Many business-to-business (B2B) firms are under the false belief that social media is just for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. In recent years, social media has transcended from a consumer engagement platform to an indispensable tool for B2B enterprises seeking to drive tangible business outcomes. Not convinced yet? Here’s a detailed look at why B2B companies should invest in social media marketing.
Reasons Why B2B Businesses Should Invest in Social Media Marketing
1. Expands Your Business’ Reach
Social media has transformed the way businesses interact with their clients, and it is not just for B2C companies! B2B businesses can also leverage social media platforms to expand their reach, connect with potential clients, and foster valuable relationships. Billions of people use social media.
Becoming visible on social media can help you reach audiences that you never engaged with in the past. By targeting specific audiences that represent your ideal customer, you can increase your business’s visibility and gather customer feedback.
Paid social media campaigns allow you to target based on industry, job title, location, and more so that your business reaches the right people. The increased brand awareness from social media marketing provides an excellent opportunity to create a positive brand image, build business relationships, and establish authority in your industry.
2. Boosts Website Traffic
Social media is an indispensable tool that can significantly contribute to the growth and success of your business by sending traffic to your website. When your business uses social media, you expand your business’s online presence and maintain your competitive edge.
By actively promoting your website’s content, products, and services across various social media channels, you effectively drive traffic toward your website, thereby increasing the likelihood of visitor engagement and conversion, as well as providing an opportunity to re-engage them through paid advertising.
3. Generates Qualified Leads
Considering that the B2B market has a longer sales funnel, a compelling social media strategy is incredibly important for keeping customers engaged at every stage of their buying journey.
Sharing relevant and engaging content can help attract clients and start the customer journey. Once they are in the consideration stage, offering templates, e-books, webinars, free trials, exclusive discounts, and more can help businesses obtain the contact information of potential business leads. This starts the process of building a strong professional relationship.
As customer communication and engagement continues on social media, your business can convert interested clients into qualified leads. As a result, social media offers an alternative venue for generating business leads.
4. Demonstrates Your Expertise as a Thought Leader
Leveraging social media platforms strategically can help your B2B company highlight its industry knowledge, experience, and expertise. By sharing opinions, updates, news articles, and analyses related to industry trends, companies can demonstrate their understanding of the market landscape and emerging opportunities.
This type of content can position your business as a forward-thinking organization that is engaged in the industry. When other businesses see this, they will learn to trust your organization since you are a reliable source of information and solutions. This credibility can significantly influence potential clients’ perceptions and decisions when considering partnerships or new services.
5. Improves E-E-A-T
y investing in social media marketing, your overall digital marketing efforts will improve. While social media marketing does not improve search engine optimization (SEO) outcomes directly, it does improve the factors that help your website be more visible online.
Google’s Search Rater Guidelines state that first-hand experience shared through social media posts results in a high level of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). In other words, social media profiles provide social proof that your business’ employees are authoritative industry figures or experts. Customer reviews and posts about your business also provide social proof. This is becoming increasingly important as Google is getting better at evaluating the quality of your website content can contribute to the online success of your business.
If your B2B organization is ready to take on the social media world, get in touch with the experts at Ontario SEO today.
