About a month ago, I had the pleasure of participating in an interview for Internet Evolution’s Web radio broadcast. Among the topics generating considerable conversation was the use of social media in a B2B context.
Though much has been said and written about the commercial use of social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare) to connect directly with consumers, it seems to me that substantially less useful information is published about social media’s potential in the B2B space.
As a distributor of wines and spirits, our customers are strictly limited (by law) to retail establishments like liquor stores, bars, and restaurants. Because they have obtained their alcoholic beverage licenses from the state, we know exactly who our customers are. Frequently, we know them even before they know who we are and realize they are highly likely to do business with us. (We distribute some very popular brands exclusively.) Therefore, end consumer marketing and outreach is the province of our customers and/or our suppliers.
Given these circumstances and market conditions, my company’s senior marketing and sales executives and I spent the better part of a year attempting to determine what place and value social media had for our organization.
Embarking on an effort to discover our place in the social media world, we sought the advice of “expert” industry, technology, and marketing consultants, as well as college students savvy in the use of the technology. We kept our Facebook posts fresh with lively, sometimes provocative, content. We attempted to engage page visitors with opportunities to participate, using invitations to fun events like tastings and recipe contests. We designated product specialists (e.g., tequila, wine), wrote blogs, and equipped them with Twitter accounts with which to develop followings.
Over time, we experienced steady increases in friends, likes, and followers. When we analyzed just who these people were, however, we discovered that they were predominantly employees, their families, and friends. Although our product specialists did gain some traction, their followings were on the lighter side, measuring in the low hundreds. Though some customers and their friends and families did participate, we instinctively realized that building a community took time, and that we would need some patience to determine the efficacy of our efforts.
We even went so far as to seriously discuss and contemplate the development and distribution of mobile apps for the iOS, Droid, and BlackBerry platforms as a means of driving customers to our portal. Again, given the limited target audience, the introduction of a mobile app would do little more for us than provide some oblique business intelligence and demonstrate our technology prowess.
It has been more than a year since we implemented our program, and we’ve seen little discernible effect on sales, demand, brand awareness, usable business intelligence, or even facilitation of community. In the end, we had little choice but to conclude that our participation in the social media space is of limited direct benefit.
Despite our experience, many continue to believe, and some even insist (including several of the listeners to the IE Radio interview), that B2B social media is relevant and beneficial.
If this is indeed the case, then several questions come to mind: Have we missed something in our approach or not given the program sufficient time to evolve? Have we overlooked something obvious, or is our target community already too defined? We continue to maintain our social media presence and would drive it further -- if there were a B2B destination.
I'm posting this comment "blindly" in response to yours. Here's a great article (again posting blindly as I haven't read it but I'm trusting the source). I'm sure a glance at minimum will provide well on this topic.
@Kim, That was Epic!! I do wonder if beverage distributors have parent companies that can benefit from it's role in social media. Just a thought.. I mean to say social media is insignificant in your business today is embarrassing "in a nutshell". More innovation is needed to find that leverage is all. Is the beverage distributor" operating in a perfect oligopoly? (have to look up details on perfect oligopoly.. or if there is even such)
"If this is indeed the case, then several questions come to mind: Have we missed something in our approach or not given the program sufficient time to evolve? Have we overlooked something obvious, or is our target community already too defined? We continue to maintain our social media presence and would drive it further -- if there were a B2B destination."
Of the likely scenarios you highlighetd above, I will say the contributing factor that may be responsible for the result you got will be that " your target community is already well defined". There is an inelastic demand for your products which leaves your customers with no option but to consistently go to you. Your customers don't have any impetus to engage with you on social media despite your very kind effort to engage with them.
"While customers of B2B companies are on a variety of social networks they come to those networks with different purposes and may not necessarily have their "business" hat on while using that network. For example, someone in need of corporate accounting services for their business may be active on Facebook (and may even access Facebook while at work), but they may be on the social network for purely personal reasons. As a result, if your company provides corporate accounting services and you try to engage this person within the Facebook platform, they may ignore you entirely because they do not have their business hat on at that time. The same can hold true for Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus and beyond."
That's the grande challenge face by B2B companies.
You ran what would have been a standard marketing campaign, but somehow missed the "last mile" of connecting your information to social media networks.
For example, when you were promoting your facebook page, at live events, did you have a laptop available so people could LIKE it before leaving and forgetting the next day?
One thing about Facebook is that it's very "opt in". You can't solicit someone without possibly gettting booted off Facebook. (For example, I tried to Friend a few people who gave me Likes for comments I made in various blogs, and they locked my Friending ability for 7 days...because I didn't know them in real life!!)
The other thing is that you say you put "useful information" in your Facebook posts. How about coupons? And speaking of coupons, do you use GroupOns?
And what about your family friends and employees who signed up? Do they repost tips, recipies, wine recommendations from the company site to their networks? That is the kind of viral marketing that might tie people back to your Facebook company site. And also, did you take advantage of any of the advertising resources on Facebook to promote your product and Facebook site? Many campaigns are relatively cheap.
Making a Friend in social media is a far cry from getting someone to see an ad and try a product. Think of how hard it is to make Friend in real life. It's got to be real.
There may not be direct benefits for a B2B company, but I'm thinking that social media is similar to an awareness campaign for your brand. It's like the "Intel Inside" ads... consumers aren't really directly buying Intel chips, but the brand recognition encourages hardware suppliers to incorporate Intel prodcts... So in your case, if your brand really doesn't matter to consumers... then how do you communicate your value to retailers besides price/productlines/etc?
I remember this discussion well, Brian. It struck me at the time that the real constraint for you is less that you're operating in a B2B environment, than that you're operating in a classic mature market. As you say, you have a finite number of customers, you know them all, they all know you. Your objective, in terms of business expansion, is not attracting new customers, but making - I assume - marginal improvements in your share of a finite cake.
(I bet you know all your competitors as well as you know your customers.)
Social media really might not be beneficial in your case, but have you looked at ways of using it to communicate about what I recall is your selling point - prompt response and delivery (you can't compete through pricing, as prices are set in advance).
Maybe that's something which could be put across using a mobile app after all?
Brian, you seem to have a very good handle on using social media for B2C. For that, it's a wonderful tool. I'm just not sure it's the ideal tool for B2B. You would want to show prospective clients the advantages of doing additional business with you (beyond the exclusive brands). As an example, back in the late 80s I built an application for a national food distributor that listed all their products, sizes, case-lot prices, and possible discounts in a spreadsheet-like format that their salespeople could use to show purchasers the benefits of buying their products. Can you imagine the impact of something similar as an app? You wouldn't even need additional sales crew to boost contact and demonstrate the direct benefit to your proposed clientele. That's bringing traditional B2B methods into the 21st century, and might just be the "killer ap" you're looking for. I hope my two cent's worth helps in some way, and please keep us up to date on how your efforts are succeeding.
We do have a CMO who is our business champion for the use of social media. At the end of the day we couldn't sustain the expense of dedicated management to our social media program (Joe commented on this) but are maintaining it in the event we find a productive direction to take it.
I wanted to thank Joe for his thoughtful insights as I was indeed looking for feedback. Your analysis and suggestions were good. So good in fact, we attempted (e.g., dedicated management, hosting topics of interest, etc.) earlier but didn't really gain much traction. The essential issues stem from our market environment; our prohibition from soliciting directly to consumers; the finite and relatively stable customer base and our middle position in a their tier supply chain (supplier -> wholesaler -> retailer) and the subtle nature of indirectly attempting to drive increased demand.
Brian, thank you for a thoughtful and thought-provoking post about B2B social media. I suspect there are many in the B2B realm struggling with the same issues you are. Who runs your social media efforts, Brian? Do you have a CMO on staff?
Also, for what it's worth, I pose the question to you and to the community: If B2B social media efforts aren't working for an organization, is it still necessary to proceed with them?
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Having spent a significant portion of my early career as a business analyst, I have always been keenly interested in potential means of delivering functionality faster to my users. As a long-standing practitioner of the traditional "waterfall" software development/project management methodology, I have integrated early prototyping and iterative functionality over the years.
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