Top 3 Social Media Marketing Essentials for MSPs and VARs

Social media is often considered the domain of B2C marketing dominated by trendy, viral content.

That’s far from the truth. Social media is an essential component of the B2B marketing mix because it allows you to effectively target the many stakeholders involved in the decision-making process during the early stages of their customer lifecycle.

It’s most effective in raising brand awareness, strengthening expert positioning, and deepening customer relationships.

Key Components of a Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy

If you have been overwhelmed by all the new tools and tactics that seem to be popping up on a daily basis, here’s the good news:

By identifying a few key foundational elements, setting goals that match your business objectives, and defining the right KPIs to measure progress, you’ll be able to effectively implement a social media marketing strategy.

Here are the key areas to focus on:

Audience Development

Simply put, developing an audience means getting your ideal customers to follow you on social media and engage with your posts.

Sharing high-quality, relevant, and authoritative content is the best way to build an audience.

Since there are multiple stakeholders with different roles in the B2B decision-making process, you need to target them individually so you can deliver the most relevant content.

You can use the audience segmentation features available on the various social media platforms to target your messaging.

Don’t forget to monitor mentions and trending topics so you can jump into the conversations to build relationships and increase your audience’s engagement with your brand.

Brand Awareness

Getting your prospects to become aware of your brand early on in their research and decision-making process gives you the opportunities to build trust and relationships that will increase conversion.

The content you post on social media is an extension of your company’s overall messaging. It should deliver a consistent user experience when the audience moves from social media to engage your brand on other platforms, such as website.

To develop brand awareness on social media, you need to establish a brand personality and use a consistent voice in your posts or interactions.

While you should be communicating your brand story, unique selling proposition and services, don’t forget to balance them out by sharing useful information that positions you as a helpful ally to your audience.

Don’t forget that social media is social! Develop a two-way conversation with your audience by asking questions and answering queries in a timely manner.

You can also use paid advertising to get your content in front of a specific audience segment and build a following.

Lead Generation

As social media is getting more crowded, your posts are seen less frequently by your fans and followers. In fact, the decline in organic reach is a common pain point among marketers and brands.

One of the best ways to leverage social media to grow your business is to use it to promote a high-value content offer that requires a prospects to provide their contact information for access.

This will help you drive traffic to your website and capture the contact information of high-quality prospects.

For most B2B  who aim to develop relationships with multiple stakeholders involved in the purchasing process, it’s often helpful to create different content offers, each targeting a specific buyer persona.

Not only can you increase your conversion rate but you’ll also be able to better segment your list for more effective targeting in the future.

Here are just a few ways to effectively generate leads using social media:

• Promote your content offer to a highly targeted audience using Facebook ads or LinkedIn sponsored posts.
• Include the landing page URL of your content offer on all social media profiles.
• Create and promote a contest or giveaway. You can add a viral component by rewarding those who share the contest on social media with additional entries.

After you have collected your followers’ contact information, you can continue the conversation and nurture these leads through channels such as email marketing or 1:1 sales conversations.

You can also use your subscriber lists to create a custom audience so you can serve highly targeted paid ads or sponsored posts to continue the conversation and progress your prospects further down the sales funnel.

Social Media – an Integral Part Of Your Customer Experience

Your social media presence gives you an opportunity to foster relationships with your prospects and customers by providing valuable content and engaging them in conversations.

It is an integral part of your customer experience and a great opportunity to leverage the power of personalized marketing, so make sure you take it into account when designing your digital marketing strategy.