in your online social media marketing strategy.
Internal updates, branded images, and spotlighting your employees are all things that you can do online to make your business more personable. If potential clients or customers can connect to your company’s message or mission, this will increase trust, and therefore sales. Social media also provides the opportunity for sharing awards, milestones, and customer reviews instantly with millions of people, building up your brand and reputation.
- Networking
Many businesses have a presence on LinkedIn, with over 57 million companies, and 722 million members. The platform differs from all other mainstream social media sites because it is a social network specifically for professionals. This means there are already a large number of people in your industry on the site that may be interested in the content you share and services you provide.
Networking involves interacting with others to develop a professional relationship. It offers the opportunity to share industry insight and knowledge, whilst also increasing visibility of your business.
Networking on LinkedIn can be done in a variety of ways. One of the easiest is by joining relevant groups full of professionals in your industry. Often these groups allow you to advertise your business and what you offer which is a good way of promoting your products and expertise. Group discussions will provide a chance to debate and offer solutions and advice, and its these helpful, authentic interactions which influence the positive perception of your company.
- Reaching Your Audience
Although you can easily be caught up in the quantity of people engaging with your SMM campaign, the true value comes from the quality of who they are and their role in the industry. You can take advantage of the large number of people using social media to find users within your business’ niche.
When uploading useful content to your social media channels, you can rely on these users to like and share your posts to generate an even wider audience. Once your following consists of people who are genuinely interested in the work you do, you will start to see this develop into qualifiable leads from people that know you and your business.
- Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of marketing, as creating an increase in website traffic increases exposure of your business. A large influence of your website’s SEO is how many backlinks exist that take users to your page.
Posting good quality content on your website, and then sharing it on social media, not only educates your followers and promotes your services, but also increases the likelihood that your posts will be shared and written about by others. This increases the number of links that lead to your website, where the content was originally posted. The more shares and reposts of these links, the better your SEO and the higher up on Google search you will appear.
At Ilex, we can offer you consultancy for your social media strategy to amplify your message, distribute to the widest possible audience and build your online community. Please get in contact if you would like to discuss how Ilex can transform your online marketing and accelerate your organisation’s growth.
