8 Benefits of B2B Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing may seem like something you have to do because everyone else is doing it. So, you jump on the bandwagon because you don’t want to fall behind.

But why use social media marketing in the first place, especially for B2B companies? What do you get out of it, and how can you make the most of it?

With nearly half of the total world population using social media, it makes total sense for B2B marketers to use this channel for promoting their products and businesses. But global usage numbers alone don’t — and won’t — tell you why you should invest in social media marketing.

Here’s a closer look at the specific benefits of B2B social media marketing so you can learn how to leverage it to its full potential:

1. Cost-effective content promotion

One of the top benefits of B2B social media marketing is that it’s cost-effective. You can use organic posts to share and promote your content free of cost. With the right audience and content quality, this organic promotion strategy alone can deliver outstanding results.

Even for those who want to go the extra mile and get even more impressive results, the cost of paid promotions isn’t too expensive. On platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you can advertise for as little as $1 per day for impressions. Though the cost may vary by ad goal and platform, you have the freedom to run ads based on your budget.

This makes social media marketing perfect for small and medium-sized B2B companies and start-ups that often have a limited budget to work with. In fact, social media is the top method for distributing both organic and content among B2B marketers, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

2. Driving referral traffic

Another major benefit of B2B social media marketing is its contribution to referral traffic. When you promote your content on social media, people will click on the link to visit your landing page or read your blog posts. This accounts for a significant portion of total site visits.

In fact, social accounts for almost as much referral traffic as search. According to a 2017 study by Shareholic, search made up 34.8% of overall site visits, while social networks accounted for 25.6%. This is a significant portion of visits that you don’t want to miss out on.

In addition, sharing your links on social media enhances your backlink profile. And the increase in referral traffic will work wonders for your search engine ranking.

To further leverage this aspect of B2B social media marketing, try the Rebrandly UTM builder to tag your links. Create a unique tag for each link based on the platform, content type, topic, and other relevant UTM parameters to understand what resonates with your audience and what works best for you. And then adapt your social content promotion strategy based on these insights.

3. Expanding your brand reach

As we touched on earlier, almost half the world’s population is on social media. So with the right approach, it can be the perfect channel to expand your brand reach. And one of the best ways to grow your reach through social media is by using hashtags.

Whether you join in on trending conversations using popular hashtags or you come up with an original hashtag of your own, a good hashtag strategy will significantly boost your brand visibility. In fact, Jan Pokrop of NapoleonCat managed to see a 20X growth in organic reach with the help of hashtags.

And companies like WeWork have owned social media with their branded hashtag. On Instagram alone, you can see over 480,000 posts using the hashtag #wework. The idea is to get people to use these hashtags so others within their network can learn about your brand.

4. Building valuable connections with your customers

One of the top benefits of B2B social media marketing is its ability to stimulate brand-customer interactions. Social media offers a platform for customers and clients to reach out directly to businesses by commenting on posts, submitting user-generated content, sending direct messages, and more. And for B2B companies, social media offers an ideal channel for driving conversations around their products or services.

This is crucial, because according to the #BrandsGetReal survey from Sprout Social, 64% of consumers want to connect with brands. And when customers feel connected to a brand, 76% of them will choose the brand over the competition. 57% will even spend more with the brand. Consumers also consider social media to be the number one platform for brands to connect with customers.

This becomes even more critical from a B2B aspect, where purchases are typically more expensive and require a higher level of trust. So it’s no surprise that B2B brands, in general, have more emotional connection with their audience. In fact, a majority of B2B brands (seven out of nine) in a Google-CEB survey had an emotional connection with at least 50% of their customers.

On the other hand, B2C brands generally have an emotional connection with around 10-40% of their customers. In addition, B2B buyers are almost 40% more likely to buy something when they see personal value. And they’re also eight times more likely to spend more if personal value is present.

That’s why having the right B2B social media marketing strategy is so vital, as it helps you strengthen your connection with your customers and win their loyalty. Try asking open-ended questions to encourage comments, ask for feedback about your products or updates, or even encourage customers to share content about your products. And when you do get comments, try responding to some of the best ones (if not all).

For instance, the online design platform, Canva regularly responds to tweets about their product. Even something as simple as the following tweet is great for connecting with your customers and garnering their loyalty.

5. Understanding your audience through social listening

You can also use your B2B social media marketing efforts to conduct social listening and gain a better understanding of your audience. This involves monitoring conversations on social media around specific topics including, but not limited to, your brand. This is the perfect way to really understand what topics your audience is interested in, what resonates with them, and what conversations they’re following.

Additionally, social listening also helps you understand what tone and language your target audience is using. And you can then use these insights to adapt your brand voice and optimize

the impact of your messaging. There are a ton of social media monitoring tools out there to help you with your social listening efforts.

The cyber-security company, Sophos, for instance, adapts their brand voice and language according to their target audience. They use wit and humor that their customers would appreciate.

6. Providing better customer support

What better way to use social media than to provide customer support? An exceptional customer support experience improves the overall experience with your brand, and social media offers the perfect channel to provide that. In fact, 34.5% of consumers prefer to get support over social media rather than through traditional channels such as phone and email.

Most importantly, customers who have experienced positive social care are 4X more likely to endorse your brand than those who don’t, according to Conversocial. So it’s crucial that you develop a social customer service strategy (if you don’t already have one). This will require you to respond to queries and complaints as well as reviews over social media.

Note that some issues may be too sensitive to handle on social media, so know when it’s a good time to take it privately. That said, you should still respond to public comments and reviews and guide the customer to a different channel because people notice how you’re responding to customers in need.

In fact, the Conversocial study found that other customers’ comments on your social page affect the opinion of 97% of consumers. And 88% of consumers are less likely to buy from you when they see unanswered questions.

This isn’t just limited to the B2C landscape either. See how Ahrefs promptly responds to a customer’s concerns and provides a resolution in the following tweet. Likewise, you can adapt your B2B social media marketing strategy to accommodate social customer support.

7. Retargeting a highly relevant audience

While traffic is great, not everyone who visits your site will convert the first time round. But having visited your site, they’ve also shown some interest in your product. So it’s all a matter of getting them back for that final conversion.

B2B social media marketing improves your chances of getting g these prospects back with the help of retargeting ads. This involves keeping track of people who have visited your site and then retargeting them with ads when they get on a social media platform. Ideally, you should display products or content they’ve shown an interest in, so the ads are even more relevant.

With the right link retargeting strategy, you can even increase your top-of-funnel traffic by upwards of 500%. Use the Rebrandly retargeting tool to easily fire retargeting pixels from your branded links and build your retargeting list on multiple channels.

8. Humanizing your brand

Without showing its human side, a brand is just a brand without a face. People will have a hard time connecting with your business if they don’t know the people behind it. One of the top benefits of B2B social media marketing is its ability to put a human face to brands and showcase the people who make up an organization.

In fact, the Sprout Social study cited earlier found that 70% of consumers feel more connected to a brand when its CEO has an active presence on social media. And 65% say that it feels like there are real people behind the company.

To top it off, 72% of people feel more connected to a brand when employees use social media to share information. And 62% like learning about the people who make up a brand, while 61% say that it feels like there are real people behind the brand.

Rebrandly’s Instagram social media marketing strategy is all about highlighting the people behind the company. Photos of team members and company events make up most of the posts.

Wrapping up

As you can see, there are tons of ways to enjoy the benefits of B2B social media marketing if you know how to use it right. Reassess your current strategy and social ROI to see if you’ve been enjoying these benefits. If not, it’s time to revamp your efforts and come up with a plan to leverage B2B social media marketing to its full potential.

What other benefits of B2B social media marketing have you been experiencing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Further reading:

This article is about:

B2B social media marketing
Social media marketing for B2B brands
B2B social media marketing examples

Enrico Lucia

RESOURCES