Try these 5 B2B Social strategies to generate leads

In Zimbabwe, B2B and social media are two words you rarely find in the same sentence. A lot of Zimbabwean businesses shy away from social media or if they do, it’s to tick a box; Facebook account…check.

However, serious businesses today understand the value they can leverage from a social strategy. It is a serious channel that marketers can take advantage of. It has grown in leaps and bounds, beyond just B2C but B2B too.

So, what should we be looking out for as Marketers and agency? Sophistication. Your customer has evolved into a knowledgeable being that seeks information relevant to them at a moment that suits them.

Let’s dive into what your Social Media should be like

1. Your customer experience needs to be sharp

 Customer experience and B2B. Does B2B really need a customer-centric approach? Yes. You want to support your customer at every point of their journey. Your prospects need to be treated as individuals receiving consistent messaging and intuitive understanding when they encounter your brand online.

On your part as a business, this will require a consistent investment across your owned, earned and paid media, delivering a synonymous brand presence across channels. Sometimes it’s better to pick one social platform and grow from there. Delivering a consistent tone and moving your traffic to an easy to navigate web property with a clear call to action will see you increasing your lead generation.

And don’t forget your content of course. The information your prospects consume in order to determine if your business is worthy.

So, what do we do as a business:

Revise your current Social strategy. If you don’t have one, explore which platform would best suit your brand and give it a go. Understand your prospect and serve them with information that is valuable and consistent. It’s not a sell but a conversation on the value you bring to the table.

2. Invest in your content

You want to begin using content formats such as video and live-streaming your corporate events for example. Anything your business does is a content opportunity. Video is highly engaging and gives you an exciting form which entices your prospect to believe you are a cut above the rest.

If you are a product orientated business, let’s see your products in action. Let’s see what your other business partners have to say about you.

So, what do we do as a business:

Surround your brand with a creative team that is able to take your business processes and break them down in a visual and engaging manner.  By increasing focus and promoting your content, the prospects you reach are highly engaged and likely to convert. And the beauty of digital, you can run various formats till you find the best format for your business.

3. Qualifying all Social Leads

We speak a lot about leads. Everything we do via social is leading up to the opportunity to receive information about a prospect interested in our product/service. So, if we invest in social, develop the content and get the engagement; our phones start ringing, we sign the business deals but we don’t truly track or measure where the leads came from. All your social media efforts would have been in vain.

It is essential to measure and understand how your social media efforts translate into leads that result in conversions that bring in revenue. You collect data online, finish the sale offline. Track that. Train your offline team to track how a lead came to you. Was it press, billboard or social for example. By so doing, the benefit of social will become more significant and more budget will be put into it as a result of the analytics you see from your social page plus the offline tracking you do as a business.

So, what do we do as a business:

Going back to our 2nd point, it’s important to focus on the social media channel best suited for your business. Continue to test, track and optimize your strategy. Whichever you find gives you the greatest return on ROI will be the leader of the pack.

You can consider scaling down on the other channels however you continue to understand your analytics and draw insights which you can apply to your business.

 Social Media advertising

Your ads need to stand out and draw the attention of your prospect. Advertising in line with the marketing objective presents different ad-formats that will reach the right audience – an audience most likely to engage with your content.

For example, LinkedIn launched a new Company page with a much cleaner design, helping companies promote themselves more efficiently and build relationships.

Facebook new ad options like Carousels enable B2B marketers to tell a story while dynamic ads serve the relevant product to a prospect. Both formats increase the quality of the user experience across devices.

So, what do we do as a business:

If your current social strategy is reliant on an inbound content strategy, to be precise you need to throw in a digital media budget that will enable you to reach a wider audience. With adverts your brand’s reach is higher and you can target by segmenting to reach a highly-engaged prospect.

5. Be a part of the action

B2C marketers like to take advantage of anything that is happening within the pop culture space. B2B should also be enterprising and find their space, where they can be social. By so doing a B2B creates touch points that engage with your prospect and engage them in a timely manner.

So what do we do as a business:

Understand your voice and how you can navigate between your corporate identity and being social with your prospect. Maintain a flexible editorial calendar with fast approval to be able to speak on time, us relevant hashtags and keywords that are aligned to your brand. The goal is to get leads without really pushing a selling strategy.