Business to Business companies tell me that Inbound Internet Marketing is good for Business to Consumer business but is not a fit for them. WRONG!
Social Media should be key part of marketing for any company that needs to build a community of customers to do business. You have to become a Trusted Resource in your field, build a community by providing helpful content, listen to your customers so you can serve them better and provide ridiculous customer service. These steps will not only to get new customers but will help you retain the ones you have building a long lasting relationship (oh…and profitable).
Becoming a Trusted Resource for Business to Business Companies – In any Social Marketing campaign you must start with being a Trusted Resource in your field. Everything you post is true. Information you give out is meant to help people and not some enticement to get a sales lead. You have to be the benchmark. Everyone that does business with you must know that if you have the answers you will be upfront and honest (even if that mean you do not make the sale) and if you don’t have the answers you can point them in a direction that might have what they are looking for. At the end of the day you only have your word…and that means everything.
Building a Community is the Goal not Sales Leads – Your goal in Social Media is build a community of people that have issues that you can help solve and might have answers that you can pass along. It is organic. By using Facebook Pages, Twitter Accounts, LinkedIn Pages and others you are creating a presence on the web. With keeping the tenets of being a Trusted Resource, your goal is to bring people that use your service, people that have used your service, people that may need your services and companies or people that may know more about your field then you (and yes shocking enough they are out there) into a discussion about your field. What is new in the business? What changes are coming down the road? What areas of your business have shown success lately? Are there success stories by clients? Are there stories from clients that have hit road blocks? These are discussion points that will help grow your community. Things like tooting your own horn or telling people your services are far superior to your competition is not going to help anyone. You’re in the Community Building Business at this point…not the selling your services or product business mode.
And please don’t start a Twitter account or Facebook Page and only have a few people following and leave a post every few months. If you are doing this please take them down now. In this case no Social Media presence is better then embarrassing Social Media presence.
Listen to your past, present and possibly future customers. LISTEN…..we don’t spend enough time listening. And when we do listen we are listening for the answers we want to here. The best person to educate us on how you business can be better is customers. And it is worth listening to.
By creating a community customers are willing to engage and share information. Smart companies are going to LISTEN and learn from this information and ask questions like…HOW CAN WE BETTER SERVE YOU. That is a big and dangerous question. Because the question is not if you are brave enough to ask it but are you in the one percent that is willing to hear the answer and act on it. If you are you will have a power source that will guide your company to success.
Ridculous Customer Service – I am asked sometimes: What level of Customer Service should we be prepared to give? My answer is: You should be engaging with your customer to such an extent that they are thinking about taking a Restraining Order against you. Really….the time to shine is when your present customer has a problem. This is when you need to pull out all the stops. If you figure how much you have spent to acquire the customers it should be a no brainer that you should spend a lot of resources to help the customers. The good news is that a lot of companies have made this job easier for you. For some reason many people are providing horrible customer service so it does not take a lot to rise to the top of the pack. But go that extra mile and be in the top tier. People really do appreciate it and you connect with the customer and a very important level.
Social Media is not about sprinting to the head of the pack but slowly building your brand. If you follow these steps and careful craft your online presence you will reap the benefits. In the end you will be smarter (and more profitable) then your competitors.