Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies for B2B Brands

Social media marketing statistics show that social media plays an important role in B2B marketing. 91% of B2B marketers use social media to distribute content organically, making it one of the top content distribution channels. Not to mention, social media is a source in making purchasing decisions for 84% of B2B executives and 75% of overall B2B buyers. 

Younger B2B buyers are also driving the use of social media marketing for B2B brands. B2B marketing statistics show that 73% of Millennials are involved in making B2B buying decisions, with 44% of all final B2B buying decisions being made by them. This younger generation of B2B buyers is significantly influenced by social media content when making final purchasing decisions, on average, reading 13 pieces of content before making a purchasing decision.

As Millennials take over the role of B2B decision-maker, Gen Z is hot on their heels. As a result, these younger generations will continue to fuel a massive shift in B2B buyer behavior in the coming years. For B2B brands, having a robust social media presence and an effective social media marketing strategy is no longer a want but a need.

But, if you’re still on the fence and wondering, is social media marketing better for B2C or B2B businesses? Well, the answer is it’s beneficial for both B2C and B2B but in different ways.

Social media marketing enables B2B companies to showcase products and services, thought leadership and industry news, engage and build relationships, and drive leads and sales to other businesses. B2C does the same except they target consumers.

So, while there may be similarities in their social media marketing strategies, there are also differences. For example, B2B brands use precise targeting to reach specific job titles in specific industries while B2C brands use broader demographic data like age or gender.

For this article, we’ll be focusing solely on social media marketing for B2B. We’ll review how to build a social media marketing strategy, the best social media channels for B2B marketing, the benefits of social media marketing for B2B, and future B2B social media marketing trends.

Let’s first take a look at the benefits of social media marketing for B2B companies.

Benefits of Implementing Social Media Marketing for B2B Companies

Social media marketing for B2B companies is a strategy for businesses to promote their brands on social media platforms (e.g., LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube). While the role of B2B social media marketing in different industries may vary, the goal is the same — to promote and engage.

With the right strategy, a B2B company can see many benefits including a boost in brand image, growth, and revenue. Additional benefits of social media marketing for B2B are:

• Brand Awareness.
• Better Customer Service.
• Higher Conversion Rates.
• Increased Website Traffic.
• Low-Cost Advertising.
• Lead Generation.

To reap these benefits, first, you need to build a B2B social media marketing strategy. Let’s now take a look at those steps.

Strategy Building for Social Media Marketing in B2B

Having a strategic B2B social media marketing plan in place will help you prioritize and track progress towards your B2B marketing goals. Good news: strategy building for social media marketing in B2B doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s as easy as completing steps one through seven.

Simply follow these steps for building an effective B2B social media marketing strategy:

1. Define Your Target Audience

Before you can launch your B2B social media marketing, you need to define your target audience. First, determine the companies who will benefit from your products and services. Next, create customer personas to help you narrow down demographics, pain points, goals, and challenges. Finally, research your competitors and identify their target audiences.

Once you have defined your target audience, it makes creating content for your social media channels a breeze.

Source: Wishpond

2. Set Measurable Objectives

Having specific and measurable objectives is another crucial step in your B2B social media marketing strategy. Objectives can include engagement, thought leadership, lead generation, and brand awareness.

3. Select Relevant Social Channels

Social channels need to align with your target audience and objectives, which means your social media marketing strategy for B2B needs to include LinkedIn. Known as a platform for business professionals, it’s ideal for lead generation, thought leadership, and B2B networking.

4. Plan Social Media Campaigns

Planning social media campaigns with defined goals will provide guidance on what type of content and visuals are needed.

5. Create a Content Calendar

To maintain consistency and organization, create a content calendar. It will help you stay on top of your social media campaigns, determine how frequently to post, and schedule posts in advance (using a social media management tool).

Source: Social Media Calendar

6. Define Metrics to Monitor Your Campaigns

To ensure the best social media marketing for B2B, you need to be tracking what’s working and what’s not. It’s important to measure your key performance indicators (KPIs). These include website traffic, lead conversion rates, and engagement metrics. Social media platforms offer analytics tools, or you can utilize third-party applications to track.

7. Use a Paid Advertising Strategy

Supplement your organic social media efforts by investing in social media advertising. This can help boost visibility for better performance. Types of paid advertising on social media include sponsoring a post or running targeted ads (e.g., text, image, video, stories).

B2B Social Media Marketing Best Practices

In addition to these strategy-building steps, here are five B2B social media marketing best practices to help you effectively leverage social media platforms and generate leads and cultivate engagement:

1. Talk to People, Not Brands. Keep the tone of your content, comments, and responses informal and human. Remember, you’re talking to the individuals behind the brands, not the brands directly.

2. Educate Your Audience. Provide your audience with content that educates and shows them how your product or service can help. Thought leadership content and how-to videos are also great ways to engage your audience with tips for how to do their jobs.

3. Reply to Comments/DMs in a Timely Manner. Try to respond to social media messages and comments within 24 hours. Replying to comments and DMs helps increase engagement, which bolsters brand awareness and brand reputation. It also makes you a go-to resource (and word-of-mouth referral) since your audience knows that you’ll respond.

4. Comment on Others’ Posts. Take the time to comment on other people’s posts, too. Engaging on others’ posts shows you actually care about others, too. Not to mention it’s a great way to boost brand awareness. When you comment on a post, and that post is then shared, more people will be exposed to your comment, which increases audience reach.
   

5. Leverage B2B Social Media Content. B2B social media content ideas that engage and resonate with your target audience can boost your brand awareness. Use a mixture of thought leadership articles, case studies, infographics, interactive polls, visuals, video clips, and compelling copy to attract and delight your target audience.

Stepping Into the Future: B2B Social Media Marketing Trends

Leveraging the right B2B social media trends can give you a competitive edge. For the best B2B social media marketing strategy, here are our top three trends to incorporate into your own strategy:

1. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy that involves targeting specific high-value accounts with personalized marketing efforts. When you align your social media marketing strategy with ABM, you’ll be engaging key decision-makers and ideally increasing conversion rates.

This strategy is also ideal for a B2B social media marketing agency, whose clients would appreciate the personalization.

2. Employee Advocacy

Savvy B2B brands know the power of employee advocacy. Employee advocacy is transforming your employees into brand ambassadors. When your employees share (and engage) with your content, they build trust and increase brand reach with your target audience.

Using an employee advocacy platform like GaggleAMP also gives brands control over the social media channels used for B2B marketing. You want your employees to stick to relevant social media platforms for B2B marketing efforts, for example, LinkedIn.

3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Automating repetitive tasks with AI will save time and resources that can be allocated elsewhere. It can also be used to supercharge your employee advocacy efforts. For example, GaggleAMP’s AI-powered paraphrasing tools can streamline the ideation and content creation process, plus transform and reword content avoiding repetition on your social media platforms.

Ready To Boost Your B2B Social Media Marketing?

B2B brands with a strong online presence know the importance of an effective B2B social media marketing strategy. It helps them build brand awareness, improve customer service, increase website traffic, and generate quality leads.

Effective social media marketing strategies for B2B have a high rate of employee engagement. To ensure employee buy-in and maximize your brand’s employee advocacy efforts, consider using a tool like GaggleAMP.

With GaggleAMP, you can promote a culture of sharing and engagement while increasing employee participation and engagement with gamification and rewards. Schedule a demo today and see how easy it is to get started.