As we were trying to put together some interesting facts about social media for B2B marketers, we discovered this interesting video. Then, we decided why would we tell you something, when we can show you instead. So, enjoy it.

B2B companies are ahead of their B2C rivals when it comes to social media adoption

• 81% of B2B companies maintain company-related accounts or profiles on social media sites versus 67% of B2C
• 75% of B2Bers participate in microblogging (eg. Twitter) versus 49% of B2Cers

Source: Business.com – 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007404)

And the FTSE 100 are just plain running scared of Twitter

• Just 16 of the FTSE 100 companies are using Twitter, despite the fact that 20% of Tweets contain a reference to a product or brand

Source: Virgin Media Business (http://ow.ly/1gDTf)

But CIOs could well be the biggest blocker to social media adoption

• 54% of CIOs prohibit use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work

Source: Robert Half Technology (http://rht.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=131&item=790)

Use of social media by B2B companies is validated by B2B buyer perspectives

• 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a presence in social media
• 85% believe companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them

Source: Cone Inc – Social Media in business (http://ow.ly/1dLqJ)

And that’s because the B2B buying process is fundamentally changing

• 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you

Source: DemandGen Report

• Over 70% of purchases are restricted to established vendors or are heavily dependent on Word of Mouth recommendations

Source: Buyersphere ebook, Enquiro (http://ow.ly/YbQm)

• More than 8 out of 10 IT decision-makers said word of mouth recommendations are the most important source when making buying decisions

Source: Forrester Research, How to take B2B relationships from Indifferent to Engaged: Jan 2009

• 59% of B2B buyers engaged with peers who addressed their challenge, 48% followed industry conversations on the topic and 37% posted questions on social networking sites looking for suggestions

Source: Genius (http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/2767/a-glimpse-inside-the-mind-of-the-new-b2b-buyer.html)

Yet there are differing opinions as to where search comes into play in the buy cycle

• 7 out of 10 buyers say that they start their buying process at vendor sites, not Google

Source: DemandGen Report (http://ow.ly/1d82N)

Versus

• 93% of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process

Source: Marketo (http://bit.ly/9O6pix)

If you think C-level executives aren’t active online, you’re sorely mistaken

• The Internet is the C-Suites top information resource (74% of C-Level executives say it’s very valuable)
• 53% of C-level executives said they prefer to locate information themselves
• The C-suite first turns to mainstream search engines (63%) to locate information
• 6 out of 10 C-Suite executives conduct more than six searches a day
• Executives in IT are the most prevalent users of the Internet for information gathering

Source: Forbes Insight – The Rise of the Digital C-Suite (http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html)

Client marketers are warming to the idea of social media, but many are still to act

• While 92% of client marketers agree that it would be unwise to ignore social media, 63% do not have a social media strategy

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

The relationship between Marketing and Sales in B2B organisations still remains fractious

• Sales generate 53% of their own leads and marketing contributes just 24%

Source: 2009 CSO Report (http://bit.ly/7EbaHS)

• 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales

Source: The New Rules of Sales Enablement (http://tiny.cc/jXRxX)

• 49% of B2B marketers confess to not measuring ROI

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

And if you still don’t get the whole social media thing, it’s worth bearing in mind…

• 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research and 96% turn to corporate websites
• 56% said social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories

* Note: We have used and abused the above information, as the author insisted. A special thanks for the folks at Earnest Agency.

What I have heard the most from my fellow marketers is the statement “use the social media or be left out of something big.” I am always cynical about this statement, especially in the B2B environment. If you are operating in a B2B environment, you have probably noticed that everyone is caught up in this new trend. Before you dive into the social media, and believe it will fix all your problems, ask yourself the following questions:

1.  Who are your clients / customers?
Many of our clients are operating in a very niche market, with only one or two customers. Why waste resources and time on the cyber space, if you can have an old fashioned face to face communication with them, especially when the client prefers it this way.

2. Do you have resources for it?
Social media will help you to generate leads, but only if you do it properly. If you are not conveying the right message to your customers, the chances are you are conveying the WRONG message. Frankly, if you are conveying the wrong message, you are better off doing nothing at all. What does it take to do it properly? Marketing specialists on social media, time, and money. Many people think social media is cheap. Don’t get me wrong, it is. Social media a free platform for businesses, but marketing specialists and their time will cost you money, just like any other marketing campaign.

3. What is your short-term business objective?
Will social media help you drive sales? It will. But if you want it to happen tomorrow, forget about it. Social media is a very cost-effective channel for you to reach prospective clients; it is not a salesman however. Even if you are using the social media properly, it will take some time before it generates positive ROIs. Why? Because “creating transactional opportunities on the web takes trust, but trust takes time to establish” (Chris Brogran, Co-author of Trust Agent Says). If you are thinking of using it to drive short-term sales, there are better methods to leverage your efforts, such as direct mail, price incentives and enhanced sales support. 

I am not suggesting that social media is not good for B2B, instead I am suggesting that your reason to use social media shouldn’t be “because everyone else is doing it!”

If you find your situation is not as outlined above, or you believe you have a very unique experience with social media in the B2B world, let us know.

By definition psychographics is not an insane graphic artist as depicted in the accompanying photo but is “The use of demographics to study and measure attitudes, values, lifestyles, and opinions for marketing purposes.”  To further explain, “even though you may have determined your demographic group, people within that group still have very different perceptions about the benefits or value of your product and will be motivated for different reasons. These differences are known as psychographics. To further target your efforts, you’ve got to determine not only who buys (or will buy) your product, but what makes them want to buy it.”(pulled from howstuffworks.com)

Psychographics  is a term used widely in the consumer research community but I admit it has only just recently come to my attention. My surface understanding of the approach did get me thinking about the B2B sales process and how we can fine tune it based on this further customer insight.

I had a chap call on me for over a year and based on his tenacity, his professional appearance and confidence in his service I finally gave him an audience. After 20 minutes into his pitch and not asking me a single question he says” so Lee, what do you think so far?”, I responded, “it sounds a bit canned”, without missing a beat  he returned back to the safety of his well rehearsed presentation and at the end was very surprised that he didn’t win the business.

The best sales people I’ve met do a great job of finding out “what’s on our sheet” first and then adapt their pitch to assess and deliver what’s important to us. I believe everyone is guilty of falling into a canned pitch at times, one that has got us business in the past so we just keep on using it. The problem is that a decision maker’s time today is more precious than ever and getting appointments are increasingly difficult…we can’t afford to misfire!

Approaches I agree on:

1. Understand what’s important to your potential customer first. I wasted a lot of valuable time a few months ago because I didn’t get this right. For 45 minutes we pitched our award winning creative, our search engine marketing skills, and our qualified tight knit team.  What was the customer really interested in? They were concerned about automated processes, quality control, work back schedules and ability to implement low cost web templates. Creative wasn’t a big priority … lesson learned.
2. Have an engaging elevator speech. If you go to each of your sales reps individually and pose the question “You’ve got 5 seconds to give me a concise snapshot of why a customer should use our services. What would you say?” I find that most companies I’ve worked with can encapsulate their unique benefits to the client in such a manner but it usually takes a couple of hours to discover what their true differentiators are. Some good examples of concise marketing statements/elevator speeches.
3. Have answers in advance for any possible push backs. I have printers call me all the time and though I’m happy with the suppliers we have established relationships with, I am open to such calls. After their brief introduction I ask questions like this, “Are you a trade printer or commercial printer? What is your maximum press sheet size? Do you have in-house bindery services? I get frequent calls like this and typically no one can answer these fairly basic questions.
4. Be prepared to handle price objections. How does a convenience store get away with charging a buck more on a 2-3 dollar item without a single complaint? We accept that convenience has a price tag. What tangible value are we adding? If we are in a position where we’re in a price war on a daily basis either we aren’t conveying our added value properly or we don’t have one. Both scenarios need addressing.

If our current sales approach is akin to the one trick pony, it needs to be a damn good trick to be a sustainable way to earn us future business. The basics of psychographics are that every purchaser of your services has different needs that require identifying and satisfying. Some are willing to take higher risks while others want to stay with the safety of known brands. The purchaser of our services may value relationships and want a lot of personal contact or may value “less is better”. We have a new account that prefers to communicate through text messaging, some respond to phone calls only, others only return e-mails and some still like when you drop by occasionally and just shoot the breeze.

The bottom line is we all need to find ways to become more customer-centric. Get inside their head by asking the right questions and making proper assessments of what’s important to them. If we find ourselves singing the same tune regardless of the audience, we should take the lead from the great jazz soloists. The best ones have part of their solo memorized and the balance is improvised. The more customized and exciting the improvisation is the more likely the performance will be appreciated and remembered.