Social media is a crucial component of an effective B2B marketing strategy. A firm that doesn’t have a social media presence of any kind looks outdated and out of touch.
Your prospects and current clients are looking for information and the latest trends that affect your industry. Social media marketing is a great way to drive traffic (leads) to your B2B web design, expand your reach, build your thought leadership, communicate information to prospects, and connect with clients.
Complete & Optimize Your Profile
A well-thought out social media marketing plan does not include every single social network out there. In fact, a successful marketing plan carefully selects the right social media platforms and focuses only on those few networks. Just like your B2B website design, your firm’s social media presence should be complete, consistent with your branding, and continually updated.
Don’t simply set up a Facebook page or Twitter profile for your business. Complete and optimize your profile. Below are a few easy steps you can take to optimize your profile to drive more leads.
- Complete “About” section – Use this section to connect with your clients. Why should they partner with you? What makes you different from your competitors? What is your value proposition? Keep this succinct, clear and as brief (but complete) as possible. Think about what would make them want to visit your website or contact your company.
- Include website link – Drive traffic to your B2B website by including a link from your social media pages. It sounds simple, but many companies overlook this simple step.
- Use a call-to-action button if provided – Many social networks, including Facebook, provide you the opportunity to create an easy call-to-action button – do it! Determine what you want leads to do and make a CTA for it.
Be Active
Don’t set it and forget it. It’s easy to push social media down on the priority list of your marketing plan as you manage blog updates, create email newsletters, write press releases, host webinars, take client calls, etc. Neglecting your social media sends the message to your prospects that you will neglect them too.
There are a few easy things you can do to create an active social media presence and garner new leads.
- Post educational content – Share helpful articles that your audience cares about – even if you didn’t write it! It’s ok to curate content from other sources. Become THE resource for your followers by sharing educational, actionable content.
- Share specials – If you have a special you are currently running, share it with your followers. The caveat here is that specials shouldn’t be the only thing you share. Believe it or not, sharing the same thing all the time will bore your audience.
- Be consistent – Schedule time into your workday or workweek to work on your firm’s social media. Don’t blast out a bunch of content one day a month and nothing else. Use a tool like HootSuite or Buffer to schedule consistent content sharing on your social media.
Respond & Engage
Social media is a great one-to-many communication solution, but at its core, it’s really designed to be a two-way communication tool. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are great places for potential clients to ask questions, current clients to voice customer service issues, and a place to get to know each other.
When people engage with your content on social media – respond! If someone leaves you a review or sends you a message – respond! When followers comment on your posts – respond! Get the message? Respond! It shows you are listening and that you care what your followers are saying. Being responsive and engaging fosters leads down the final towards a close.
Review Traffic Metrics
You track traffic to your B2B web design, so you should track your social media marketing as well. Each social network has an analytics tool built into the platform. In addition to Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and LinkedIn Analytics, you should be reviewing traffic in Google Analytics. Doing so enables you to see how visitors from the social platforms are interacting with your site. Do Facebook visitors only look at one page and then leave your site? Do LinkedIn visitors spend 5+ minutes perusing your site? Also, Google Analytics enables you to track if these visitors from social media are converting into new leads.
Pay to Play
An active, branded social media presence is essential for a good customer experience. The downside of social media is that it is also becoming a pay to play space for brands and companies. As companies like Facebook and Twitter look to increase their revenue, they are showing less organic page posts and tweets to followers. Instead, they are prioritizing paid posts and tweets.
You can easily turn this into a win as many platforms offer extreme audience targeting (even down to income level and neighborhood!). If you are looking to increase the traffic to your website and your leads, even small budget social promotions can garner excellent results.
A successful marketing strategy has multiple avenues including a strong digital presence that starts with a professional B2B web design and extends to the right social media platforms. Drive more leads to your website using the social media tactics outlined here.
Got questions about how to leverage social media for your company? Let us know in the comments below.
