is social media right for b2b organisations?
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- 1. Is Social Media Right For B2B Organisations? #f3seminars @factor3tweets 20 thSeptember 2011
2. Welcome to Factor 3
- Fully integrated, full service marketing and creative agency
- 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
3. Who we work with 4. Our services Brand strategy Design Advertising Digital Direct mail Packaging Point of sale Signage 5. Our approach
- Understand
Understanding the issue, its causes, the context and dynamics. A diagnostic process. Determining which disciplines and what actions could combine to help meet the objectives. Resolving the campaign shape. Appropriation of budget and effort. Create Deliver 6. Disclaimer
- Vast subject, limited time
- Specifics impossible in group situation
- Covering principles of social media for B2B market
7. Contents
- 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
8. A counter view
- 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
9. A counter view
- 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 Nobody wants to appear out of date, out of touch
10. A counter view
- Example:Best Buy
- Heralded launch into UK market purely via Facebook / Twitter
- After 18 months, only 15,000 Likes, 5,000 Twitter followers
11. A counter view
- 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
12. A counter view
- 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
13. A counter view
- 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
14. Market analysis 15. So whatissocial media? 16. How about all of these? 17. People also forget:
- Blogs
- Forums
- Message boards
- News / Indi news site message boards
- These outnumber social sites many 1000x
18. Social media revolution?
- 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
19. So whatissocial media?
- Any site that enables public communication
20. Best usage for social media
- 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
21. B2C usage 22. B2B usage 23. Why lower numbers?
- Personal user
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- Hobby/pastime
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- Brands say something about the user
-
- Following isnt always engaging
- Professional
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- No time!
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- Brands less relevant in affinity terms
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- Companies followed to enrich working life
- Broader considerations
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- Role of decision making unit
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- Higher prices create barriers to entry
24. SOCIAL MEDIA MYTHS 25. #1: Social media is cheap
- Tools are free, but...
- Trial and error principles inherent
- Highly time consuming
- For B2B, rarely direct response channel
- Incentivising response = ancillary costs
26. #2: Missing 1,000,001 opportunities
- 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
27. #3: Social media is changing the rules
- All traditional channels work the same way
- Social media not necessarily promotional channel
- As a marketing channel, same rules apply
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- Right message
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- Right audience
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- Right place
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- Right time
28. #4: Best place for customer insight
- 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
29. So what is it good for?
- 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
30. Golden rule #1
- People dont want to be marketed to they want to be communicated with
31. Social media is like a dinner party 32. Social media is like a dinner party 33. Social media is like a dinner party 34. A place for everyone 35. B2B Communication rules
- Previously stated, professionals time-poor
- Critical to be a PRUDE over content:
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- Pertinent Provide something significant and timely
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- Relevant Ensure it relates with your audience
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- Useful In audiences professional lives
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- Digestable It has to be easy to understand
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- Enriching Audience feels better with you in their lives
- Content is key
- Time is precious
36. Golden rule #2
- It takes time to build relationships
- you need friends to invite to a party, you need to invite the right people
37. Building relationships
- 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
38. Common social media objectives
- 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
39. 40.
- 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
Increasing website traffic 41. Brand awareness
- 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
42. Deepening customer service
- Inherent in the medium
- More ways to contact = easier comms
- Customer support on public sites sends strong message
43. Thought leadership
- 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.
44. Case study - Indium 45. Case study - Indium 46. Case study - Indium 47. Case study - Indium 48. Not isolated
- 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
49. Social media strategy
- Strategy absolutely key
- Direction determined before jumping in
- Better not to do it at all than do it half-heartedly
- Keys to social success:
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- Appetite
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- Context
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- Resource
50. 51. LinkedIn.com
- Practical demonstration
52. LinkedIn.com top tips
- 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
53. 54. Facebook Creating a business page 55. FB - wizard 56. Facebook
- Practical demonstration
57. Customised pages 58. Customising (additional) tabs http://www.Shortstack.com http://www.wildfireapp.com/ 59. 60. Twitter jargon
- 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
61. Twitter
- Practical demonstration
62. Finding your audience
- 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:
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- Socialmention.com
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- Twellow.com
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- wefollow.com
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- technorati.com
63. Hooking social media influencers
- 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
64. Overall social media measurement tools
- 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)
65. Management platforms
- &
- Manage LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter from one location
- Both allow you to schedule updates/tweets
- Built in analytics that allows you to customise reports
66. Social media as company policy
- 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
67. Already evolving
- 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
68. Evolving again - Google+ implications
- 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
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- SEO not just based on backlinks
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- Recommendations in broad terms
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- Recommendations based on peers
- Biggest reason social media can no longer be ignored
69. Summary
- 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
70. How we can help
- 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
71.
- Thank you!
- Any questions?