I dream of working on the B2C side of marketing some day. I would love to engage with fans who are emotionally invested in a brand and act as ambassadors and evangelists.
A huge portion of the social media strategy I studied during my training was based on B2C marketing, which is thought to be more successful and more profitable than B2C social media marketing. For this reason, many businesses and marketers shy away from B2B social media.
I approach B2B marketing much the same way I approach B2C marketing – provide worthwhile, useful content to people who are interested in the same products, services, lifestyle, etc. as our target audience.
B2B marketing is actually pretty neat. I rarely have irate clients posting hateful messages on our social media platforms and there is a lot less engagement with our fan base in general making it much easier to manage the customer service part of social media marketing. And the engagement I do see is very positive and insightful since I am posting thought provoking industry information and not photos of puppies and kittens.
I approach B2B marketing much the same way I approach B2C marketing – provide worthwhile, useful content to people who are interested in the same products, services, lifestyle, etc. as our target audience.The major difference from B2C marketing, is that I see less impact when I offer discounts and purchase incentives. I’m not saying those things are impossible, I just have to reach out to business owners and clients to make those offers worthwhile and not all of my fans business owners let alone clients.