B2B Social Media Marketing Strategies and Case Studies

I often get asked “What are some good examples or case studies when it comes to social in the B2B space?”

It’s easy to rattle of the great examples and social engagements in the B2C space. B2B marketing in social requires a slightly different lens on Social Business to engage your prospects and retain (and grow) your existing customer base. It carries over many of the same tenets and methods of engagement as seen in B2C social web marketing, but with an extremely strong focus on first understanding who your prospects are, identifying the target audience and analyzing how they are leveraging social at their organization (both as an individual and an employee).

Implementing also requires training and in some cases retraining of existing internal sales staff to shift they way in which they create a sale over time. Sales organizations need to use social to capture long tail opportunities – enabling their employees to become marketers, listen (facilitated with the use of the right tools), and implement strategies in which they engage their prospects. Today, it is easier than ever to find a lead as many prospective customers have begun signaling their social accounts for business purposes and using platforms and the web to help make purchase decisions. An implementation could be as simple as a sales organization listening in and engaging on LinkedIn Answers. It can also be as a comprehensive integration including staff training, toolkit roll out and a shift in overall sales strategy identified from an internal social media center of excellence.

Below is a list of some quick hits worth checking out to see how different organizations are working within this space.

a.  AMEX Open Forum focuses on content and connections for small business owners: http://www.openforum.com/
Presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/fmsignal/case-study-open-forum-scott-roan

b. FedEx Brown Bailout takes an aggressive stance on legislation and their competitors: http://www.brownbailout.com/
Read More: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db2009068_154641.htm
Presentation on how UPS manages and their responding communication strategy: http://www.slideshare.net/GasPedal/blog-well-atlanta-ups-presented-by-debbie-curtismagley-2699339

c. IBM Sales Team taps in with a comprehensive strategy including using social as a means to “listen for leads” and enabling their sales force to spend a few hours per week on social. Empowering their biggest assets to be tuned in was a minor expenditure to drive sales growth via social.
Presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/delphRB/social-media-is-dead-ibm-prez-paris-28-march-2011

d. Cisco saves 100k by using social to reach their target customers during a product launch.
Read More: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/cisco-social-media-product-launch/

What you can do today? As stated above, it’s critical to begin understanding who your audience is and how they are using social in a B2B scenario. Hit up LinkedIn, and see how 10 of your prospects and how 10 of your best customers are using the platform. Try the same for Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other related services which, depending on your industry, your prospects may be engaging in. This initial dive into your audience, will begin surfacing relevant information on how they are engaging in the space (look to see if they are sharing content, asking questions, contributing media, etc). Along with this, review Forrester’s Social Technographics Ladder (shown below) and begin classifying how both your prospects and existing consumers fit within this ladder. It may require a deeper dive and analytical assessment and can provide the first steps to understanding your audience and how you may be able to strategically engage with them to drive sales via social efforts. Forrester’s also provides an easy to use tool to get a high-level snapshot on the behavior of consumers from their surveys to help you see how the data can be broken down and analyzed.