Is your investment in social media not paying the returns you expected? Are you getting no leads from all your effort? There are no excuses for not delivering measurable results from your investment in social media marketing. Then why are so many companies having troubles generating leads from social media? The reason has nothing to do with the complexity of the sale; it is more that B-2-B marketers need to focus less on building community and more on generating leads and sales. Number of Facebook friends is not revenue, your Twitter Klout is not revenue, the number of blog subscribers you have is not revenue, salesis revenue, and anything else is just an excuse for not achieving your goal.
It's a Battle for Creditability
The fact is, we are nearly five years into the "social media revolution" and for most B2B companies, the results have been very inadequate for effort spent. According to Fournaise Groups 2011 Global Marketing Effectiveness Program, "73% of CEOs think Marketers lack business credibility and are not the business growth generators they should be".
With the global economy and financial markets on the brink of collapse, CEOs and CFOs are expecting measureable results from their investment in marketing and social media. Until Marketers start speaking the profit and loss language of their CEOs, and start tracking the business effectiveness of all their strategies and campaigns to prove they generate incremental revenue, they will continue to lack credibility in the eyes of their CEOs - will continue to be seen more as a cost centre than an asset.
Front and center in this credibility challenge is the investment in social media. Many CEOs feel that their marketing departments focus too much on the latest trends and not on generating revenue. While many marketers catch up on the possibilities that these new frontiers offer, they fail to demonstrate how these trends will help them generate more business for their companies.
Need to Get Back to Selling
There is a way out, and it's simple. B2B companies and their marketing teams need to get back to the business of selling. There are two very powerful and time-tested truths about selling:
- The best way to ensure that you achieve your desired sales results is to focus on helping your customers achieve their desired business results.
- Sales & marketing professionals and their companies must plan, measure, and manage their activity and behaviour in order to maximize their sales results.
You need to become extremely customer-focused. Don't focus on building community or engagement - leave that to your B2C counterparts - but rather on a better understanding of your customers' businesses, their problems and how the products and services you sell can help them to achieve the results they want to achieve. In short, focus on helping your customers buy.
The reason most businesses aren't achieving results with their social media campaigns is because they are setting the wrong goals. Instead of focusing on how to generate revenue, they are getting sidetracked and focusing on vanity metrics like "engagement", "likes" and "followers". The rush to get involved in social media results in many companies losing focus on sales and more on re-tweets, friends and being liked. It's like a teenager in high school. Instead of focusing on what is important in life, they give into peer pressure, cut class and start experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
It's Time to Regain Focus on What's Important
Some B2B companies are actually using social media to evolve their sales process. These companies are focusing on gaining insights on their customers' purchase intent. They are using mediums like Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs to provide awareness around the problems their customers face. When their prospects understand their problems more clearly, they're more equipped and willing to be guided toward the answers they need and ultimately your products or services.
Your social media and all lead generation efforts should be designed to drive behaviour. But not just any behaviour, it needs to be designed to drive your prospects to the next step in their buying process. For example, every blog, tweet or video is pre-designed to prompt your prospects to give insight on their problems, desires or where they are at in their buying process, as well as help them to take the next step. With these insights and clearly defined goals, you can then use social media to help drive your lead generation initiatives.
It's not only about being the thought leaders around your solution but more about being thought provokers around your prospects' problems. The truth is that your prospects need to be given a reason to move toward a purchase, because we all know that with no need there is no sale. That is what a successful social media campaign zooms in on. Being the thought leader is not the answer after all; successful companies know that it's more important to be the thought provoker. Your social media strategy needs to be designed to sell and focus on translating prospects' needs into problems they need to solve and then nurture them into a customer. It's when you flip this switch that you will earn the respect of your CEO and deliver revenue, not just more B.S. that most of your competitors are.
Want to learn more about how to build a lead generation engine that cuts out the BS and drives revenue? Check out this free guide - The Executives' Guide to Building a Lead Generation Engine.
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