There was a time, not all that long ago, when social advertising was an unapologetically fruitless endeavour for the world’s B2B providers. Thankfully though, the tide is beginning to turn, and those of us offering products and services to businesses now have a fighting chance of winning custom on social networks.
The problem was, back then, social media and work just didn’t mix. This was a time when social sites were routinely blacklisted by big companies because employees were deemed to be wasting time rather than working. I was working at an animal charity at the time, and Facebook was blocked on their internal network. I noted with interest that the charity announced late last year, having finally got over its social phobia, that Zuckerberg’s eponymous social network has now become one of their biggest sources of donations.
The increasing acceptance of social networks within previously-wary organisations is indicative of a wider trend. Both the users and the networks themselves are becoming more mature; in the way they’re used, in their audience profiles, and - importantly - their advertising services.
This is why Facebook, Twitter and others are finally becoming useful for B2B providers. Whereas the Cokes and McDonalds of the world can choose their six figure budgets, press “Advertise!” and see a decent return, a B2B marketer has to use a little more finesse. We need to use a scalpel where consumer brands wield a sledgehammer. We need to find the person who will make buying decisions; for Coke this is anyone with 75p in their pocket, but for B2B services it can often be one specific person amongst the staff of a narrow subset of businesses.
Chasing the long tail
Google was one of the first companies to recognise the power of “the long tail” - the thousands of small businesses with a need to target advertising on comparatively meagre budgets, and the company’s AdWords service, used by even the tiniest of businesses, accounted for around 70% of their $37 billion 2013 revenue.
Clever tools like advertising against specific search terms and retargeting (advertising only to people who have visited your website or subscriber to your mailing list) have helped AdWords become the main advertising channel for many B2B services looking to ensnare the tiny sliver of the business population that can buy their product.
Social networks are now - finally - seeing some of these features.
Early ad products offered by Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter were sledgehammery in the extreme - a promoted trend on Twitter would set you back somewhere in the region of $200,000 per day. Now though these sites are beginning to cater for the long tail in social media the same way Google did in search a decade ago.
All three social networks now sport self-serve platforms which allow advertisers of any size to build campaigns, set budgets and reach niche audiences through keywords, retargeting and other methods. Finally us B2B providers have the same tools afforded to our B2C counterparts - and the initial results are promising. We ran a small experiment with Twitter Lead Generation Cards and Promoted Tweets late last year, and the results were far more positive than we expected; the new customers we’ve picked up from the campaign so far have had an acquisition cost that is around half the average from other channels. We’re hearing similar things from other businesses testing the waters too.
Combined with good lead nurturing campaigns and informative content, social could well be the next big avenue in B2B advertising.
By Jon Norris, freelance writer and web editor for Crunch.
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