Today I attended Forrester’s Webinar “Defining Your B2B Social Media Strategy” with Vice President and Principal Analyst, Laura Ramos, and Vice President of Tech Industry Consulting, Dan Klein.
The seminar was chock full of interesting facts on social media usage by B2B marketers and by B2B decision-makers.
For both B2B vendors and the buyers of those solutions, social media is considered a second tier marketing medium.
Last month, Laura Ramos released a report entitled: How to Derive Value from B2B Blogging. A survey of 189 Forrester customers revealed the number of blogs started by these B2B organizations `plummeted` in 2007 from 2006 as the results from these blogs did not meet expectations.
Laura attributes part of this to using `warmed-over press releases` on blogs.
Another attendee and I leveraged the WebEx chat to ask questions on how the usage of social media varied by the size of the organization.
Anu Venkitaraman, Managing Partner of ReThink Marketing of Addison,TX and I, conducted a private chat discussing why small B2B marketers have embraced social media in a stronger way than their bigger B2B sisters and brothers.
Here are our top 10 (in no particular order and actually there are only 8):
- Give me a Megaphone - For B2B start-ups evangelizing is a way of life to attract the attention of investors, partners and customers.
- Talking about My Generation - Younger professionals are already well-versed in social networking and have a huge appetite for expressing themselves.
- A Clean Slate – With little to no marketing infrastructure, a small B2B marketer can leapfrog to a web presence that includes social media. Witness the number of firms that use blogs as their website backbone.
- The Big Squeeze – Hard dollars are in short supply for small firms. The cost of entry for social media in hard budget dollars is close to zero.
- Sweat Equity – The greatest resource for a small firm is the hard labor that staff will invest to make their equity real. The production of relevant social media content requires this dedication and investment.
- Risk / Reward – The small B2B marketer recognizes that the rewards associated with engaging in public customer dialog outweigh the risk of losing control of the marketing message.
- Inverse Relationship of Press Releases - the number of parties who must approve a press release is inversely related to that organization`s embrace of social media. In other words, the more bureaucracy associated with marketing communications, the less likelihood that the wild west of social media will be approved by senior executives.
- Let`s fail and try again - Smaller organizations are more likely to experiment with marketing media and social media is another option to test.
Are there any other reasons? Help me round off the number to 10!
12 Comments
seems like market asymmeties, change management issues, and small businesses nature of being more sensitive to every little pebble on the side walk produce a cultural context better suited to the social media play ground
Improve existing customer service while you are generating leads? I'm always impressed if I see a service problem being solved on a blog…and I might spread that word to somebody who could help you, invest in you, or buy from you.
Interesting post and observations, Robert. I'd add a 9th reason, here… which is "Got passion?" (Actually, this could be considered a part of the "megaphone" and "sweat equity" reasons, too.) But so many small business owners have real passion for what they are doing, and that converts into the energy and authenticity necessary to commit to doing social media right.
Great post — this is very helpful for a project I'm working on in regards to smaller brick & mortar retailers.
One other reason I can think of is that in most small businesses, the founder/CEO *is* the company, or there are a few key employees who play that role, and so it's much easier to put a human face on the organization than if it were a huge multinational corporation.
hey some great insights there!
I might add 9) Building Loyalty: Small biz can engage customers more directly, leading to product innovations and increased loyalty through conversations.
#10 should be: It Gets Real Results
All the above and, it really works (when done properly)
Thanks Matt, Martha, Ann, Ann, Webeconomist et al who took a moment to share your thoughts! As a small business ourselves we are bullish on Web 2.0 media and feel better positioned to reap the benefits versus our larger brethren.
Great post! Utilizing Social media has doubled our website visitors and has increased our online lead generation system by 25%. As a small business with a very lean marketing and sales staff any little bit helps and this is far more than a little bit.
There's a small business internal component that is worth considering called morale. There are people in small companies everywhere who have solid expertise to contribute to the effectiveness of social networking with their thoughts and ideas. Seeing them online can cause attitudes and enthusiasm to improve within an organization which can have an overall positive effect on morale. Using inside 'experts' who are not the companies busiest top tier managers can also relieve some of their responsibilities.
For all the reasons others have listed, small firms are often more comfortable with take some risk. Even mid-size firms, particularly in the industrial B2B sector, may fear getting ahead of the market and alienating their customers whose (older) execs are barely beyond email adoption. The tsunami of change is coming–and this is a context where the innovators can win big.
Thanks Beverly for your note. Its great to hear that your investment in social media is paying off.
Scott's note on one of the unintended internal benefits of social media is a good one.
And thanks Katherine for your note – I agree there is a fundamental change in the way that B2B organizations evaluate solutions through digital and social media. Unfortunately for some organizations the risk is too high: the risk of providing staff with a public voice through social media.
Robert,
Great post. I adapted it for non-profits here:
http://www.corporatedollar.org/?p=1725
Thanks,
John Haydon
CorporateDollar.Org