Social media and B2B communications: the perfect marriage

Social media gives you the opportunity to put the spotlight on your activities for free or for a small amount. In the past, digital resources were far more limited, you only had your website, possibly supplemented with some email marketing.

Today, communication is much broader and you need to maintain a presence everywhere, but your social media activities should exist in one ecosystem. You can reuse the information from your website in your email marketing, but different platforms present you with the opportunity to tailor your communications for each one; be open on Facebook, informative on Twitter, businesslike on LinkedIn, have a strong focus on image on Instagram and, the icing on the cake, in videos on Youtube.

If we look at our personal internet behaviour, we surf less and rarely to www.yourcompany.com, but our dependence on mobile internet has increased. Social media is part of our personal and professional lives.

And even though we may be posting less of our lives than we used to, we are consuming ever more social media. Facebook and Instagram for stories, videos and photos from friends, Twitter for news , and LinkedIn to show your professional network who you are and what you're doing.

In short: we consider social media to be a great way to maintain our relationships and stay informed. And these are 2 of the important principles of B2B marketing.

On social media you can also target custom audiences based on their specific interests. Custom audiences give you the opportunity to target the data you provide (and of course have collected according to the rules of the GDPR) and reach only those people.

Do you want to reach 3,000 of your customers and show certain information exclusively to them? That’s no problem if you have their phone number and/or email address, and even better if Facebook has that information too. Cost to reach 3,000 people: approximately 15 euros.

For example, via LinkedIn you can choose to only reach people who are employed as engineers and who work in a company with a scale between 51 and 200 employees. In short: social media offers you an incredible range of interesting possibilities to tailor your communication and thus also your advertising.

7.3 million Belgians have Facebook accounts. We may not use it professionally, but we are very active on the platform.

You should try smart and targeted advertising to reach your target audience’s newsfeed. Based on data we talked about earlier (e-mail, Facebook) or based on socio-demographic data, for example people with an interest in construction within a radius of 15 km of your company.

A third option is programmatic advertising, but more about that in a moment.

So, should you only use LinkedIn in a B2B context? Our answer is a loud and clear 'no' to that. You have to fish where the fish are. It's down to you to make sure you have the right bait. The pond itself is secondary.

Terms such as Google Tag Manager, the Facebook Pixel and the LinkedIn Insight tag should be familiar tools to the modern marketer. These are pieces of code that you have to place on your site, which then efficiently keep track of who visits your digital media and what they view.

You can easily use that data to then target advertising again, with programmatic advertising.

Website visitors never just land on your site, and certainly not in the world of B2B. That's low hanging fruit. When they arrive, your website visitors have already indicated that they are interested in your business. It is up to you to nurture their customer journey with tailor-made content.

Can you generate B2B leads on social media? Yes. Let’s briefly summarise why we believe this is the case:

• You have a limited and definable group of relevant contacts.

• Personal data, specific interests or previous actions make it possible to target your communications and advice effectively.

• Your actions are specific and thus cost-effective with no need to dramatically increase your TOM. As a result, you can operate effectively with a smaller budget.