Top 3 Areas of Focus for This Year’s Marketing Strategy
Most small to mid-sized b2b organizations want to get in the social media game, but many are time limited to engage consistently, or simply don’t know what to do. Most of what we are exposed to is how social media is great to engage consumers for consumer product and services. But what if we are trying to reach other businesses? In my experience the last several years in the heavy equipment industry, I realized that most equipment dealers are either using social media sporadically at best and ineffectively at its worst. This is just one industry example. It can be such a powerful and cost efficient marketing method, but most aren’t getting it right. This very dilemma is the reason g2 media pros is in existence. How can these businesses better engage in a marketing medium that should be part of any effective marketing plan?
Cisco posted a great article, 5 B2B Lessons Cisco Learned in 2014 and the number one lesson they listed was the proper use of social analytics. It’s the old adage of “if its worth doing its worth measuring”, too many companies are winging it. They are posting without strategy or thought and aren’t paying attention to how their followers are responding and posting. Getting the timing right on when you post is as simple as looking at your followers and determining when they are online the most. While there are lots of stats out there that claim businesses are on social media during the week between 10am and 5pm, that may not be true for your target audience.
While hiring a professional to handle this for you either from within or outside of the organization (ahem…g2 media pros for starters) is my recommendation, I can definitely share some best practices.
- Post when you know your audience is online
- Make sure your content is both informational and somewhat entertaining
- Don’t make it too personal, this is your business after all
- Be consistent, by posting regularly. There are some great social media posting tools like Hootsuite or Sendible to make that easier.
- Give a call to action on some of your posts, encouraging your audience to take advantage of an offer, sign up for a contest or even vote on something (contest, name change, etc.)
- Don’t make it all about selling them something…give them real information and resources, you will keep them engaged if you aren’t always trying to promote your product
Also, find the best platforms relative to your business, there are many too choose from, it doesn’t mean you need to be participating on all of them, this goes back to knowing your audience, and making sure your content speaks to them. So get tweeting, and posting, and sharing!
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