Gate your Content
B2B Social Media Marketing
Strategies to Generate Quality Leads
Table of Content
Introduction
That’s nearly 250 million people! If you are a marketer, social media helps you reach a larger pool of prospects in a shorter period when compared to any other channel. Lead generation was once an exhaustive and often futile process. Now, the resources required to generate leads are reliant on real-time communication. And what’s more, your leads are the ones who initiate contact with you, and not the other way round!
Despite this, B2B marketers are reluctant to embrace social media marketing. Their hesitation stems from a fistful of factors. For instance, it takes a while before you start getting noticed. The initial investment needed may seem steep, with no guarantee of returns. And acquiring a bad reputation on social media can destroy all that you have built, in an instant.
But social media is a conglomerate of various platforms, each with their own challenges, pros-cons, etc. Therefore, social media has a primary benefit that sets it apart from the rest – Effortless communication! No other channel facilitates communication between a business and a customer quite like the way social media does.
Despite this, B2B marketers are reluctant to embrace social media marketing. Their hesitation stems from a fistful of factors. For instance, it takes a while before you start getting noticed. The initial investment needed may seem steep, with no guarantee of returns. And acquiring a bad reputation on social media can destroy all that you have built, in an instant.
Here are six strategies you can implement to make the most of
your social media marketing plan:
Choose the Right Platform
There are hundreds of social media platforms, but that doesn’t mean they are all suitable for your business. In fact, depending on what your out-to-sell, specific platforms will be more beneficial than others.
For example, if you sell CRM systems to other businesses, LinkedIn might be right up your alley. But you would be off-the-mark if you were to try that on Instagram, for example.
Ensure that you construct your social media strategies around a platform you wish to capitalize on. While cross-channel promotion is recommended, you do want maximum impact, don’t you?
While there’s no specific rule of thumb, research shows that the most effective platforms for B2B sales are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Tweak your Profile
First impressions matter!
On social media, your business page profile is the first thing that will be visible to an interested user. If they find it unprofessional or unconvincing, well, smile and wave! Choose a name that your customers will remember, and make sure it is relevant to your product.
Make sure that your contact information is visible to anyone who visits, and includes links to your website. Add a crisp, precise bio that explains what your business is all about. And most importantly, include an attractive call-to-action button to draw prospects in.
Listen to your connections
None of your social media strategies, no matter how sophisticated they might be, will work unless you know and understand your audience.
Social listening refers to monitoring your prospects on social media to gain industry insights. Get familiar with the most popular hashtags among your followers. Set up Google Alerts to notify you every time your business is referenced online.
And if you’re short on resources, it won’t hurt to invest in tools like Hootsuite to sort out your social media management woes.
Social media also enables you to effectively track your competitors.
Keep an eye on how they’re faring, as well as customer opinions about them. This can help you plan your digital campaigns better as well as fine-tune future social media strategies.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, gated content is content that involves the extraction of visitor information in exchange for access to a particular piece of content.
By forcing visitors to part with their information, you stand to retrieve a higher number of direct leads for your business. As annoying as it may seem, if you don’t gate certain content, you risk collecting a lower number of leads.
You also risk not being able to share valuable resources that you may have spent sleepless nights constructing with anyone. If you have content that is of value to your users, they will gladly share their contact information with you.
It’s that simple!
While gated content almost always gets lesser clicks than publicly available content, your leads are almost certainly more interested in your products.
As with all social media strategies – the right balance is everything. Whenever it makes sense to share content without information, do so.
But don’t hesitate to gate your content when there’s an opportunity to grow your business.
Create a Buyer Persona
Buyer personas are detailed profiles of your target customers/audience. Study your prospects and customers. Analyze their buying habits. Group all the common factors among them, and you will arrive at your buyer persona!
Example of a Buyer Persona
After creating your buyer persona, create content that is specific to their interests. Design your social media strategies in a way that it addresses your prospect’s pain points, concerns, and delivers what they expect. You might find that your customers have more than one consistent buyer persona. In such cases, it’s much better to run ads that target each type, rather than a generalized campaign. On social media, the more specific you can be, the better!
Learn how to discover your target audience
Organize Contests and Free Trials
B2B Social media is all about interacting with the community. There’s no better way to do that than giving away one of your products via an online contest. Run a contest that only commences after a prospect shares their information. You must be extremely specific, both in terms of the prospects you want to target and the prize you are giving away.
This ensures you filter out low-quality leads.
Free trials are also an effective way of getting more leads. The word “Free” is a time-tested lead magnet on the internet. To ensure that your free-trial program is successful, offer minimal, but essential features to users.
The point is to allow them to see the benefits of your product without having to give them the whole nine-yards for free.
Generate quality leads
with ReachStream
Conclusion
Social media is a blessing to all digital marketers. The process of lead generation becomes a much easier task with the right social media strategiesThe fact that you can reach out to and directly communicate with interested prospects allows your business to expand its customer base by leaps and bounds.
Irrespective of whether your customers are individuals or businesses, social media is the answer you have been looking for. While not always straightforward, social media does pay-off in kind when equal measures of perseverance and effort have been invested. Create structured social media strategies and follow them religiously. With time and discipline, you will see measurable returns! If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of social media marketing, Subscribe to our blog! Share your thoughts and suggestions with us in the comment section below. If you enjoyed this read, share it with your colleagues and acquaintances!
Joseph Cruz
Author
An established author and former B2B content marketer, Joseph has been around long enough to see content marketing grow from a buzzword to an industry. Currently a freelancer, he also plays an advisory role with ReachStream’s content team. During his time off, he enjoys a quiet day by the beach with his three dogs.
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