31 Jul Creative Ways to Run B2B Social Campaigns

Consumer brands have it easy, using specific campaigns to collect likes, create conversation, and distribute coupons. Meanwhile, B2B marketers have more sophisticated needs and no technology to help deliver.

For B2B social strategies, having people follow you is not enough. Lucky, there are finally new approaches available to B2B marketers to creatively run their social campaigns with success.

The first step to social success in the B2B environment is mindset. You must get past the B2C way of thinking from single-shot campaigns to ongoing engagements.

It’s not as simple as offering a coupon or discount. You need to continue the conversation in order to nurture your leads, which can’t happen in the span of a single 90-day campaign. Instead, strategize a series of nested engagements to give the prospect time to warm to your solution and gives you time to leverage all that user data you’re collecting.

You also shouldn’t plan to be on a single network like Facebook or Twitter. Your prospects are social everywhere on the Web, and your social campaigns must behave in the same way. Yes, this includes mobile. You must realize that people are interacting in all ways on their smartphones – and you need to include it in your campaign, and do it well to boot.

Poor mobile experiences cause drop-off no matter what, but business prospects will be even more unforgiving if your campaign isn’t mobile-friendly.

How about giveaways and incentives?

Coupon giveaways and product deals don’t work as well in B2B campaigns, as the experience is less immediate. Since buying comes much later in B2B sales cycles, the giveaway should be small chunks of relevant information. This way you are establishing yourself as an expert and leader, so when they are ready to make a decision they immediately know who to turn to.

Are you using these types of steps in your business to foster new business leads with social media? Share your experience in the comments below!