Want to grow your B2B commerce? Have you thought about a social media marketing strategy?

In this article, we’re going to explain how a social media marketing strategy can help business-to-business companies boost their sales.

Business-to-business

Any commercial deal in which both sides are businesses themselves is called Business-to-Business. B2B is often defined in contrast with business-to-consumer (B2C) commerce in which brands sell their products/services to the public.

For example, the task of a company that produces and sells manufacturing machines to other companies is B2B. Raw material providers are also another example of B2B companies.

Marketing, selling, and brand awareness is a bit different in such companies since there isn’t a direct relationship between the brand and the people

B2B Social media marketing

Social media is now playing a significant role in our lives, especially in marketing. It has provided business owners with a unique opportunity to increase their brand awareness and boost sales.

Social media users are usually regular people that are the perfect target audience for B2C-based companies. But what about B2Bs?

Many marketers believe that the sales of B2B products/services won’t change using social media.

But you need to change your mind since social media can greatly help you grow your B2B commerce.

Here are several advantages of social media marketing for B2B-based companies:

• Building brand identity
• Appearing like a though/technology-leader
• Driving traffic to your website
• Reaching out to your partners’ customers
• Generating leads
• Teaching student about job opportunities
• Employing highly-skilled staff

With social media, you can build your brand identity and broadcast your mission. Actually, you have the opportunity to appear like a part of society, not just a selling machine. This can certainly change the mind of your partners and make them build long-lasting deals with you.

As a B2B-based company, you are a specialist in your niche. This is what many of your B2C counterparts might not think about you.

Try to provide social users with educating content in an entertaining format and establish your authority and leadership in your industry. You can influence the customers of your B2C partners and make them believe in your brand.

The more engagement you can reach on social media, the more traffic you can drive to your site and the more leads you can generate.

Last but not least you can increase the awareness of people, especially students, about your company and the related job opportunities.

So, on the one hand, they will trust you as a technology-leader and try to learn new skills required in your company. On the other hand, you can employ highly-skilled staff since they have already tried to match your requirements.

So, think about a good social media strategy to grow your B2B-based company.

Set clear goals

As a professional, you must have been aware of the importance of clear goals for every task. Social media marketing isn’t an exception too.

There are several common goals many marketers set for their career:

• Increasing brand awareness
• Building community
• Generating leads
• Increasing online sales
• Driving traffic to a website
• Providing customer services

You can use a similar list with a little adjustment for your B2B commerce. You need also to consider several metrics to measure these goals. The number of followers, conversion rates, likes, and comments are several metrics that can help you measure your performance.

Determine your marketing budget

After determining your marketing goals, you need to know your resources such as money, marketing staff, etc.

Brands are spending a noticeable amount of time and money on marketing. So, you can only get ahead of the competition by a powerful social presence.

For this reason, many brands even utilize social escrow services to acquire and customize new social accounts. This can help them save time and money and also have a well-established social presence at the beginning.

Try to do competition research to find out how much money your niche rivals have spent on marketing. This can greatly help you to start efficiently.

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Identify your target audience

Now that you have written your goals and set aside your budget, it’s necessary to know who you should post for.

So, you need to identify your target audience to create proper content just for them. Keep in mind that the more relevant your target audience is, the more leads you can generate.

There are several approaches by which you can identify and target your audience and make them follow you.

First, you should use your experience and knowledge about your current and previous customers and partners. You need to use your connections as much as you can. This can boost your marketing efforts significantly and let you save time and money.

Try to sort them in terms of location, position, size of the company, the age and the gender of the owners, and any other factors that might be important in your target market.

You then need to use social analytics apps to get user demographics and know the distribution of your target audience.

Also, you can do competition research and learn about your competitors’ presence on social networks. You can find their followers or even build a relationship with them.

In the end, it’s good to use social tools such as Kicksta to automate finding organic niche followers.

Select your platforms

Now, you have to choose the best social media platforms that fit your style, niche, and target audience. You need to know the differences between social platforms to be able to prioritize them in your strategy.

Try to compile the newest statistics about social media. For example:

• 70% of Instagram users are aged less than 35.
• Pinterest is most popular among women.
• 45% of Linked users are managers such as directors, CEOs, and vice presidents.
• Reseachgate is a network for researchers and authors.

These and many other statistics that are constantly changing help you to know the best platforms for your business.

As the first approach, we recommend thinking about LinkedIn as an employment-oriented platform suitable for B2B commerce. Many job seekers around the word search job positions on this network.

On the other hand, many companies have an account on its marketing their products/services.

Create informative content

Content creation is at the core of every social media marketing strategy. As a B2B-based company, your content should be different from posts of other mediocre social accounts.

You need to appear like a niche leader and make users believe in your skills and thoughts.

So, creating educating content can be your priority. Many social media and internet users are seeking for training videos, PDFs, infographics, etc. You are the best person who can provide them with these files using social media networks.

Of course, it’s good to broadcast your information in a conversational tone or even in funny ways. This is a requirement on social media these days since many people prefer a friendly relationship.

Schedule your posting time

Another important matter about social media marketing is a timely presence. You need to post at the best time to get maximum exposure.

Keep in mind that the best posting times vary by industry. So, try to find the optimum posting schedule for your niche.

Also, social automation tools such as Kicksta can help you to repeat your posts regularly and automatically. This will significantly reduce your costs and save you time.

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Collaborate with niche influencers

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective means of building brand awareness even for B2B commerce. Try to identify niche relevant influencers using valid sources such as Awario and BuzzSumo.

Keep in mind that many influencers on social media are not authentic and can’t bring increase your brand awareness. An expert in Social Tradia says that many influencers on Instagram have caused problems for brands and finally have sold their accounts.

Final word

We tried to summarize the whole procedure of building a B2B marketing strategy step-by-step. Of course, practice makes perfect. Always track the newest trend in your target market and try to be ready for changes.