Marketing

How Most B2B Brands Get Facebook Wrong (And How to Get it Right)

September 24, 2014

If you look at lists of the most successful brands on Facebook, you’ll notice a trend. No, not that they’re food, beverage, or clothing companies (which is true). But more generally, that they’re consumer companies. Naturally, that can lead many B2B marketers to assume that Facebook — despite boasting more than 1 billion users — is not really the best forum for B2B marketing and customer engagement.
Social media thought leader and Facebook aficionado Mari Smith says that presumption is bogus.
“There’s a big myth out there that Facebook isn’t for B2B companies because it’s a consumer channel, but that’s absolutely misguided,”says Smith, who Forbes has named as a top 10 social media power influencer four years in a row.

“The fact of the matter is that B2B businesses are run by consumers, and those consumers are very active on Facebook. If your B2B business isn’t active on Facebook, it’s missing an enormous opportunity to interact with a very engaged, targeted audience.”

— Mari Smith, author of The New Relationship Marketing

Where Most B2B Brands Go Wrong with Facebook Marketing

Granted, Smith acknowledges that B2B brands can’t (and shouldn’t) deploy the same marketing approach on Facebook that they do on other marketing channels. After all, Facebook users tend to be most active in their personal time — like when they’re at home, unwinding from the day, and looking to engage in a very organic, sales-free environment.
“Facebook is not a place where you can just blast company updates or content, and hope people engage,”explains Smith, who has written two books on Facebook marketing. “It’s a two-way engagement forum. You have to be proactive about facilitating real-time conversations with a very value-focused, highly relevant approach. Facebook is very much a top-of-the-funnel channel. But if you do it right, it can ultimately improve bottom-of-the-funnel conversion.”
Smith says she sees B2B brands make two other key mistakes that limit their engagement on Facebook:

  • They fail to adapt to algorithm changes: For a time, images were Facebook gold. They generated high engagement, boosted News Feed ranking, and allowed brands to showcase their personality. But in January 2014, Facebook changed its ranking algorithm to promote link sharing. And in August, it implemented new changes to crackdown on click baiting. Smith says failing to adapt to those changes greatly limits engagement and could, ultimately, hurt brand reputation.
  • They use Facebook solely for content distribution: While its not a bad idea to share content on Facebook (see the point above about link sharing), Smith says Facebook should be viewed as a platform for idea sharing, casual conversation, and very top-of-funnel calls-to-action. If you use it simply as a bullhorn for content promotion on the other hand, Smith warns that you’ll be disappointed by the results.

How to Avoid Those Mistakes

To avoid wasting time and resources on ineffective Facebook marketing, Smith says B2B companies should strive to accomplish a very simple goal that can be broken down into five parts:

  • Be real
  • Be personal
  • Be responsive
  • Be consistent
  • Focus first on building social equity

Of course, achieving success and measurable results also requires a significant commitment, including the potential addition of dedicated staff.
“The bottom line is that Facebook is a channel for long-term brand building, nurturing, and customer engagement,”Smith says. “You have to invest some time into it and you have to be prepared to respond to comments, likes, and shares in real-time. If you don’t make that investment, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the channel fails to deliver meaningful returns.”

The Death of Organic Reach (and an Argument for Creating a Facebook Budget)

One aspect of Facebook that has changed dramatically over the last year is the capability of B2B brands to amass a big audience and following with a nominal budget.
Unfortunately, generating significant organic reach today — a post’s ability to be seen without any paid promotion or help from Facebook’s algorithm — isn’t as simple as it used to be. As Forbes laid out in a post in June, organic reach with brand pages was expected to be less than two percent by the end of 2014. Eventually, that number may drop to zero. What does that mean for B2B companies that previously relied on Facebook as an inexpensive way to reach and engage a large audience? According to Smith, achieving the same results will now require companies to pay-to-play.
While some might scoff at that, Smith says it’s not such a ridiculous notion. After all, if your business wants to appear on the first page of a Google search for a hotly contested keyword, it’s unlikely that you would just write a blog post, publish it, and hope for the best. Instead, you’d invest a significant amount of time (and money) into SEO, inbound marketing, and AdWords.

“If you stand back and take a 30,000-foot view of things, investing a nominal budget in Facebook actually makes a lot of sense. Competition is lower and your dollars go farther. And you don’t need to spend money to promote every post in order to get the amplification and reach you’re hoping for.”


Importantly, Smith warns against relying on Facebook’s “boost”button too heavily. While that advertising amplification product allows you to broadcast your posts to a larger audience, Smith says that’s not really the name of the game in B2B Facebook marketing.
“If you’re Coca-Cola, then your target audience is much bigger, wider, and more diverse than if you’re a B2B software company,”Smith says. “You shouldn’t care about bigger — you should care about more targeted. Facebook Ads has a power editor tool that allows you to more granularly target a specific audience or placement. If you use it properly and with the right types of content or campaigns, the ROI on that relatively small investment can be huge.”
Image by Scott Beale
 
 

CEO & Founder

<strong>Mari Smith</strong>is the CEO & founder of <a href="http://marismith.com">Mari Smith</a>. She is a social media marketing speaker and consultant.