Five mistakes B2B companies make in their paid social media marketing.

Many B2B companies have undergone a digital transformation in recent years, which has further accelerated due to the pandemic, leaving marketing departments facing new challenges to keep up with the development. Meanwhile, digital usage, especially on social media, is growing. This means that B2B companies have better opportunities than ever to operate digitally – So why have some not succeeded yet?

1. There's an outdated distrust – "Social media marketing doesn't work for us B2B companies with complex businesses compared to B2C companies."

This is a common misunderstanding among B2B companies, that the new media channels, compared to traditional ones, are tailored to B2C business – in other words, one click away from a purchase.

The classic tactics for B2B marketing have long been seminars, events, emails, and newsletters. Many companies are just beginning to post organically on social media, and still only measure likes/comments on content that focuses more on employer branding than sales. They mistrust digital marketing because they don't fully understand the potential of digital advancements with targeted marketing, which is significantly different from traditional reach media.

However, B2B companies that have dared to try are often too quick to evaluate. Ask yourself – How long does it take for your sellers to process a lead before a deal?

An ad will take just as long to position your brand and products top-of-mind before we can expect a deal. On average, we don't see results within 3-6 months depending on the complexity of the business. Social media marketing can contribute to both growth and profitability in the long run – if you play it cool and set the right conditions.

2.

A challenge we see many marketing departments at B2B companies face is collaboration with the sales department. The marketing and sales departments usually work on two fronts where communication and the customer journey/touchpoints with target groups are not shared, even though both units actually work towards the same business goals.

There are opportunities to review how the departments can collaborate and complement each other's knowledge and insights. The marketing department should work to give salespeople the right conditions through hot and qualified leads that social media can drive in larger volumes than the sales force, significantly improving the sales team's time and hit rate. Still, the sales team can contribute insights and key values for both target audience direction and communication in relation to activities the marketing department should prioritize and act on.

3.

The general difference in how a B2C company versus a B2B company communicates is the tone in relation to the target audience. B2C companies have a more natural behavior to highlight their brand and services with a more emotional tone in a more easily consumed format, while B2B companies mainly focus on information-heavy communication to market a product or service – often material created for internal use that emphasizes what the company is good at instead of what added value it gives the end consumer. It's time to think more from the outside in and more customer-centric.

What is often forgotten is that behind every purchasing decision there is a person, with real feelings and interests. And as we know, we as humans have a rational and an emotional side. The rational side is often highlighted in your professional role where efficiency in your work is a crucial factor, while as an individual you buy products that will in one way or another shape your lifestyle or environment, like furnishing your home. But that doesn't rule out being more playful with the emotional side of your target audience base – based on insights like demographics, interests, etc.

Let's think B2E – "Business to everybody" instead of B2B to be inspired by how B2C companies work with their communication. Let the salespeople focus on their material based on hard facts and let the marketing department translate this into an emotional and engaging context based on soft values. Ultimately, B2B marketing is about creating value/interest among relevant target groups – which results in reducing the time for sales to pursue unqualified leads and increasing the time on quality leads.

4.

It is not uncommon for B2B companies to still spend a lot of time on manual work and not have digitized their sales process. This makes it difficult to keep track of what the investment in social media has done and what it has generated in actual business.

Every sales process is also delegated to an individual salesperson and the results linked to actual marketing activities fall through the cracks. To be able to develop and streamline the process, you need to map and identify pitfalls from your starting point. Only then do you have the opportunity to follow your process from A to Z – which means the target audience interacted with your ad and with your website & content, qualified for a lead, flowed through various activity-driven events in your CRM system, signed contracts and associated business. This way, you can also measure a fair ROI on your investment and find patterns that can contribute to more cost-effective campaigns by acting on your insights.

5.

Finally, when you as a B2B company have established a digitized sales process and started generating leads through your social media, it's common to lose track of the final return. It requires a technical setup to have the right measurements in place – pixels that can track what happens along the entire customer journey allow you to assign a value to a conversion to finally see what a lead costs and generates in actual revenue from each channel in your media mix.

Define your cost per lead & how many leads you need – Start by calculating backward with the sales team and mapping how many leads are actually required for a deal. Analyze your actual purchase price and sales cycle – How much are you willing to invest for each lead in relation to your margins on a deal? And what resources are usually required in time to get a deal? Then you can calculate how many leads you need and what you are willing to pay for a lead from social media to remain profitable. Applying your actual sales process in the way you measure your investment in social media contributes to both a fair starting point and greatly facilitates what expectations your company should have on actual revenues based on previous sales results.

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