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I’ve been working with my colleagues at ITSMA on another survey on social media for B2B marketers that I hope you’ll take by going here.
As we put together the questions, we struggled with the issue of social media strategy. I resisted treating it as a standalone in the survey. I’m hoping that all the articles, books, and blogs I’m seeing that look at B2B social media strategy in isolation are a function of our excitement over this new channel (and don’t get me wrong; it is really, really exciting).
I’m also hoping that the excitement (and the needs of social media consultants and authors to drive their businesses) will not drive us to distraction. B2B marketing lays the path to a sales discussion and supports relationships with existing customers. Social media is another channel—one of many—for making the connection and building the relationship with customers.
Social media is no silver bullet. Other channels are more effective for reaching high-level B2B buyers—and that situation may never change. I say this even after discounting ITSMA’s recent research showing that marketers don’t see social media as being very effective components in their marketing strategies. It’s clear that social media are still new and most B2B marketing groups haven’t gotten the hang of them yet. It’s too early to reach any definitive conclusions on effectiveness.
It’s tempting to say that because B2B sales are highly dependent on relationships, social media will eventually reign supreme. But I think the nature of B2B makes it harder for companies and customers to have a satisfying relationship that’s entirely virtual than it is for B2C companies.
We all know that B2B decisions take a long time and are made by committee and logic rather than individuals and impulse. It’s hard to imagine that kind of a complex, long-term, multi-person relationship ever happening entirely or even mostly in social media. At the C-level especially, face-to-face remains the killer app for everyone involved.
What’s been proven to work in B2B is for marketers to reach out to prospects with smart, engaging, educational content that leads to trust. The trust leads to a more personal relationship and hopefully, a purchase.
Looking at social media in isolation distracts us from the real revolutionary trend, which is that marketing strategies need to shift to an emphasis on content and relationships.
Social media simply makes starkly plain what we’ve known for some time but haven’t had to face yet: We don’t have a lot of content capable of generating trust and relationships.
Trust comes from buyers deciding that providers are as interested in their concerns and needs as they are in selling stuff. The only way we can do that is by providing a range of different content—thought leadership, news, education, training, support—in a range of different channels—events, white papers, communities, private meetings—at all phases of the buying cycle.
If you look at social media in isolation, you’re not going to see the larger strategic issues until they slap you in the face—blogs with nothing to write about; LinkedIn groups with no substantive conversation; Twitter streams that link to nothing but brochures and press releases.
That’s why I’d love to see the social media conversation turn more towards integrating social media into the overall marketing mix and arming marketers with the additional skills they need to make it happen. It’s why I left strategy and metrics out of the four components of social media management. The strategy is a marketing strategy and the metrics should happen across everything you do. I’m trying to get at the issues of integration in our survey, and will report on our findings.
What do you think? Are we overemphasizing social media strategy at the expense of overall marketing integration? Please let me know.
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I think that social media strategy developed in a vaccuum isn't good strategy. Businesses need to recognize that social media is a complement, but not a replacement of traditional marketing. So the focus should be integrative marketing, with an eye toward developing a social media strategy that supplements other marketing, and also more focus on monitoring social media and being proactive in responses.
Interesting. As we speak, our university is developing a social media marketing MBA program and though the program's focus is on social media, the direction should be to educate on the strengths and weaknesses of social media and how they can best be applied to solve marketing challenges. Your comments here bring up an interesting point to keep in mind… social media is a very exciting part of the marketing toolbox and should be considered to solve marketing challenges but to wear blinders and look at social media as the “silver bullet” is a bit of stretch.
Chris…awesome article and I think dead on target.
Right on, Chris. I totally agree both that social media needs to be fully integrated with the rest of marketing, and that it's unlikely to fully take over in B2B. Hopefully the current separation that is often the reality reflects the relative immaturity of the discipline. On the one hand, the early evangelists tend to oversell, and often suggest that social media is the be all and end all. On the other hand, social media in many large companies is still relegated to relatively junior folks who have little say over marketing strategy as a whole, but rather are given a small corner to play in after the big decisions have already been made. I think both of these factors are diminishing as marketing leadership increasingly understands the strategic value of social media but still have core business objectives at the top of their priority list.
Excellent point that social media is making the demand for content “starkly plain.” And this content isn't the traditional “buy now!” kind of content–it's the content that builds trusts and relationships–which is what social media is about.
There is a lot of blogging and tweeting about blogging and tweeting. Thank you for discussing social media as part of a practical strategy, and not just as another bright shiny object for marketers.
Great post and completely agree. This fits in the 80/20 rule category, but probably more like 90/10 in B2B space. I just had lengthy conversation with Founder/CEO of one of my clients on this exact topic and concluded (again) that our social media/networking “strategy” can only be looked in the context of our overall go-to-market marketing strategy. I especially like this quote from above Chris:
“If you look at social media in isolation, you’re not going to see the larger strategic issues until they slap you in the face—blogs with nothing to write about; LinkedIn groups with no substantive conversation; Twitter streams that link to nothing but brochures and press releases.”
I still the problem as very basic in terms of culture, personality and habits for B2B marketers – they don't think and act like sales people. Translation: They are not good at building relationships and carrying on conversations. This is something that is especially true in B2B. This is why social media marketing has to be viewed as a component of the overall marketing strategy and program mix. If you approach the SMM program the way you do other marketing programs and expect results in a few months you will end up with the situation you describe in your quote above … any no one will be paying attention to anything you are trying to say.
Thanks again Chris. You hit the nail on the head with this one.
Henry
Hi Henry,
Excellent point about the sales mindset. I'm going to make a huge oversimplification here, but salespeople are the talkers and marketers are the writers/creatives. Marketers are going to have to takes some lessons from salespeople in engaging in social media. Thanks for the thoughtful comments!
Hi Rob,
Great comments. I think your point about new things being assigned exclusively to junior people in a forgotten corner is especially important. It's a pattern we see again and again. Let's ignore it until everyone else does it better; then we'll treat it as an important part of our strategy. There needs to be more integration from the start. Thanks!
Thanks!
Thanks, Coy!
Hi Andy,
A separate MBA program for social media marketing seems like a stretch to me. The technology piece of social media will be handled by programming specialists. Marketers will be the content specialists just like they always have been, except they will be expected to know more and more about sales and the business. Better to focus on the craft of content (e.g., English or Journalism) or the craft of programming (Computer Science) as part of an MBA rather than social media, which will probably not give anyone enough in either of those two disciplines.
Well put, Taylor. Thanks!
The focus has to be on Customer Relationship Management strategy that can and should be augmented by inclusion of Social Media channels with it's influence on Marketing. However it also includes Customer Service, Market research and Customer Feedback enabled by Social Media. Marketing people have to accept the fact that their customers can and will talk back in loud enough voice to be noticed.
Exactly. Going through that exact approach with another client right now. Read this blog post from @chriscrandell on this topic. I retweeted this am. If you don't Christine, you should. She gets this topic as it relates to alignment and collaboration between marketing and sales. Marketing must drive it, but ingratiate themselves with sales leadership and team before acting.
http://christinecrandell.com/2010/02/thinker-bl...
Hi Chris,
I am mainly active in Linkedin since 2003 (Viadeo and Xing since 2004 for not english speakers) and for about 20 years in the ICT B2B channel and I would never even think to use one of these social media for Marketing (I am pretty sure I would loose all my contacts if I tried). For the same I wouldn't even try to sell through them.
We will see, for sure, to an evolution of the current social media that might encourage marketing people to consider them in their strategy but until that moment I would be very carefull to include them in a marketing (or selling) strategy.
Hi Paolo,
I agree that the tools alone are not enough. But I do think that C-level executives are interested in high-quality news, analysis and thought leadership and that that content can be “sold” through social media. I think that C-levels who are not seeking out influencers in their industries (analysts, journalists, authors, academics) through social media are missing out. The trick is for marketers to become part of that list through content and through alliances/sponsorships with influencers that matter to target C-level executives.
Thanks, Henry. I'll check out her blog.
Chris,
On Monday in the B2Bbloggers Newsletter I wrote,
–
The first is that the overwhelming majority of marketers I am speaking with are thinking of social media marketing as something separate and distinct from the rest of their corporate marketing plans. I don't believe this is being done intentionally, it's just happening. We saw this same thing (and still do to some extent) happen when companies were first considering how to begin marketing on the internet.
While this approach may work on a small scale for a limited time, to realize the full benefits the social web has to offer your B2B marketing, your social media marketing needs to be integrated with your overall marketing plan. It needs to share the same overarching goals, share the same voice, and most importantly, share the same performance metrics. Thinking of it separately will not be giving it the attention it deserves (and the resources it needs) to truly help you realize its benefits.
—
Glad to see we are sharing the same thinking relative to social media and B2B Marketing. Look forward to the survey results.
Great points, Jeremy. Thanks!
[...] Media: It Has To Have Strategy By kafka93 Chris Koch wrote an excellent blog post, “There is No Social Media Strategy, Only Marketing Strategy,” in which he states: Social media simply makes starkly plain what we’ve known for some time but [...]
Definitely agree. We've been working towards a “teach them to fish” philosophy at our company by training individual marketing and product managers how to integrate social media into their campaigns instead of doing it for them. This sometimes involves individual coaching but also works by example. One important tool has been a “social media cookbook” that our social media manager wrote to outline everything marketers need to know to start integrating social media into their campaigns.
Great idea, Alison. We talk a lot about a social media policy for organizations. I think we need to add a cookbook to the list of recommendations. Thanks!
True. I work for a radio station and I love social media! But combining social media with traditional media gets a company a knock 'em dead marketing strategy!
Hi Leslie,
The combination also lets you get more mileage from your traditional media without much additional cost. Thanks for the comment!
[...] Chris Koch summed it up very succinctly in his blog article: There is no social media strategy, only marketing strategy: [...]
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Social media is really effective with any kind of business and website unless you know how to used it. You can also combined your marketing strategy and social media and I think it has a good result.