First recent B2B Social Media Statistics

A social media study by BtoB Magazine shows that B2B marketers prefer to use the big 3 social media platforms, where LinkedIn is most used one (72%). Facebook (71%) and Twitter (67%) follow. These channels form the core of the B2B activities. Other platforms being used are YouTube (48%), Blogs (44%) and online communities (22%).

B2B Social Media Lead Generation Strategy

B2B purchase decisions are predominantly made by a group of people with different priorities and a big hunger for details in regards to the product. We believe Social Media Marketing is a very effective channel to satisfy the information needs of the potential buyers and to shorten the sales cycle. The approach to a social media strategy B2B can be differentiated into two approaches:

Both overlap and mutually dependent on each other. However they differ by inbound approach (inbound marketing) being the more passive one (=getting found) as opposed to the active engagement in the social media platforms of the outbound approach.

Outbound Social Lead Generierung

Outbound stand for the active engagement with potential buyers who post and talk about product relevant topics on social platforms.

Nevertheless the question arises if its possible at all to drive leads without promoting yourself (and violating social media rule #1: no promotions) or ruining one’s online / social reputation. The answer is: YES – it is absolutely possible. 

The line of attack should start by finding potential leads, the platforms where the conversation takes place, the topics and the most important influencers. this in of information can be found with social media monitoring tools – for B2B it certainly would make sense to utilise emerging social CRM or social media management tools as well. They would allow a better segmenting and lead nurturing. More about this in a another post though.

There are lots of positive examples of how outbound social media marketing can generate new leads in a B2B world. The best known one is probably IBM’s Listen for Leads program. Here the IBM sales people use tools to monitor the conversation which might indicate that the participants are at the beginning of a B2B sales cycle; for instance “I’m looking to replace my old server…). More pro-active sales people could use also LinkedIn groups (at the time of writing there were 310,759 professional groups in many different languages). To find the right group can be a bit overwhelming, a good start though would be the LinkedIn directory and starts filtering then. If you join groups you will get recommendations for similar groups over time. A good idea is also to join the same groups as your competitors.

Twitter is also very well suited for lead generation. Use here the Advanced Search or the lists to find the right in-marked users. Of course the are also numerous B2B blogs run by companies where comments can be left or any kind of engagement can be achieved.

Inbound Social Lead Generation

Average Cost per Sale

Inbound marketing means, instead of sending out the message through various channels hoping to get a big targeted audience, getting found for offering and disseminating useful and interesting content. Instead of finding the customers they find you on social media platforms or on search engine results pages. Find our related blog post here. Inbound marketing is more effective than its outbound evil brother and comprises the following steps:

• Generating of relevant content for the audience: mainly done by monitoring the social platforms or also analysis of the Google Analytics traffic sources and corresponding keywords. The focus of the generated content needs to be often discussed topics.
• SEO-optimisation of the content – also called Social SEO or Social Media Optimisation. Basically this means to amend or optimise content with relevant keywords and meta tags which can be picked up and ranked by Google and the social platforms. This counts also for e.g. status updates in Facebook or new tweets in Twitter. The content has to be also easily shareable (e.g. Facebook like button) or social link baiting tends to give good results as well.

• Dissemination of the content throughout the social networks and sharing of the content through users: the social platforms are basically built for sharing interesting or entertaining content and generating word of mouth on top of it. The uses are generally very hungry to share (since by sharing B2B content they always get a piece of that thought leaderhsip for them). However an ongoing tendency to note is that the usage of social media platform is constantly changing – see this interesting post for more.
• As a result of the above Google will rank your site for the topics and this will cause more targeted search and social traffic back to the site: social media activities and resulting social traffic to the site have a  rather brand-building impact as opposed to search traffic which normally powers a traffic with higher conversion rates. Reason being is the user are more actively looking for a solution and in market for the particular terms.

B2B Social Community

This of course is a very exciting topic can be tackled form many angles. A good start would be to build up a community via LinkedIn Xing groups and feed them with good content or moderations.

Social Media B2B Leads – Results

We did a number of B2B social media campaigns and were pleasantly surprised about the results each time. As mentioned above the users are really hungry for good content and are more than happy to share it amongst their peers. Google’s latest Panda update also utilises more than ever social signals (e.g. how often is a blog post shared or re-tweeted) to rank a website in the search results. We only can recommend social media leads generation – this blog post serves the same purpose for our social media agency…

• What results in higher ROI – Social Media or SEO?
• Why is that?

Internet Marketing-Mix of the client

• Social Commerce Seite on Magneto: 50%
• Social Media Strategie* and Social Media Support: 20%
• SEO – On-page + off-page: 30%

*Social Media Monitoring + Social Media Guidelines + Social Media Workshops

The budget was not as high as we hoped but we found lots of motivation and enthusiasm for social media marketing – which we believe is more important than any budget.

Like in most cases the awareness of how much effort and time you have to put into successful social media for ecommerce was not there in the beginning of the project – hence there was a bit of a learning curve involved.

Results – Ecommerce Traffic Numbers

We’re not a PR agency and believe in hard quantifiable figures in terms of social traffic vs. SEO traffic and corresponding sales, hence the following are number from their Google Analytics account.

Traffic to the site

Our results are even better than the general trend. According to Outbrain contributes Social Media only for 10% of the traffic sources, compared to 41% search traffic and a third coming form content sites. Surprising numbers considering the effort lots of companies putting into Social Media Marketing nowadays.

Social Media Traffic – any good?

Another Social Media Study by eMarketer says that Social Media traffic often is not very engaging – resulting in high bounce rates and little pages per visit. Whereas SEO traffic in many cases appears to be “hyperengaging” (more than 5 page views per user), Social Media visitors often seem to be distracted. The follow an interesting sounding link, but come back to where they started very soon: socialising online.

Ecommerce Sales – Social Media or SEO?

For us and our client the crucial question. Both activities hold brand building value though, we however think the Facebook is the strong force for that (through immediate communication and engagement). The following shows to simplify matters only Google and Facebook.

It’s easy to see that Google and SEO win over Social Media Marketing.

Especially the conversion rates speak for themselves. It seems that the in-market desire to purchase of the Google visitors more often leads to buys than the communication and word-of-mouth marketing driven social media marketing. Caused by much higher traffic from search engines this results in a higher revenue share for SEO generated traffic on top of that.

Does Social Media impact Ecommerce-Sales?

If you see the metric Average Basket size you’ll see that Social Media can have an impact in ecommerce sales. This especially when social platforms are utilised to drive campaigns, contests, discounts etc. The high numbers for the average basket size were generated through discounts for social media fans (Facebook).

One major reason why users follow brands on Facebook are giveaways and discounts. This seems to slowly change overtime (see also here) since the social media activities of the brands also become more professional  and the content provided is targeted and suits their specific customers better.

Its hard to say when is the right moment to direct the social media fan through a link form Facebook to the ecommerce site. One one hand can the active discussion of the customers with the brand and amongst each drive lots of word of mouth and trust. On the other hand the main impact of social media marketing especially for medium sized and smaller online shops needs to be higher sales and better ROI. The shop owners probably need to get used to that the the shop becomes less important within the user journey of the customers. Even if there’s access to the site from social its only brief and brings in little sales.

We believe that online-shops should not get scared off by the these numbers since there are enough positive examples how social media can impact the revenue. And in our case for the 5% of the revenue coming from Social is room for improvement over time and with increasing numbers of fans. The Dell social media activities are as usual a good example.

Antother way of monetising social media are Facebook store-fronts where users don’t have  to leave the social media platform and can directly purchase from there. This kind of Social Commerce shows currently a high growth rate and we need to wait and see if there higher conversions that on the ecommerce sites. Read more about that in our next blog-post.

It raises an important point that can be applied to a number of online marketing initiatives; simply having the tools does not mean you are using them correctly or solving wider business objectives. For example, social media monitoring CAN be used for research but until you delve into the data to pull the actionable insights…it’s just data collection. You need to get into the mechanics of how customers are using the networks and see how tactical engagement (content and conversations) can help your business…and that requires some smarts.

The rapid adoption of social media and the share economy has created a new market full of potential for brand and many of the new software that are helping to tap into the data and manage the platforms can lull people into a false sense of security – eg. “We have Radian6 or Brandwatch so we are doing social research” or “We have Google analytics and Webmaster tools installed on our site so we have website insights covered off”. These tools will pull in data; humans (with a certain level of skill) need to do the drilling down to get the value.

To get the real value from social media (and it is significant if done correctly) you need to look into the insights from all the pieces of the puzzle such as Audits, monitoring, analytics, responses to posts and content. This will show you what is working, what the sentiment of the market is, how the competitors are perceived….that is great intelligence that, if leveraged, can make a huge difference a business. If you just look at the public numbers (mentions, followers, fans, page impressions etc) then you are in danger of seriously overestimating the effectiveness of your social media program

The tools available today are good and will only get better but remember, they are just tools. The valuable stuff that will help your business the most is in the detail, the insights and the interactions you can generate with customers and advocates using social media. The quicker you can get to that stage, then the quicker you will start to see REAL results that can impact on your bottom line.

What is Video SEO

Videos in search results

Google’s algorithms always grows in complexity and they blend in search results with videos and images (so called universal search). Now, according to a Searchmetrics study video results appeared in over 60% of all searches. Images appeared in 30%, followed by shopping results at about 20% and news at around 10%. Less than 30% of Google’s results pages do not have a universal element to them.

Hence any SEO Manager or Webmaster intending to be found in an increasingly competitive search market can use videos to bring content to the first SERP.

Video platforms in search results

Looking at the video platforms available YouTube is by far the most displayed on in the Google search results (see image on the right). Therefore the following SEO video optimization tips cover YouTube and it’s functionalities only.

Video Search Engine Optimisation

Video SEO Marketing is an important word of mouth and internet marketing technique and one needs to bear in mind that YouTube (just like Google+) is part of the Google empire so optimisation really can have a big impact on exposing you brand / company to the public. Lots of users nowadays go to YouTube to find information about new products or technical features of products. Especially independent user generated content product reviews generate trust and can stimulate a purchase. But also how-to guides or series are very popular. So, the demand is there!

In case you’ve got already videos on your website and a YouTube channel you can try the onlinevideograder to find out your video marketing grade for your site.

Social SEO

Just like any Social SEO technique for videos you have to find out where you’re audience hangs out and what they are talking about and of course reaching them. This means disseminate your video content throughout these social media platforms. For easy video uploading to various video platforms available and tracking results you can use Tubemogul. Just make sure to SEO optimise your content and take each platform’s differences into consideration. For Vimeo for instance there are different Social SEO opportunities than for YouTube. These are some platforms you should use on top of YouTube:

The tracking of the results coming back from social can and should be done with Google Analytics and bit.ly.

Video SEO Tips For Your Own Site

Obviously don’t forget to put the videos on your own website as well and we recommend here to create a separate SEO-optimized html page for each new video (+make these site easily shareable on social networks). Also add a description for each video and link to your YouTube page/channel with link anchor text as the desired keyword.

Video SEO Tips For YouTube

The following are pretty easy to follow and need to be done for each video you’re posting on YouTube:

Keywords

• Very important is to make use of the title tag of the video and make sure you have the main keyword that you going after in your title ideally at the beginning of the title. YouTube has it’s own keyword tool which I find rather useless, hence I recommend to stick with the traditional Google keyword suggestion tool for your keyword research. Since there’s so much content on YouTube, hardly differentiable by YouTube/Google (no traditional text to crawl available), I recommend to go for long tail keywords than anything else.

Meta Tags

• Fill out the description box and put a link to your website title at the beginning of the text. This is the best thing you can do in terms of directing “direct traffic” from the video back to your site. Make sure the description covers the message you want to bring across and the topic you want to rank for. The content of the description box is is also used for ranking, so put in the relevant keywords.
• Utilise call to actions and put keywords at the end of the sentence and finish it with an exclamation mark ! or question mark?
• The video tags must contain your main keywords and variations of them and be generous. The ones suggested by YouTube work not very well from my experience, but give them a try.

YouTube Video Ranking

• The YouTube ranking uses the comments and ratings, as well as the number of shares and playlists the video appears in – so try to motivate your viewers to like and share the video (either in the video itself or the tags boxes)

Video Sitemap

• A video site map gives additional boost to visibility and crawlabilty for Google – it is an XML sitemap you can submit to Google Webmaster Tools.

Other Video Marketing Considerations

• Video preview images: a good idea is the include calls-to-action images and also consider creating your own preview icons than using the YouTube default ones. This in particular important for the YouTube mobile users (screen is smaller hence the pic has to be more meaningful / easy to grasp).
• In-video description/branding/call to action
• Try to stick with a 4/3 aspect ratio even YouTube’s 16:9 seems tempting since most devices don’t display this format properly.

Not all industries have taken to social media and in some cases, this isn’t a bad thing. Social technologies are just another tool in a company’s locker that they can use to develop areas of their business and they need to be deployed in the same way as all other initiatives – where they will have the most value to the customer.

For companies whose customers are not particularly active on social media yet, then the available resources should be focused elsewhere but for an industry such as Travel and Tourism, where user generated content plays such a huge role in a customers purchasing decision, it still seems that many of even the biggest brands are still ‘leaving money on the table’.

The crux of the problem is highlighted by a report in April from L2 a digital think tank who evaluated 89 of the top travel and tourism brands, from airlines, hotels and cruise companies. The table below looks at how well they have integrated social tools on their website (which is still the place where most customers will visit for information and bookings).

While over 90% have the option to book online from the website, which one would expect to be in action by now, the other areas which are the most important factors in helping customers make purchasing decisions and delivering better customer service are largely being ignored.

Let’s have a look at a few stats courtesy of Sticky Media which help back this up.

• 40% of online travellers visit social networking sites to influence destination selection
• 87% said reviews impacted hotel choice
• 84% said reviews impacted method of travel
• 78% said reviews impacted choice of dining
• 70% of consumers trust online recommendations while only 14% trust advertisements

(source:http://www.stikkymedia.com/articles/social-media-and-the-tourism-industry-statistics)

With online reviews and opinions playing such a pivotal role in how we make decisions when we travel and go on holiday, all brands in this industry need to get a grip on reviews. Not just managing the comments and responding appropriately but using the insights to improve their service.

For luxury tourism, outstanding customer service is especially important. So, it is again surprising that so few don’t have a live chat service on their website to go that extra mile for any new or returning customers.

While many brands are looking at how they can build their Facebook fan pages up, it is vitally important to understand your online market and what is going to be best for the customer…because, (dramatic pause) that is what is going to be best for your business!

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments on how social media and tourism can synergise each other or how any other industry is implementing effective digital and social tools.

There is a huge amount the Travel and Tourism industry can do with social and there have already been plenty of examples of brands stepping up to the plate. However, during researching the talk and from speaking to many of the delegates at the event, it would seem that many organizations are still in the ‘novice’ phase of implementing social business and there is great growth potential.

I will do a few separate blog posts on some of the areas I covered in the talk but for now, the slides are below.

The growth of social media in general and social channels in particular has led companies to utilise social media management software to manage their social accounts. Social Media Management tools enable to manage, maintain, and run reporting on multiple accounts and channels.
Grosvenor Casinos / G Casinos are part of the Rank Group, a leading European gaming and betting company, headquartered in UK.

The Challenge

Grosvenor uses for each of its 35 local casinos a separate social media account. They are currently active in mainly on Facebook but also on Twitter. Their social accounts grew over time in an uncontrolled way, there were personal profiles, others were Facebook Groups and some Facebook Fanpages and all with a different look and feel to them.
The challenge was to come up with a sound social media strategy, standardise the social media presence, create engaging content, put everything under one branding umbrella and conduct a proper reporting.

The Solution

The Results

• Huge efficiency improvements through centralised posting
• Average Facebook growth 15% per month
• Facebook fans growth through fresh content and engagement
• Clear insights about what works and what not through in-depth reporting and analytics

For more information contact us.

Lufthansa Systems (LHS), wholly-owned subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group, launched a new business arm which aims to take advantage of mobile technologies to provide apps for the aviation / airline industry, pilots and aviation enthusiasts.

The Challenge

LHS was a new player in an unknown territory. The app markets follow different rules and require different marketing approaches than the software enterprise solutions they used to sell. Weever Media was chosen as social media agency to develop and partly execute a strategy from December 2010 onwards.

The Solution

Weever Media created a comprehensive positioning, launch and marketing plan, including:

The Results

• Buzz growth through Social Media Marketing
• Facebook fans growth through fresh content and engagement
• Established positive correlation between PPC and app downloads
• Targeted traffic (converting keywords) to site growth
• Top 3 Google rankings through SEO and social SEO
• Successfully entered the US market

For more information find our app marketing page or contact us directly.

Social Media Accidents Do Happen

Click to enlarge

Recently (March 2011) an outsourced agency consultant tweeted on behalf of Chrysler the tweet on the right. This cause some irritations and the person who tweeted said he confused private and company (client’s) account. He got fired anyway. However this could have happened to internal as as well as external staff, it’s more a matter of using social media management tools the right way.

Do you have a Social Media Strategy?

This point can’t be stressed less. A proper social media strategy has to be in place and needs to outline your social media marketing plan as well as your social media policy. You need to be aware of what you want to achieve on the social platforms if you want to decide whether to outsource social media or execute it with your own internal resources. You’ll need to know what you need to provide, e.g. what content to provide to succeed with your particular social audience; blog driven inbound marketing strategies require different resources than viral marketing video campaigns (or any high quality audio or video) etc.

Benefits Of Outsourcing Social Media

There are clear benefits of outsourcing:

• Speed: New to Social Media companies can get connected faster and easier and shorten the learning curve.
• Social Media Training + Experience: You’d get all the experience from an social media expert built up over years
• Social Technology + Social Desing: Setting up social media can be technology intensive and often requires expert skills, the same can be true for designing your social media channels or producing content
• Social Strategy: the most prominent point here – a social media consultancy can you put together a best practice strategy tailored to your needs, audience and industry.
• Social Media Campaigns: campaings with wider and more complex content needs such as good videos etc.

What parts of Social Media can’t be outsourced?

If you’re responsible for marketing in a big corporation and you’re interested in a more corporate social media style you might even outsource the conversations. This seems feasible for social media accounts for customer services. Also for producing social media content you can use creative ideas from your social media agency. I am talking about B2C areas, in B2B marketing you want to bring across your thought-leadership and domain expertise and the content needs to be created by your company’s experts and can’t (or less) come from the agency.

In general a social media trend is certainly that brands are replacing the obsession of how their image is projected to how well they engage with people, how well the can help customers and make them happy and eventually loyal.

In order to follow that appraoch companies need to engage in daily conversations, the heart and soul of Social Media Marketing, and this has to come authentically from you and your staff. No doubt these conversations require some skills too but it is important that organisations begin to acquire them directly, rather than mediating through third parties. You definitely want to avoid to loose authenticity by outsourcing.

Outsourcing Social Media – good or bad?

Social Media Phases – Click to enlarge

We see social media implemented in phases. Most companies start with a Facebook fanpage and a Twitter acount and build up frorm there. Hence our outsourcing advice is: “it depends“…

Getting started in social media is daunting for most brands, so in the first phases of a social media implementation companies can certainly benefit from the expertise of social media agencies. A strategy can be created and implemented by external sources. Also more technical or analytical tasks such as Social Media Monitoring can (and should be done) be provided by an agency. Also when crisis management is needed the first time, you might want to fall back on the best practices of your agency who probably dealt with these issues before. When entering new phases of social media or dealing with new technology (which is plenty in social media), e.g. Social Media Advertising, Social Apps or other mobile services they should rely again on the proven knowledge of an agency.

In the long run though we recommend companies to build processes to streamline with your existing marketing (for instance implementing a Social SEO strategy) and incorporate social aspects throughout the organisation.