A Social Media Strategy for B2B communication (Business to Business) might not be the first application that comes to mind when talking about Social Media Marketing. But the future of B2B is digital.
Already today, with a trend accelerated by the conditions imposed by the pandemic, sales meetings, conferences and business decisions take place online. So even social media can contribute decisively to creating new connections, expanding the boundaries of your business and fostering new business opportunities.
In B2C companies, marketing activities on social media focus on reaching consumers and influencing purchases. B2B social media marketing strategies, on the other hand, must be planned in a more strategic way and over a longer period of time. They serve to reach users potentially connected to the company at a professional level or who are actually responsible for business decisions. It is only at that point, in a later step, that you can begin to build connections that can lead to interesting business opportunities.
All social media platforms can find a place in B2B marketing. But the balance, the investment and the type of content will be different from those designed for a strategy focused on the end consumer.
Social Media Strategy for B2B: specifics and objectives
Just like a good B2C strategy, every B2B social media plan must answer the following two questions:
- What are the business objectives?
- How will B2B Social Media Marketing help to achieve them?
However, while B2C campaigns have (of course, alongside other goals) the sale of products or services as their main purpose, B2B ones are aimed mainly at the “top” of the conversion funnel. This is the theoretical model used to visualise the stages of the online purchasing process and to analyse the flow of potential customers until the desired conversion is reached.
In fact, the 3 main objectives for B2B marketing (which therefore also includes social media strategies) turn out to be:
- Creating brand awareness (brand awareness) (87%)
- Building credibility for business activities and the company mission (81%)
- Informing and “educating” your target audience (79%)
Companies must explain exactly who they are, what distinguishes their activities from the competition and what their strengths. Social media offer a potentially boundless space for distributing small-sized content (individual posts), optimised to enhance all these aspects.
Given the competition that exists in the B2B sector, anything you can do to build trust and demonstrate the added value of your company is an advantage. Positive testimonials, goals achieved, commitments honoured and awards are excellent communication levers for seeking this kind of social and values-based feedback from users.
Moreover, a fact: the majority of professional users do a lot of independent research. An excellent way to consolidate credibility is to provide, first-hand, educational content to your audience. From blog articles to informative posts, from up-to-date reports to how-to videos, a good Social Media Strategy should always also include a “training” component aimed at users.
Platforms, content and viewpoints in B2B social communication
As a general rule, a company that intends to invest in B2B digital communication must plan for identifying the online space most frequented by its audience. To do this in the best way, it would require a careful analysis of the demographic data of each social network and specific research into the users potentially most interested at a professional level.
Generally speaking, the vast majority of B2B Social Media Marketing strategies include LinkedIn. This is considered by far the best-performing organic platform when it comes to creating profitable B2B connections, followed by Facebook and Twitter and, at a distance, YouTube.
When designing a B2B Social Media Marketing strategy, you always need to consider that starting conversations and building relationships can indeed help to achieve business relationships (and sales), but with a long-term time horizon.
This is an achievable goal by remembering a golden rule of social media communication. Users will not become followers — and followers will not become a community — if the content offered doesn’t interest them. And this applies to the B2B universe too. Getting past the prejudice that B2B content is “boring” is a necessary condition for carrying out a successful strategy.
Sure, from time to time it may be appropriate to share technical and specific information about new products or services, but not exclusively.
Rather, it’s better to bring creativity into play to seek content aimed at simplifying or making the (working) life of your followers more pleasant. Offering ideas and resources that capture their attention and satisfy them with new information, even in unexpected ways.
Another winning way to offer ideas, born from the heart of the company, is to involve the employees themselves. Telling their stories, highlighting their unique characteristics, showcasing their results. Real people make the brand voice more human and enhance recruitment efforts (especially when it comes to video-format posts, which generate five times more engagement than other posts).
Opocrin Group and AMA: B2B on social media according to Ventisette Digital
These reflections on the specific activities for B2B social communication have been at the heart of the strategies that, in recent weeks, Ventisette Digital has prepared and put into practice for two new projects.
Opocrin Group
Opocrin Group is an international player in the Pharma world thanks to its positioning as the world’s leading producer of heparin derivatives.
In recent months VENTISETTE has supported the Group in redefining its coordinated visual identity and consolidating its online presence, through the launch of the new LinkedIn page.
This, through the definition and sharing of a specific B2B strategy weighed against the company’s needs, will feed the flow of communication on social media by proposing content of interest to all the Group’s professional stakeholders and interacting with updates and news coming from the new websites.
AMA SpA
AMA SpA is an Italian company that is a leader in supplying components for the fitting-out and maintenance of Off Highway Vehicles (OHV), at the head of a group made up of 16 production plants and 12 distribution branches.
After working on the development of an entirely renewed Brand Identity, the agency supported AMA SpA in planning, assisting with and producing a B2B Social Media Strategy on the LinkedIn and Facebook channels: a project that, in this case too, was carried out adapting to the nature and the specific communication and commercial needs of the company.
The company is in fact interested in presenting itself as “a sum of individuals who follow one single vision, forming valuable synergies inside and outside the Group, through consolidated, trusting relationships with all its stakeholders”.
