The Social Window….
If you ran a business and had a veritable window into people’s souls, especially those who you wanted to do business with, would you ignore it?
B2B Marketers – You’ll really feel the love if you go beyond simply marketing on social media and statrt lsitening to it.
Not if you wanted your business to succeed, yet that’s exactly what appears to be standard operating procedure for many of the country’s execs operating in the B2B space.
The tool? Social media, and according to the 2012 Harris Interactive 2012 Zeno Digital Readiness Survey, that’s precisely how a large minority of B2B decision makers use social media…. or don’t use it, if the survey is an accurate reflection of their behavior.
The survey discovered that while a majority of execs do take social media into account when making their business decisions, it’s a much smaller percentage than the number many people would guess, given the importance social media occupies in society today. Moreover, the percentage that never make a move without consulting their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Pinterest oracle is but 21%.
Consider this:
- There are over 168 million U.S. Facebook users, equating to over 73% of the Internet-using population, and according to Facebook, they average over 40 minutes a day on the site.
- U.S. Twitter users topped 100 million for the first time in 2012, and Twitter using brands report getting twice the number of inbound leads as those that don’t.
- 53% of B2B companies use Twitter.
- 55% of B2B buyers use social media to help make purchase decisions.
- 82% of buyers trust a brand more if its CEO is active on social media, yet midway through 2012, only 30% of CEOs are active on social networks of any stripe. (BusinessInsider)
It seems that using social media as a decision making tool among B2B brands’ decision makers is far less common than one might have thought, even if their companies have a social media presence. While some companies, like eBay, have wholly embraced social media as a powerful decision making tool, even implementing real time listening posts to monitor social traffic and conversations, others have stopped at using social media for marketing only.
The Better Half?
As a marketing company we certainly support social media marketing, however companies that stop there are leaving much on the table. Social media represents the first time that businesses have the ability to not only affect a behavior change, through social media marketing, but also to monitor and correct their efforts in real time.
Brands that don’t do that are missing half the equation. You’re staring an opportunity to monitor your market’s trends, attitudes, and opinions right in the face. As social has grown increasingly mobile recently (According to Hubspot, 49% of smartphone owners use them for social networking) the real time feedback aspect of social media as a way to shape your marketing efforts has grown even more powerful.
Most decision makers are loathe to even take a shower without their mobile device, so this is definitely a trend not to be ignored. According to Techcrunch 22% of LinkedIn’s usres are now mobile, and that number is rising. Given LinkedIn is a B2B marketer’s paradise, how their user base acts definitely bears watching. Since mobile usders get things in near real time, the feedback you’ll get is that much more valuable.
The Social Register…
The bottom line; embrace not just social media marketing, but social media monitoring, too. Watch your blog comments, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn regularly. More to the point, get what they’re telling you, and act on it quickly. Your bottom line will go nowhere but up. Oh, and you C-suiters out there, get your butts using LinkedIn and Twitter, stat!
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I think Social Media has become so important in the past few months because it is the only medium that can reach out to places and people that are difficult to cater otherwise. So, if the company’s management and officials are not catering to the audience through these platforms, it could be taken as a negative factor and make the customer feel unheard and unsatisfied.
It’s not only that upper management doesn’t get as involved as they should, it’s that many brands don’t use social media signals in their decision making process. This despite the fact that it is a real time picture of peoples though’s and opinions. It’s ironic that many of these same brands are very involved in the marketing aspect of social media, they simply stop short of completing the circle.
The bottom line is that social media for marketing is about connecting with other people and businesses, not being marketed to, and people will gravitate towards you if they feel you are a real person and not just a marketing machine.
Robert,
Very true, but I thnk most people these days are sophisticated enough to realize that theyare being marketed to by the large brands. They will still respond if the brands engage them as people, instead of just numbers, and deliver value in the social campaigns. That value can take many forms from entertainment and humor, to education and problem solving.
Thank you for commenting.
“55% of B2B buyers use social media to help make purchase decisions.” THIS!
Businesses need to understand that social media helps them sell their products and services. People go to enormous lengths nowadays just to do research before making a purchase. They’ll probably even scrutinize your social media accounts.
It’s important that you get social media right especially if you want to break into it this 2013.
By the way, found a little typo:
“B2B Marketers – You’ll really feel the love if you go beyond simply marketing on social media and statrt lsitening to it.”
Max,
It is actually shocking that some businesses still don’t see the value of social media marketing, despite how many consumers embrace social media.
It’s also suprising that CEOs can’t seem to find the time to send out a well timed Tweet or two, despite the correlation between CEO social media use and consumer trust.