Oscar Wilde might have just as well been talking about content marketing when he famously said, ‘I have nothing to declare but my genius’. Whilst he was not exactly a B2B marketing specialist, he unwittingly summarised the new way of thinking in social media – it’s not your product that matters, but your expertise.
But surely, as B2B marketers, we are in the business of providing products and services that meet a customer’s need?
This remains largely true. But things have changed and it is increasingly recognised that the brand experience comprises more than just the product or service. If your brand is to prosper, it needs to be synonymous with expertise. If your customer believes you know what you are talking about, they will be more likely to turn to you for help in the form of your paid-for product or service.
The information journey
Every customer travels a long way from the earliest point of the sales cycle – when they may not even be aware of that need that your product or service will meet – to the final decision to select a supplier. During that process, they go through a process of learning, asking themselves a series of questions. How could they do business better? What do they need to implement that change? What are the pros and cons? Who else has done it? How do they get buy in from bosses and colleagues? And, ultimately, who do they choose to help them?
This process is as old as business itself. But what has changed recently is that the answers to these questions are found in different ways. Crucially, the buyers now find the answers for themselves, in their own time, under their own terms.
The catalyst for this change has of course been social media. Whereas buyers once relied on the vendors themselves for the bulk of their information, they now have access – via the instant, on-demand world of social media – to a cornucopia of views, experiences, opinions and first-hand, impartial accounts of how other people have addressed the challenges they face. Not only can they read about their peers, they can also get information from a new breed of journalist: the industry blogger.
No longer the preserve of the big publishing houses and media groups, advice is provided free of charge by this growing army of users-turned-advisors. They are motivated both by genuine altruism and (probably to a greater extent) by the prospect of raising their own profile to the point where they can sell advertising on their own sites. Either way, the technology behind social media has allowed a new kind of advisor to appear and they are much more powerful than the brands themselves.
The availability of this much information has created a new place where buyers share and consume information that influences their buying decisions. Known as the Buyersphere, it is the place where B2B marketers need to be active, but the way they will achieve that best is not by offering products but by offering knowledge.
Playing by the new rules
So the game has changed. But that doesn’t mean we’ve lost before we start. In fact, the B2B marketers who react fastest have a gilt-edged opportunity to tilt the playing field in their favour. As long as they play by the rules…
Don’t interrupt
This is the golden rule of social media marketing, because buyers are seeking information under their own terms, they are searching for answers to their own questions. They use social media to conduct conversations, to investigate issues of their choosing: in order to do this, they go where they want, when they want. It is no longer your job to interrupt their quest and point them in a different direction. They will ignore you.
Interruptive – or outbound – marketing still has its place, however. If you are communicating with a tightly targeted group of people, all of whom are at a certain point in the buying process, all of whom are likely to appreciate what you have to offer, it is still a viable and effective marketing method via email, DM, advertising or various other means. But social media is different. Buyers are using it socially, they are connecting with people they like, people they find useful. So, in the same way that you wouldn’t butt into a conversation at a garden party to sell life assurance, don’t use social media as a broadcast/push-marketing tool. It will damage your brand while competitors who are using it more considerately will pick up all the goodwill you are losing.
Social media has been described as the biggest cocktail party in the world. Everyone’s invited but you are expected to behave. Be engaging, be polite, be fun and you will have a great time. If you try to corner people by the punch bowl to tell them why they should buy your product, you’ll become a pariah before you know it.
Be prepared to give
One of the most common objections to social media marketing is the fear that companies are giving away something that once generated income. But as marketers become aware that the perception of expertise is part of the brand that people buy, they are accepting that it needs to accompany the sale – the thing to get your head around is that much of that expertise changes hands before the money does.
But where will you find all this expertise? The answer is from within. Your company is no doubt dedicated to its niche, whether that is financial services, enterprise software, telecommunications or whatever. And on the ‘factory floor’ you have specialists dealing with the issues that your customers are facing. The tragedy is that much of their knowledge – which is of enormous value to potential customers – never finds its way out to them.
Find your knowledge-bearers
The first step is to identify your knowledge bearers. Look at your sales staff, your engineers, your customer service specialists. Look for those with the experience and know-how that matches the issues that you believe your customers are looking into. Divide them according to the subjects they know and build your expert army. The challenge you then face is how to convert raw expertise into online content – there are two ways to do this:
DIY
Equipping staff with the wherewithal to use social media themselves is the preferred option. How better to show your corporate expertise than to release your knowledge bearers onto the social media world? They would help your organisation build direct relationships with prospects and create a reputation for expertise that puts you ultimately at the top of every supplier shortlist. But there are significant hurdles to overcome, i.e. time and technology.
Your experts are busy with the day-to-day jobs (that’s how they became experts) and, unless their roles can be revised to permit the significant time required to be active on social media, this is a no-starter. In addition, many of your knowledge-bearers will be either reluctant or unable to deal with the learning curve involved. They may have little knowledge of social media, or they may be highly skeptical: either of these will likely derail any attempt to convert their knowledge into compelling content.
Third party
As social media becomes more widely understood by marketers, it is becoming clear that it is much like any other marketing discipline. If the skills are not available in-house, the most flexible and appropriate way to provide those skills is to bring them in from a third party, such as an agency.
Agencies are becoming increasingly skilled, not only at creating content by using their writers, video producers, designers etc, but also at finding the most efficient ways to convert that raw expertise into good, useful information. So instead of asking your engineers to sit down and spend an uncomfortable two hours writing a blog every week, simply get a freelance writer (who understands your brand) to spend ten minutes on the phone with them. Armed with this information, plus what they have learned by scanning the other information available on social media about that issue, they can quickly and cost-effectively produce material that your target market will appreciate. An agency will also be able to map out the part of the Buyersphere where your target market is active, and therefore repurpose that content to be used on the various different social media platforms, from social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg to communities like LinkedIn and microblogging channels like Twitter.
Keep it simple
But this is not to say that agency ‘polish’ is required. Good social media content needs to be fresh, relevant and human. The art of the content producer – whether writer, video producer, or designer – is not to over-complicate. It is to cut through to the core issue and deliver it quickly and informally to the user. A blog is not a corporate brochure; it is a nugget of information, quickly summarised for the benefit of the reader. Videos do not need studio lighting and expensive post-production; they need a camcorder and a good idea.
So Oscar Wilde was right without knowing it. If you want to impress, attract and ultimately win customers using social media, you need to use your genius. If he were around today, he would applaud the idea that you let your market know how much you know – whether you are using blogs, video or even Twitter. And if anyone was born to create witty one-liners in less than 140 characters, it was him.
