In today’s B2B marketing environment, great achievements can only come as an effect of great targeting. Target your intention and attention toward the proper prospects, and you shall benefit from suitable results. You see, unlike in B2C marketing, you can’t sell your professional products/services to people who have a random buying behavior.
For example, if you’re selling chocolate online as a B2C store, your audience will be comprised of all sorts of nationalities, professions, and ages. In this case, the professional interests really don’t matter, so extensive targeting is not often required because a purchase can often come as a result of randomness.
However, as Mark Joseph, Marketing Manager at aussiewritings.com, remarks, “In the B2B world, promoting your company on social media without properly considering who your target audience is will make your pursuit of success impossible.”
There are many mistakes that B2B organizations commit when promoting their products and services on social channels. These mistakes may seem small at first, but they can produce a lot of “unpleasant” side-effects such as the loss of reputation, customers, and opportunities.
In today’s post, we’ll discuss the mistakes that most B2B companies do while defining their social media target audience. Pay attention and never repeat these mistakes again!
B2B Social Media Marketing – Targeting Mistakes
Your social media marketing success is heavily influenced by the way you target your prospects and clients. Well, there are several mistakes you can commit while targeting your B2B audience:
1. You Haven’t Done Enough to Understand Your Audience
How much effort did you put into building your target persona? B2B targeting is so different from the B2C one. Finding the proper clients that are willing to appeal to your services takes double time and effort. That’s why you should never rush and spend money without fully understanding who you’ll be dealing with.
Ideally, you should keep gathering information about your prospects even after they bought something from you. This way, you can improve your targeting efforts in the future.
2. You’re Going after Quantity Instead of Quality
Instead of collecting dozens of emails fromrandom potential buyers, you should narrow your search, make it more precise and focused, and seek only individuals who may be truly interested. I’m talking about the quality over quantity model. Don’t sacrifice precision for broad reach.
Try to capture the attention of super-targeted individuals, and not of average, random, potential buyers.
3. You’re Only Counting on Executives
If your B2B target audience is comprised of executives and high-ranks only, you’re doing it wrong. According to Google, in today’s business environment, only 64% of executives are responsible for the final sign-offs, while 24% of the non-C-suit professionals are responsible for the rest. Are you forgetting about the rest?
4. You Didn’t Know (or Forgot) that Millennials Are Your Best Audience
A lot of millennials happen to be B2B researchers, which means that many of them have the power to make buying decisions. You got to understand and appreciate the differences between millennial professionals and the other generations, as they’re pretty huge. Focus to capture their attention by appealing to their motives, goals, and personalities.
5. You Ignore the Power of Surveys
How often do you survey your clients and prospects? Do you even do it? You know, there’s a huge power that lies behind your customers’ feedback, suggestions, and critiques. The more you understand how your products and services affect your clients the better you’ll craft your next B2B social strategy, the better you’ll pitch, and the more you’ll succeed.
Other Important B2B Social Marketing Mistakes
Besides the audience selection and targeting, there are several other mistakes you might commit while promoting your content and offers. Pay attention and stay away from these practices.
1. You’re Spamming Your Followers by Posting Too Much
You should post consistently and regularly. However, you shouldn’t cross the line by posting too much. Too much posting is considered spam, and spamming will bring a lot of negative consequences that your brand – not you! –will have to suffer. Here are some suggestions on how to post on different social channels:
- Facebook – don’t post more than three to four posts/day
- LinkedIn – one relevant post per day is enough
- Twitter – no more than three times per day
- Google+ – three to four posts per day
- Instagram – one to two posts per day
- Pinterest – more than 5 posts a day
2. You’re Distributing Poor Content with an Inconsistent Message
Posting is one thing, and your content’s quality is another. For your company to be remarked, you got to deliver value through professional content. Besides writing without grammar and spelling mistakes, you need to keep your brand’s and content’s message aligned. Don’t say something on Facebook and something else on your site.
3. Your Business Profile is Not Optimized
Optimize your business profile as well as you can, so you can leave a great first impression whenever you make contact with other professionals. Ensure that your picture is professional, clear, and powerful. You could smile, laugh, or show your “confident look”. Post content consistently to show that you are active, and never publish poor content.
Takeaways
Now that you acknowledge the mistakes behind social media B2B audience targeting, you should be ready to start fixing your strategies. Take your time, collect direct and indirect feedback, go for precise instead of broad, and post valuable content on a consistent basis!
Written by Olivia Ryan
