A foolproof plan addressing your target investors is a first basic step strategy towards building your business’ growth. Depending on your target investors (be it consumers or other business enterprises), your strategies vary along the basic lines. This is because consumers and business investors need to be addressed in different outlooks depending on their interest area.
Both the sectors have their prospects of growth if tapped right. This also means that both also face intense competition. The B2B may seem quite a restricted area for your growth, with little target audience (of course, the consumer count cannot be used as an index against the number of businesses out there).
However, this article will help you squash against the predicament and build an effective strategy using the most prominent tool of this decade- social media.
Table of contents
- What is B2B? Do you qualify as a B2B company?
- What is the index that measures your growth?
- Why social media marketing?
- A realization
- Areas to work on the social platform
- Define your target audience
- Select a particular platform depending on your target
- Branch out to other and increase visibility
- Your agenda should be
- Creating an awareness of your brand
- Socialize with the target
- Translate into a business partnership
- Numbers are important!
- Learn from the stars!
- Personalize a strategy just for you
What is B2B? Do you qualify as a B2B company?
A B2B refers to Business to Business. That is, if your company deals with product or services that can be bought by other businesses, then your company classifies under B2B.
For example, Amazon Business. Apart from carrying out the regular business to consumer transactions, the e-commerce giant also features B2B transactions by offering special access to the business through the amazon business. Here, the employer can order things needed for their business in bulk (yes! With additional discounts), apart from getting added benefits of availing the service.
There are a lot of services that can be classified under B2B. The most obvious being the software solution. Others that are included are- security, furniture, hardware, other office supplies…etc. Summing up, any transaction that involves buying and selling of goods or services between two businesses.
However, today there is a blurring in lines with most of the companies providing both B2B and B2C services. Just like Amazon or other e-commerce giants like Alibaba. But that does not mean that both involve similar marketing strategies. A close look will help you distinguish between the policies that need to be made transparent in B2B companies.
What is the index that measures your growth?
Knowing about the indices helps you to alter your planning and work towards increasing the parameter. Here are some of the indexes that you can look at while considering whether the trajectory of your company is growing or is remaining stagnant.
There are multiple metrics, but the most obvious one will be your performance in terms of sales and successful biddings undertaken by your business in a working year. It can be calculated with respect to the successful endeavors divided by total.
Another way is to measure the conversion rate or the lead you managed to get through multiple platforms. Since different platforms give different engagement and growth prospects, measuring them gives you your growth and makes you filter out the platforms that you need to focus less on.
There are many more areas that you can use to quantitively measure the growth of your business. For a detailed analysis, you can compare with https://blog.imaginellc.com/the-9-metrics-you-must-be-tracking-to-scale-b2b-sales-growth on the areas that you need to work closely on.
Why social media marketing?
To keep the trajectory growing, one of the important factors is an efficient promotion. With high competition and a limited target audience, you need to promote your business to make it visible in the eyes of the traders. The best way to do so in the 21st century is undoubtedly via social media.
However, with more than one option to chose from, which one will work best for you? How much should you invest? And what is the fastest way to increase the visibility in the platforms? These all are a few questions that form the crux of efficient social media marketing.
A realization
Social media marketing is not an entirely new idea, especially at a time when the popularity of these social platforms is at its peak for quite some time. With commercialization, these platforms are a hub for many C2C marketing and small-time businesses (as well as business giants) to carry out B2C marketing. Already saturated with content creators, influencers and dealers, social media may seem overwhelming to make a mark.
But the beauty of these platforms is that even with competitiveness, you still stand a chance to make it. Not denying the fact that it would definitely require a wholesome effort on your part, the marketing strategies for social media will definitely improve your prospect’s manifolds.
Areas to work on the social platform
Here is the basic step-by-step guide on how to proceed with marketing your content on social media platforms.
Define your target audience
Identifying your target audience you want to partner up with is the first step in determining the way forward. If your service is universal, then you should filter out and list people who are under your primary focus list. This helps you to build a better marketing strategy that is aimed at the prime focus. Your primary focus should be to reach out to these businesses. The only way to do so is to create visibility by a targeted approach.
Summing up:
- List out the enterprises that fall under your primary focus.
Select a particular platform depending on your target
As mentioned earlier, there are multiple social media platforms that stand tall with millions of users each day. But as a B2B, your main aim is not to reach out to millions but to the targeted businesses you want to forge business with. This in no way is to undermine the strength of the magnitude. They too come under the area of concern but are not of primary concern as they will not be your business partners.
You should choose a platform that dominates your target audience. For example, Facebook is a safe base where almost all the businesses put up an account, but not be the best one in terms of leading them to you if you do not have a face value yet. On the other hand, Twitter can be your go-to platform if you are looking at targeting a particular section of people. YouTube fetches importance if you are looking at a wider range of targets who belong to a special niche.
Depending on the platform, you can use various features that they exclusively offer to send across your message. Moreover, depending on the platform, you may also need to employ Search Engine optimization to ensure that your content is right at the top accessible to others just the way you want.
Thus, the more your business expands, it would be better to hire professionals who create personalized, targeted content and do the optimization to remain visible in the domain.
Summing up:
- Select your platform where your primary target businesses are concentrated.
- Optimize your content such that they find their target.
Branch out to other and increase visibility
The reason it was stated to focus on one platform first was so that you efficiently cover the target audience that you are aiming for. Moreover, focusing on more than one platform results in diluting the effectiveness of the content. As a result, you are not effective on either of the platform.
But there is no denying two is better than one. Thus, once you set your base on one of the platforms, you can expand your promotion to other social media. Link them together so the users may get directed to the base platform from the others. This is an efficient way to increase visibility, as some platforms rise in the visibility ladder faster. Thus, you are merging your user base across all the platforms.
Summing up:
- Spread out only after you have established your base.
- Use other platforms that gain popularity fast to direct the users to the main platform.
Your agenda should be
Once on the platforms promoting yourself, these are the top three areas you need to focus on.
Creating an awareness of your brand
Across all the platforms, your main aim is to build your face, which proclaims you as a brand. If you are new to the area, there is no way that people can find you or associate things with your business.
With an effective marketing strategy, you must form the basics of what makes your company a valuable partner worthy of investing in. With multiple contents in numerous formats, you can show your business under different lights, highlighting the best. You can also associate with a belief system that you aim to propagate, thus uniting people who resonate with the same thought process.
For example, Nestle puts forth the idea of ‘good food, good life. Similarly, a basic ideology like ‘making workspace better,’ ‘towards a better us’…etc., creates a positive vibe among the consumers.
Another excellent way to build an image is by giving out information, updates, or offers to the audience through blogs and newsletters. Since these can hold much larger information, it is also better to create content that can be referred to as a one-place site to require all details.
You can also build your brand by promoting them through mutual collaboration. That is, join hands with other businesses on the platform and promote each other on the respective platform. This introduces your brand to their micro-followers and ice-versa.
Summing up:
- Build the brand, associate with a value, and propagate the thought.
Socialize with the target
Even being on the same platform does not mean you are on the same page as your potential investors. Hence, a way to come into their vision area is to engage with them directly.
Social media is the best platform for this. As it is neither too formal nor informal, it provides a place for both the parties to know their common interest areas and what the investors are looking for.
Summing up:
- Create engagement with the target business.
Translate into a business partnership
This is what matters the most. If you want your PR to yield fruits, they should translate into an end result you want.
Make sure all your platforms have working biodatas and links. Also, promote your growth to attract those who are not yet sure about their decision. Alternatively, if your company is in its starting stages, instead of a growth chart, show your small triumphs. All these help you to project a better self.
Summing up:
- All the PR bear fruit when some of them translate as a business.
Numbers are important!
Many may often refute and state not to give importance to the number game. But the reality is far from the truth (well, luckily not that far!).
The numbers are important as they are what increases your visibility in the domain. Be it the followers, likes, views, shares…the numbers deem your value.
Other than increasing your visibility, these numbers are your promoters. Say, for example, your content is liked by an individual who follows you to keep an update about future projects. An acquaintance of this person might need a service that you provide. In such a situation, the person would obviously recommend your business first and share the links to your page. This way, you are promoting yourself, even by never really appearing before them.
This is the reason you should not ignore the secondary viewers. Try to create contents that educationalize the consumers about your brand, goals, and prospects. You never know when one of them may come back as your investor.
The ultimate aim
A brand face that builds trust among the audience is your main aim with the promotions on any platform, including social media. The wide range of users that it connects all over the world makes social media the perfect stage to carry out your aim.
Learn from the stars!
There is no better way than learning from your contemporaries on how they managed to up their business through social media marketing.
Though their positioning at the top is also an amalgamation of various other factors and working strategies other than the marketing, learning from the heavyweights has its benefits. Gives a compiled list of the top 20 B2B brands across various arenas that have struck gold.
A few of the success stories to inspire are:
Oracle: digital banking of the future
Powered by their online marketing as well as the offline camps, Oracle successfully set up their marketing strategy improving their figures considerably for the particular campaign.
Philips
Philips has turned to digital marketing as a primary source to increase engagement
with its users. A leading electronics brand, Philips has tied up with influencers and celebrities in their online campaign to expand their reach.LinkedIn
A prominent site for professionals has become a major job-hunting site, thanks to the paid advertisements it uses across the social media platforms.
Skype
The paid advertisements of skype aim to target the business individuals with creative ads.
Mailchimp
An automation platform has multiple blogs that lead to a common website that gives detailed information about why a brand should choose them.
Personalize a strategy just for you
The incubation time before the companies catapulted to fame is decreasing with advancing times. The only credible source which can be credited for the outcome is the highly effective promotional strategies that the companies are employing on social platforms.
It is relatively easier for a brand with a face to promote themselves on these platforms. Hence, the strategies adopted by them may not befit the new businesses as they are riding on their success. Learning from start-ups may prove more useful as they have experienced growth from the start using these tactics.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is an excellent way to promote your business and build a partnership with other businesses ready to invest in your business. Being ignorant of the ways to promote yourself will not lead you to see the growth chart you are expecting from these platforms. Hence, you should be clear about the tactics you aim to employ to increase the visibility of the brand as well as the image that it projects.
Heading a company that focuses on B2B, you should maximize your chances to promote your company, thus aiming for growth. And what is better than social media at this time and date?
