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Just a few months ago, social media was so much simpler. Back then marketers were only concerned with the BIG three of social media: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
With just three major social sites, we all took the same approach. Hire someone, put him or her in charge of social media, post your content to those three and we’re done, right?
Wrong.
Everything we knew has changed, as social media sites rose and fell. It’s like the kids game of a Whack-A-Mole. As soon as you knock one social media strategy down, another pops up. Vine, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Listly, Tumblr, and more each week.
Let me suggest a few ways to do social better. These approaches help you get away from playing games and get you back to driving real revenue for your business in 2014.
Everything you do must be focused on customers. Ask questions. Listen. Go meet with them. Focus on developing really good buyer personas – designed to uncover real insights. In fact, content marketing evangelist Joe Pulizzi says, “One of the most common errors marketers make is failing to really understand audience personas.”
Are your existing personas up to snuff? Here’s a quick self-test. Answer just one question: Why do some prospects buy while others simply choose to live with the pain?
If you can’t answer that question, you may not have adequate personas. As Michael Brenner of SAP wrote in The Secret to Amazing Service, “Know thy customer."
One of the most common mistakes I see B2B marketers make is trying to be all things to all people. The result: They are everything to no one. The fact is that B2B marketers who focus on select niches deliver much better results.
Look to your very best customers and ask yourself a few questions. What makes those customers the best? Why are they the best? How can you find more customers just like them?
Perhaps the best case on why you need to find your ideal niche is my personal mistakes – how I lost value time and money by focusing on the wrong market. As the Creator and Host of Marketing Made Simple TV, my show is supported by sponsors. I was networking and talking to large companies. But I kept getting the proverbial door shut in my face. After some long and hard thinking, I refocused on new, well-funded startups and all the sudden, everyone wanted to talk to me.
While many talk about Big Data, the fact is that most B2B marketers have a Small Data problem – they have lots of data, but it’s not accurate.
Clean up your data and make it accurate. Then you can harness data in order to capture net new customers today, as well as to predict future customer behaviors.
To do that, you need people skilled at turning data into insights. They can address your small data problems and make your data a company asset. For more on this, read Big Data Marketing by Lisa Arthur, Chief Marketing Officer of Teradata Applications (all book proceeds go to the American Red Cross.)
Sam Fiorella, co-author of Influence Marketing, says, “So-called social influence sites...do not give you real influence. Nor do social media stars give you influence. Influence only comes from customers and prospective buyers." Sorry, but the shortcuts don’t work.
If true influence comes only from customers, then make them the center of your universe. I suggest you go back to the Buyer Persona advice in idea one.
It’s more important than ever for B2B marketers to prove the value of marketing to the C-suite. That gives them job security. And what’s more important than that?
If you're just starting out, you may have to use vanity metrics such as Facebook likes and Twitter followers. But over time, I suggest you dive deeper into metrics that drive bottom-line revenue, like lead conversions to sales-accepted leads and win rates.
What do you think of these five ideas? Did I forget anything? I love to read your comments and appreciate those who share on social media too.
Image source: flickr.com/photos/jeff_kontur
Learn more social media tips for your business with the free Salesforce ebook below.
