Marketers are failing to pay attention to social media best practice according to B2B Marketing’s annual Social Media Benchmarking Report. Jessica McGreal reveals what marketers must do to get social right
In 2014 B2B Marketing gave marketers an ‘F’ for social media (equivalent to a big fat fail) after our annual Social Media Benchmarking Report revealed B2B organisations weren’t planning social activity and consequently were unable to prove returns. Unfortunately, this year the same research project shows that not much has changed. It appears marketers, while acknowledging the importance of social within the marketing mix, are stuck in a social media rut.
Similar to last year, half of the 105 B2B marketers surveyed said social media is an important part of their marketing – 16 per cent admitting it’s ‘critical’ and 40 per cent ‘important’. Yet, despite over half claiming social is important, the majority of output remains ad-hoc. Almost three in five marketers (56 per cent) do not have a social media strategy – even worse than last year when 44 per cent owned up to relying on unplanned activity. There’s a clear disparity in what marketers are saying and the day-to-day reality.
Time and time again this inconsistency appears in the 2015 study. It’s evident B2B marketers know their stuff. They realise the value of social media, what’s working, what’s not and how their brand should use these platforms. The problem lies in the fact professionals don’t seem to be putting this useful knowledge into practice.
Platform perfection
Let’s start with platforms. This year Twitter overtook LinkedIn as the most actively used social platform. Seventy-six per cent of B2B marketers said they updated their brand’s Twitter profile often; followed closely by LinkedIn (updated regularly by 71 per cent). Yet, while marketers are focusing their energies on typing 140-character tweets, just 24 per cent believe Twitter is the most effective platform for achieving their marketing goals. LinkedIn was deemed the most effective (selected by 58 per cent of respondents).
B2B marketers recognise LinkedIn is twice as effective as Twitter, yet still choose to spend more time and resources on the less beneficial platform. The fast paced nature of Twitter and breaking news element could perhaps be one reason behind these findings. To flourish on the platform, organisations need to employ an individual to tweet, interact with followers and monitor mentions – during work hours at the very least. Yet, with only 24 per cent seeing returns, shouldn’t marketers focus their attention elsewhere?
Making content count
Visual content triumphs on social media – it’s attention grabbing, easy to consume and, therefore, shareable. The report reflects this, with the top three most effective content types being visual. Infographics were named the most successful content, with 67 per cent of respondents describing them as ‘very effective’ and a further 31 per cent saying they were ‘somewhat effective’. This was followed by videos (66 per cent of respondents said these were ‘very effective’) and images (57 per cent).
At the other end of the scale were links to longer content, selected by only 31 per cent of marketers as ‘very effective’, headlines (chosen by 23 per cent), and, lastly, invitations (20 per cent).
The results confirm visual content is a definite winner on social, whereas written copy tends to underperform. In spite of this, the majority of B2B brands favour written content when posting on their social media channels. Links to longer content are the most widely used format, with 85 per cent of respondents posting these updates even though the majority of respondents found them ineffective. On the other hand, infographics (the most effective format) appear seventh in the most widely used content league table (just 52 per cent of brands use infographics).
An explanation as to the popularity of written (rather than visual) content – despite its ineffectiveness – may be related to time and budget restraints. Many believe creating professional infographics, high-end videos or bespoke images require huge levels of investment. Yet, in reality this is no longer the case. For instance, instead of blowing the entire quarterly budget on a three-minute YouTube video that garners only a hundred views, experiment with Vine or Instagram for less. These short clips can then be pulled through and promoted on other social platforms, like Facebook and Twitter where your brand is likely to have a larger following. Both these platforms now autoplay videos in users’ home feeds (to different extents), which is great news for businesses as it makes their clips more likely to be noticed.
Additionally, Graham Forsyth, marketing manager EMEA and APAC at Spredfast, puts forward another argument to explain these results. He says: “Infographics, while an important content type, should be used strategically. A single, well crafted, infographic can generate multiple blog posts, or longer forms of content, and maybe inspire other forms of visual and written content.
“Infographics should be part of the social mix of generated content rather than an asset used in isolation. Therefore, it’s understandable that infographics can be measured as the most effective content type, but doesn’t necessarily need to be the most widely produced as they in turn help generate other forms of content.”
Ignoring engagement
Perhaps the most worrying discrepancy between what marketers say and what they do was highlighted when we asked respondents exactly how they used their time on social, and compared this to their principle objectives.
On average 71 per cent of time dedicated to social media is spent broadcasting brand content, while interacting accounted for 16 per cent of time and direct conversations even less (13 per cent). It appears professionals are using social media to increase brand awareness, rather than build engagement. When asked: ‘Which of the following do you pay most attention to when evaluating social media success?’ the majority (58 per cent) said the main way they measured success was through interactions – something they spend a mere 16 per cent of time focused on. These contradictory answers are at first confusing, but may be justified by marketers basically sticking to what they are comfortable with: status updates to promote content and drive traffic.
Tom Bourlet, senior digital marketing executive at The Stag Company, explains how marketers can escape their rut: “I believe too many businesses simply focus on voicing their content, yet social has so many more useful aspects. Once you have a complete customer profile, you should first focus on where they are, how they use the social platform, what their job titles are and what type of content they will respond to.”
Bourlet offers an example of using social for more than content amplification: “With the use of Tweetdeck you can monitor tweets that contain a particular string of keywords, allowing you to find people working in a certain industry. Beyond just sales, this helps reach out to journalists in the industry and can gain a number of newspaper publication mentions.”
The problem with ROI
The final difference between what marketers say and the reality was uncovered when we tackled the subject of social ROI. The marketing department’s struggle to prove ROI in all aspects of their campaigns has been a continuous uphill struggle and social is no exception.
The ‘ability to prove social ROI’ appears as the second toughest challenge (after ‘cutting through the noise’ – more on this later). Just a tiny five per cent of respondents were ‘completely’ confident they could prove social ROI all the time, whereas 31 per cent admitted they could show ROI ‘rarely or not at all’. With the ability to prove ROI considered relatively low and a top challenge, it’s clear this is one problem stressing professionals out. But it shouldn’t be. The research also revealed that only two in five (38 per cent) senior managers expect social activity to demonstrate ROI.
“For me, this is a problem as it reiterates that people aren’t taking social seriously as a channel”, argues Katie Colbourne, account director at The Marketing Practice. “As we move towards real-time marketing and the need for 360 degree view of customers – social media and online behaviour must sit at the heart of that.
“There are some organisations making great strides, but the ROI feat always seems to be a vicious cycle. The more social isn’t taken seriously the less it is regarded as integral to a business or marketing strategy, meaning even less focus is put on the value it can bring to an organisation. I think as marketers we should be striving to integrate social as a marketing channel that is taken seriously. In this age, marketing needs to become more intelligent and personalised. Channels like social will need to sit at the core of that so as an industry we need to always be seen to be acting as ‘intelligent marketers’ focused on returning ROI – not just for social media but for all channels alike.”
Nevertheless, whether it should be top of your agenda or a little lower down, the majority of organisations are positive about improving their ability to demonstrate ROI over the next 12 months. Twenty-three per cent of respondents said they believe their ability to prove ROI will ‘improve greatly’, while 55 per cent said it will ‘slightly improve’.
Overcoming challenges
Social media now takes up 20 per cent of marketers’ time, and 12 per cent of their annual budget – and these figures are only set to rise in the coming years. Brittany Berger, head of content at Mention, advises: “If a company is spending 20 per cent of its marketing budget on social media and it drives no engagement, traffic or revenue then that’s too much money. But say your team is devoting 20 per cent of its budget to social and it works really well and you’re still getting positive ROI. At this point, it’s worth it to increase the budget and time commitment if you’re confident it will increase results.”
With social now playing such a crucial role within campaigns and everyday marketing communications, it’s worrying that professionals are failing to put their knowledge into practice. To overcome the major challenges social presents, B2B marketers need to bridge the gap between what they say (or understand) and what they do.
‘Cutting through the noise’ was listed as the top challenge for 38 per cent of marketers, followed by ‘difficulty proving ROI’ (which we addressed earlier). While employing the most effective platform, producing the most clickable content and engaging with your following can all help overcome these issues, there’s something even more important at stake: analytics.
This year’s survey revealed that B2B marketers might be lacking the technology to really see returns from social. Only 35 per cent of B2B organisations use paid for social media monitoring platforms and as few as one in five (18 per cent) plan to implement it in the future. In addition, only 32 per cent of marketers make use of marketing automation (MA), and just one in three (30 per cent) plan to roll it out in the future. On the other hand, 75 per cent rely on web analytics to help track the effectiveness of their social campaigns. This is disquieting as the majority of web analytics platforms concentrate on stats in relation to web traffic rather than the bigger picture. Paid for social analytics can divulge in depth profiles of your following and track conversations, while MA can distinguish where these people fit into your overall marketing strategy – ensuring social doesn’t sit in a silo.
Over the next 12 months it would be encouraging to see B2B marketers addressing these failures in their social media marketing. This will be by no means an easy journey. The 2015 Social Media Benchmarking Report has proven that B2B marketers do possess a great deal of social media expertise, but need to ditch their home comforts once and for all. This means planning and experimentation. Ignoring this advice will only mean one thing for B2B brands: #Fail.
Social Media Benchmarking Report
This feature is based on statistics from our annual Social Media Benchmarking Report. For the full analysis of the B2B social media landscape download the report. It’s available for free to premium members and to buy for non-members.