Is social media important for B2B demand generation?
As the B2B landscape continues to shift and evolve due to advances in software, current trends, and the lasting effect of the pandemic, so must the way B2B marketers go about creating demand generation campaigns.
With limited time, budget, and the pressures of adapting to changes, it is only natural that marketers are evaluating and questioning the effectiveness of the individual facets of their demand generation campaigns.
For example, one key element of the success of any marketing strategy, is ensuring that content is distributed on the channels where potential clients are.
So, how does social media as a channel fit into a B2B demand generation campaign?
In this article we will explore how social media strategies can boost demand generation at relatively low cost.
Establish your brand
While implementing a multi-channel approach by utilizing multiple social media platforms for demand generation is a solid strategy, LinkedIn is by far the leading platform for B2B and should be your priority.
Instagram and Twitter still have their own uses however, for simplicity and due to its rapid and continuous growth, LinkedIn will be the primary focus of this article.
Social media is an effective medium for establishing your brand in the B2B online space as it allows you to communicate directly with potential leads, prospects, and existing clients.
One way of provoking these discussions is by sharing thought leadership content in your posts. This can take shape in the form of advice, general thoughts, or challenging opinions on current trends and the state of your industry.
The aim here is to encourage interaction and share valuable insights. The better thought leadership you post on a consistent basis, the more likely your content is going to reach your connection’s networks, either through shares or your discussions showing up on their feed.
Another benefit of this content is its low cost. If implemented correctly, you can leverage thought leadership on social media to effectively solidify your brand in the online space.
Boost content
Social media makes an efficient vehicle for boosting the reach of content with your online network and can get your content in front of reader who are not opted-in to your email lists.
Leverage the good standing, new relationships, and interest created by your thought leadership by sharing posts related to your content marketing. This can help to compound the effects of nurturing efforts and generate demand.
In their most simple form, these posts can just feature links to content on your website. However, you can also repurpose your existing content into other shareable formats such as an infographics and combine them with backlinks.
The key to this strategy is featuring content that resonates the most with the different segments making up your broader target audience.
The more valuable and insightful the content being shared and supporting post copy is, the more likely it is for the reach of your content to be boosted by your social media efforts.
Collect valuable data
A useful aspect of social media that can bring value to your demand generation campaigns, is the opportunity to perform social listening and collect insightful data for future strategies.
This can be done by interacting with discussions created by your thought leadership content and analyzing the comments made by participants to identify common pain points.
Investing time to assess the language prospects use to talk about different topics can also help feed your outreach strategies by allowing you to adopt relatable language choices.
You can also collect data by running a poll on a LinkedIn post. This can be about any topic of your choosing and is an effective way to drive engagement with your social media posts.
Another benefit of LinkedIn is that participants are notified when polls have closed, bringing them right back to your content.
This can help to drive discussions and provide you with insights to integrate into future demand generation campaigns, such as topics for content marketing.
Humanize your company
Social media also presents marketers with the opportunity to showcase the humans behind a company. This can be done by creating employee highlights on your social media platforms that provide a background on various team members.
Boosting your employees not only helps with team morale but also takes advantages of potentially expanding your reach by getting your company name in front of your employee’s network.
Your employees can also be leveraged as brand advocates by creating a social media campaign to boost your demand generation that is fuelled by employees participating with their own posts under a shared hashtag.
In general, showing the faces behind your brand aids demand generation by reminding interested parties that your company is made up of other people and is not just a faceless organization driven by profit.
It can also help to boost your credibility, make you and your content more relatable and genuine.
Final thoughts
In an increasingly digital world, human connections are highly valued. Social media is a cost-effective way of establishing your brand and its values, as well as boosting the reach of your content to nurture demand and form long-lasting relationships.
When constructing your own multi-channel demand generation campaign be sure to consider how to incorporate and take advantage of the potential of social media in aiding your efforts.