Social networking clearly works for B2C (Business to Consumer). Rumours are now rife that Google will be developing "GoogleMe" as a competitor to FaceBook. But what about B2B (Business to Business)?
All marketing (whether B2C or B2B) targets real people. Real people are social. They enjoy conversations and value authentic relationships. There is therefore no inherent reason why social networking shouldn't work for B2B, provided there is careful attention to the specific considerations.
Graham Jones, the Internet Psychologist, warns about how to use social networking effectively in "Do not use Twitter for business" - well that depends how you define business. The article is especially relevant to B2B 1-2-few rather than B2C 1-2-many.
So who is making social networking work for B2B?
Professionals marketing themselves or their companies certainly find LinkedIn, Plaxo and similar systems useful. Executives from CEOs downwards can leverage their existing contacts using a variety of techniques that I'll put aside for another occasion.
Today let's look at account management and finding new people for new business? Certainly documented case studies for B2B to “prove” it works are extremely thin on the ground. Yet apparently roughly one-third of all commercial searches on Google are B2B in nature, more than 50 percent of Google’s target advertisers are B2B, and almost 38 percent of Yahoo’s target advertisers are B2B.
So what are the major major B2B brands doing in the UK? There are virtually no documented case studies, so what are key brand names doing?:
- Staples the stationers, a US Nasdaq-quoted group, have an email newsletter in the UK and that's about it. They do have a Facebook page in the US, but not in the UK.
- Ryman does likewise with an email newsletter
- British Airways, which sells to both businesses and consumers, often through intermediary agency businesses, have used Facebook. But the website only promotes their use of Twitter. They are also using YouTube for PR videos
- Avaya, the telecoms and data networking company , which uses a mixture of techniques. Their Facebook "wall" is the core to provide "Powerful, Authentic, Personal Interaction", linked to videos on YouTube plus other resources. Oddly the website only refers to their blog and Twitter
- Siemens, another technology company, has no indication of social media on its website, but have dipped their toe into the water with 3-1-2-1 to market to US government
- Kodak makes sure they are monitoring what people are saying about them on social media, apparently plus proactive techniques - though these are not obvious from the website
- DuPont the chemical and materials company is using "viral video" - taking the more stunning video clips from product tests to produce videos that people want to watch and share woith friends. But where are they on the company's website?
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Thanks for the blog mention Chris; very kind of you. B2C companies do "get" social networking more quickly than B2B firms, I agree. However, even amongst B2C I'd estimate that less than 5% of firms are using social media in any meaningful way. Although there are some B2C examples of success, they are few and far between. In the B2B arena there are success stories, but like B2C they also represent a tiny proportion of the marketplace, which is why they are difficult to find. I know of training companies that get almost all their work via LinkedIn, for instance, plus a business coach who get the bulk of his income via Twitter nowadays. The problem is, in the B2B arena the success stories are from "unknowns" - sole traders, small firms, partnerships that no-one has heard of. That then leads to "Ah, that's OK for them" kind of reactions. In the B2C arena they are well known names, like Starbucks or Dell, which then makes people in the B2B arena say "Ah, that's OK for them"....! None of the main B2B household names are engaging with social media. Why? Because they realise it will show them up against the sole traders etc. Fear is a significant factor here.
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