The old notion that social media marketing isn’t worthwhile for B2B companies is officially dead. But many want to improve on the organic engagement social platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter provide them and venture into paid social advertising. In fact, Salesforce’s 2015 State of Marketing report showed that 70% of B2B companies are looking to increase their spend on social media advertising in the coming year.
So B2B companies: if you’re looking to amplify your content and drive results through paid social media advertising, check out our three tips below.
Tip #1: Know the Audience Using the Social Platform You’re Advertising Across
Many B2B companies cite LinkedIn as their social site of choice for paid media as it’s comprised of business professionals, but others could be equally valuable for your business. Knowing the audience using the social platform you’re advertising across can also help you better cater your ads to them and improve engagement. Check out our previous blog post on making the most of your paid social media campaigns, where we talk about the different audiences using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Tip #2: Use Targeting Features to Reach Quality Prospects
Each social advertising platform has unique targeting features that you can use to get your content in front of the most valuable prospects for your business. LinkedIn, for example allows you to target users for content distribution based on their job title, company, or industry, while Facebook allows you to target by behaviors. Understand who your potential customers are on the social advertising platform you’re using and then use ad targeting features to help them find you.
Tip #3: Understand the Metrics to Track Based On Your Campaign Objective
B2B companies using paid social media generally have the objective of improving either brand awareness or lead generation. Below, we’ve listed two important metrics to track for each.
Brand awareness: B2B businesses seeking increased brand awareness from their paid social media campaigns should monitor metrics that measure the extent of the impression their brand is making online, such as website traffic and amount of inbound links.
Lead generation: B2B businesses looking to increase lead generation should track metrics that show whether their campaign is truly delivering financial returns, such as conversion rate and CTR.
We encourage B2B companies to take advantage of paid social media to increase audience awareness and engagement and to extend the reach of their content. And if your business needs help creating an effective paid advertising strategy, contact us at SevenAtoms.
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