Is Social Media Effective for B2B Marketing? 10 things that will surprise you

By Sahil Chopra, Founder & CEO, iCubesWire

Social media is unanimously considered one of the powerful tools for businesses when reaching out to consumers. Marketers call it B2C (Business to consumers). But that is not any thumb rule. For the last 5 years, research and analysis are loudly shouting about Social Media’s effectiveness even when it’s about Business to Business (B2B) marketing communication.Amazingly innovative campaigns are being strategized, and these are also acting as the key to change B2B promotions into an interesting affair.

Business buyers prefer to deep dive into research before taking the big step of purchasing. Buyers often rely on social media to dig out information, compare products, read reviews and interact with other people. Social media platforms being the most visited arena of every human being today, awards businesses with insightful data on psychographic analytics. These form the basis for one business entity to leverage for selling out a proposition to another business entity. Why not? At the end of the day, all a business wants to get from another is how it will help in bettering its customer experience.

According to a survey conducted by Omobonoon 115 B2B marketing specialists, it has been reported that 79% of the marketers can vouch for social media to be the most effective channel for their Business to Business communication. 38% of the marketers are hoping to invest their redundant budget on social media. But that’s not all, statistics from various other studies show that social media for B2B marketing is more effective than conventional channels.

Now let’s look into some more exciting stats which prove that social media yields better returns for B2B marketing –

1. Social Media influences about 84% of C-level and VP-level buyers: According to IDG, Social Media has a higher reach when targeting B2B decision-makers while purchasing. Social media being the most active platform provides a lot of research opportunities for B2B. Almost 55% of buyers have reported that they look for information on social media.
2. Rising affinity for social media: Nowadays social media is the most popular tactic used for B2B marketing. Social media enables marketers to schedule promos, and this saves a lot of time, energy and effort. Hence, it is used by 83% of marketers among which 66% of B2B marketers have reported that social media has resulted in manifold leads.
3. Tech companies are inclining towards B2B: Social media is a perfect amalgamation of user-generated content in forms of blogging, GIFs, videos and static images, which are boosted over time. Organic search and paid search delivers better results and around 76% of B2B tech companies are following the trend.
4. Diversification: There are numerous social media platforms and every platform yields different results. According to ‘Statista’ findings, 66% of marketers have claimed that LinkedIn works best for B2B strategy while 30% of the marketers stick with Facebook.
5. LinkedIn is used more widely: Almost every company has their profile page on LinkedIn and uses the platform to research. B2B buyers also base their purchasing decisions on the research.
6. Instagram is booming: Lately, Instagram has been witnessing a lot of boost in their organic posts and based on that, two out of three B2B marketers say that they will be boosting their organic usage by the next year.
7. YouTube has proved to be vital in overall growth: YouTube has become more popular among B2B marketers over time and 56% of business solutions providers have reported YouTube to be the prominent social media platform for the growth of their business. Also, 77% of B2B marketers said that they are planning to base their content on videos.
8. We should not ignore, CEOs are on Facebook as well: The presence of different social media platforms may make it difficult to choose a platform ideal for your business. But none of the social media platforms should be ignored. A CEO of a company is also a social being on his or her personal social profile, and is definitely on Facebook which remains the biggest social media network for adults.
9. Leads for B2B get easier when they come through social: 49% of B2B marketers consider it the hardest tactic to generate leads. It’s important to have the right social media strategy in place.
10. The platform for professionals will always be preferred: Reports from LinkedIn found that user engagement is increased by 98% when images are used. Thus, marketers on this platform are strategizing more as per its trends to garner better results for B2B.

Moreover, Social Media is very cost effective which enables big farms to invest in different fields while keeping the cost for relationship building and customer acquisition in check. Promotion on social media channels helps a great deal as buyers tend to trust third parties such as news outlets and professional association more. This helps the firm build a strong client base.

B2B companies monitor their competitors and their content on different media channels to devise an effective marketing strategy for their businesses. Social media also helps in increasing brand awareness which can be boosted at any time. Also, paid social increases your media presence and displays the content you want to showcase to potential clients.The statistics for B2B communication on social media look quite promising and social media will definitely yield better ROI for Tech Businesses in the future.

The above article is authored by Sahil Chopra, Founder & CEO, iCubesWire