Social media marketing has been responsible for a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. B2B Brands need to stop controlling communication and instead engage in a constant dialogue with their target community. Get it right and the rewards are immense get it wrong and the risk are even greater.
We have created this article to focus on B2B Facebook fan sites. Facebook now boasts more than 400 million active users so this platform represents a huge opportunity for B2B organisations to promote their brand and develop relationships with their target audience.
To help B2B marketers get started we have created five top tips for using Facebook:
1. Create a Facebook page
Start with the most obvious but create a Facebook page for your business. This is easy to do, simply go to any fan page and look on the left hand side and you will see an option to ‘create a page for my business’
What you will notice is that there has been a change with Facebook and you now invite users to ‘like’ a business versus becoming a fan. The feedback has been that users find this approach far less intrusive and are happier about this way of showing their approval.
2. Promote your page
Don’t wait for your fans to find you. Have your staff promote the new fan page to their friends, add a link to your fan page from your website, have links in your company news letters, on your email signatures, add it to presentations as a way of contacting you and you can even add this to printed collateral. Simply put- integrate Facebook into everything you do.
By doing this you are showing that you are embracing social media and that you brand is personable and engaging. So even if you don’t acquire many ‘likes’ you will improve the perception of your brand.
3. Be interesting and engaging
You want to be engaging, interesting and thought provoking. Here you need to let your creative juices flow. Focus your energy on creating content that is relevant, topical and freely available and at all costs avoid putting barriers around your content. In fact give people the chance to distribute your content by adding buttons to share content on Facebook, Twitter and any other social media platform which you deem appropriate.
Make sure your content gives your fans something to interact with so that your brand appears in their news feeds. Ideas include content, applications, games competitions and incentives.
A great example we saw recently was a competition run by the fan page ‘Days Out Guide’ where they ran a competition and to take part their fans had to change their status to include their favourite 2 4 1 promotion offered by Days Out Guide. In taking part the fans were promoting the company to all their friends via the newsfeed. The Days Out Guide is also a great example as they frequently engage with their target audience and post regular content. Whilst this is a B2C example B2B businesses could learn a lot from adopting this approach.
4. Give your fans exclusives
Think about how you can thank your fans for their support. Maybe they can get special discounts, sneak previews to new products and special invitations to hospitality days. Key here is to really put some thought to rewarding your fans.
5. Be patient, think long term & measure
You need to adopt a long term view on all your social media marketing. You must dedicate resource(s) and ensure you are regularly contributing and adding fresh content.
As with all aspects of marketing the return on investment (ROI) is key and your Facebook fan page is no exception. There are no hard and fast rules of what to measure and over time you will create your own success metrics. That said make sure you use Facebook Analytics as you’ll be able to easily access intelligence on your Fanpage to help you adapt, improve and refine your facebook strategy.
Here are a few things to measure to get you started.
- Capture the number of ‘likes’ to your page and the number of unsubscribes
- Capture the number of post your make and the number of comments you receive
- Record the nature feedback your customers give you
By integrating your facebook fan page into other elements are your marketing mix you are far more likely to drive awareness of your brand and be perceived a key player within your market.
If you would like more information on this article or further insight to get started then please don’t hesitate to contact us as we would be delighted to help.
References:
Chapman, T., 2009. Communities are not a right- they are a privilege. B2B Magazine, April 09. P43
Five things your brand should ask about social media in 2009, Fresh Networks Blog, December 2008 http://blog.freshnetworks.com/2008/12/five-things-your-brand-should-ask-about-social-media-in-2009/
Five ways to engage your customers in 2009, Fresh Networks Blog, December 2008 http://blog.freshnetworks.com/2008/12/five-ways-to-engage-your-customers-in-2009
Fleet, D., 2008. Success Beckons the Social Media-Driven Enterprise. http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/62704
Meadows-Klue, D. 2009. Getting social media marketing to deliver real business results
Technology for Marketing and Advertising Event, February 2009. http://www.seminarstreams.com/TFM&A-keynotes.asp
Kevin Gibbons. 2010. Ten ways to advertise your business on Facebook. Econsultancy blog. July 16th 2010. http://econsultancy.com/blog/6249-ten-ways-to-advertise-your-business-on-facebook#comments
