How to develop an organic B2B social media marketing plan

Looking to expand your B2B Social Media marketing organically, but not sure of the approach? Breaking the tasks into bite-size chunks will make it less daunting and reduce errors. Here are the steps you need to take.

Articulate your goals

Goals should contribute directly or indirectly to your business plan, for example, to:

drive revenue from new customer acquisition
increase revenue from cross-selling to existing customers
increase brand awareness

If you have multiple goals, prioritise them to make it easier to measure your success.

Define the target

You already know who your current customers are, but are you clear about your ideal prospects? It’s vital to have a clear understanding of customer segments. You’ll probably have most of the information you need to segment your customers by company metrics – revenue, number of staff, industry sector, and so on. But it’s also important to segment your customers by key stakeholders – your buyers and influencers. You will, after all, deal with these companies on a person-to-person basis.

Choose your platform

Once you know who exactly you want to reach, you need to make them aware of your offering. And since you need to fish where the fish are, you need to know which social networks they’re on. Is it LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or another platform? It’s most likely LinkedIn in the B2B world, but don’t make assumptions – check if they’re there.

Reach out

You’re now ready to reach out to the right people on the right social media platform – so introduce yourself properly. If they’re on LinkedIn – invite them to connect with a personalised note. Found them on Twitter? Follow them. Ensure you’re using proper etiquette, as everyone loves good manners – offline and online.

Engage

So your prospects are aware of you…what now? It’s time to bring something to the table. Be a valuable resource, someone who is helpful, has interesting insights, knowledge of what’s going on the industry, now and in the future. This is best done by sharing content – interesting articles, case studies, white papers. Your customer segmentation will have provided a guide about your content distribution plan; the intel you gathered along the way will have refined it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you shouldn’t expect your content to ‘win’ clients over in the same timeframe either. Consistency and relevance will eventually pay off.

Gauge your activity

Measure your achievements against your goals. Was your goal to increase brand awareness? If so, market research will shed some light. Was it to increase revenue? If so, once your prospect has been exposed to your content over a period of time, it will be time to request to meet. When you reach out to your new connections, you won’t be a complete stranger this time. Some will have seen your content. Once again, use proper etiquette. Being relevant in your request will show that you’ve done your homework.

Start the process by starting the process

You now have a few ideas for your B2B Social Media marketing planning. Taking a methodical approach will make it easier to complete each task successfully, and contribute to the likelihood of achieving your objectives.