Social media has been the plaything for Business to Consumer (B2C) Marketers and they have always seemed to have grabbed the headlines because their products are funkier and sexier than a B2B 
service or product. In fact B2B social media marketing has been put in the ‘boring’ category for too long.
I have noticed latelythough that the B2B social media marketers seem to be coming out of the closet, only this morning a friend of mine and fellow blogger Mark Schaefer sent me a link to a post at his blog called ‘Business Grow.com‘ where he provides a fascinating case study about a company ShipServ who is a leading e-marketplace in the maritime industry providing a portfolio of software, services and hosted applications designed to enable efficient global shipping. This type of industry you would think is not appropriate for social media marketing but for some impressive stats pop over to Marks blog to read the story.
Also just last week this very cool YouTube Video was kindly sent to me byErnest Agency and I think they had a secret evil plan that if I liked it enough I would spread the word .. and you know what?.. it succeeded…it is very good, in fact it is even excellent and well worth taking 3 minutes and 48 seconds to view. I have also put some of the statistics into a text format for those of you who prefer to read than watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXQdy-22TXM&feature=player_embeddedSome Facts and Figures To Consider For B2B Social Media Marketing
- 81 % of B2B companies have accounts on social media sites compared to 67% of B2C
- 75% of B2B brands participate in Twitter versus 49% of B2C
- 54% of Chief Information Officers ban the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter at the workplace
- 93% of all business buyers believe all companies should be on social media platforms
- 85% of of those buyers should use social media to engage and interact with them
- 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they are ready to buy, they will come looking for you
- Eight out of Ten IT decision makers said word of mouth is the most important source when making buying decisions
- 37% of B2B buyers asked questions on social media sites when looking for suggestions
- 93% of B2B buyers use a search engine such as Google to begin the buying process
- 74% of C- Level executives say that the internet is a very valuable source of information
- Six out of Ten C-Suite executives conduct more than six online searches a day
- Managers in information technology are the top ranked users of the Web for information gathering
- 49% of B2B marketers do not measure return on investment
- 90% of marketing deliverables not used by sales
- Sales generate 53% of their own leads and the marketing department provides only 24%
So how are you using social media marketing for your B2B go to market strategy?
