Social Media Marketing for B2B Tech Companies: The Ultimate Guide
How CMOs and VPs of Marketing Can Start Using Social Media to Accelerate Growth
As a business-to-business tech company, social media should be essential to your marketing mix – whether you’re in PaaS, API security, or LendingTech. Social can help you grow your brand, generate leads, and support RevOps.
After all, you’re ultimately selling to people – and people use social media.
But social media marketing can be tricky. It's not as simple as posting a few times and calling it a day. This guide will walk you through the basics of social media marketing for B2B tech companies, from cybersecurity to SaaS to FinTech. We'll start with paid social media, then move on to organic social media.
First, let's cover why B2B tech brands should use social media.
The Benefits of Social Media for B2B Tech Companies
Build Brand Awareness and Recall: B2B tech companies can benefit significantly from social media by creating awareness and recall. Posting regularly on social helps establish yourself as an expert in the industry, builds credibility with potential customers, analysts, and journalists, and funnels users to your website (so they can be retargeted later).
Lead Generation: Social media can be an excellent tool for lead generation, especially when you use social ads. You can target super-specific audiences based on their interests, industry, company size, location, and more, enabling you to reach the right potential customers at the perfect time in their buying journey.
Improve RevOps: Social is also a powerful tool for improving revenue operations (RevOps). For example, you can utilize social media to drive traffic to your website or other digital assets, and create content that resonates with potential customers.
Engagement & Audience Growth: Social media marketing and advertising is a great way to engage with your current audience and expand it further by sharing relevant content and interacting. It gives you a direct line to customers and prospects – the perfect opportunity for determining pain points and other valuable information. (Plus, VCs love using social following as a credibility indicator. Over the past 18 months, multiple clients have discussed how VCs are want to see an engaged, growing following before investing.)
What social media can't or won't do for B2B tech brands
Increase In-Person Engagement: Social media is not a replacement for in-person interaction. You will still need to meet people at networking events, conferences, and other social gatherings to build relationships with potential customers. (It can sometimes be used to increase traffic to your trade booth if your customers are Director-level and below. VPs and the C-Suite don’t use social in the same way.)
Replace Traditional Marketing Channels: Social media should be an essential part of your overall marketing mix, but it can’t replace conventional channels like email, direct mail, or print. (A good omnichannel strategy should be a priority for your marketing team to build.)
Offer a Quick Fix: Social media is not instant. And you’re unlikely to go viral. Creating content, engaging with users, monitoring social conversations, and measuring results take time and effort. (Though paid social advertising can deliver results much quicker. Speaking of...)
Now that you understand the basics of why social media is critical for B2B tech companies, let's dive into specifics.
How to leverage Paid social media
- First, understand the different social media platforms, and which ones are best for your organization and your goals. Platforms have different strengths and weaknesses regarding targeting, content formats, audience engagement, etc. LinkedIn is ideal for connecting with industry professionals, while Twitter is great for timely updates and news sharing.
- Determine the aforementioned goals of your social media campaign: Lead generation? Brand awareness? Traffic to a website or blog? Knowing your goals will help you craft an effective social media strategy.
- Create compelling ads that speak directly to your target audience. A well-crafted ad can make all the difference in getting people to click through and take action. Ads should be entertaining, educational, and eye-catching.
- Consider running retargeting campaigns to stay top-of-mind with potential customers who have already interacted with your brand in some way – either by visiting your website or engaging with your content on social media (like watching a video).
- Track your performance metrics regularly. Monitor the success of your social media campaign by keeping tabs on impressions, clicks, conversions, CPLs, and other important KPIs.
How to leverage Organic social media
- Once you understand each social platform and focus on the one or two that matter most, research trends in your industry to create content that resonates with your target audience. Stay informed about key topics and conversations related to B2B tech and your industry so you can join in on the social conversation – and know when to not to engage.
- Share a mix of original content and relevant third-party content. Your social media followers crave variety. They want to learn, grow in their field, and be entertained – not hit with a sales pitch 24/7.
- Keep an eye on those KPIs. Look at how many people are engaging with your posts, commenting, liking, or resharing them – and optimize accordingly!
- Make sure your social media accounts are optimized to drive conversions. Add links to your top social platforms on your website, include social sharing buttons on blogs, and encourage your audience to follow.
A note about earned social: Earned social is another crucial component of social media marketing. Earned refers to the organic, unpaid reach your content receives from reshares and mentions. This can include shares and retweets from followers, mentions by industry analysts, and press hits. It's a great way to increase brand awareness and further engage with potential customers – and it’s typically a partnership between your social and PR/AR teams.
Lastly, a note about dark social: Dark social is social media activity that goes unmeasured and unaccounted for. This can include social shares on private messaging apps like WhatsApp, or searching Google for a link rather than clicking through from social. It's the modern-day Town Square, where word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) rules. But, unlike a Town Square, your brand is not invited to watch. It's important to keep an eye on dark social, but that subject is too long to cover here.
It's vital to track dark social where possible (hurray for UTMs and shortened links) to get an accurate picture of the performance of your social media campaigns. However, dark social can't be measured very well – and that's okay.
Next up: Creating a basic social media strategy for your business…
How to Create a Basic Social Media Strategy
- Set Social Media Goals: First, clearly define what goals you want to achieve. These should be realistic and measurable, such as "increase brand awareness" or "drive website traffic." Goals like “going viral” won’t help you here.
- Pick the Right Social Networks to Use: Consider which platforms your target audience is most active on, and focus your efforts there first. Don't feel the need to be on all social networks at once – start with one or two at a time, and build up your presence gradually. It’s much better to do LinkedIn right than to do Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn poorly. (That said, reserve your company name on every relevant platform to protect your brand.)
- Create Content Strategies for Each Social Network: Each platform requires different types of content. Strategize with your team about how you can tailor your messages specifically to each network while still delivering consistent messaging across the board.
- Develop Social Media Processes: Set up a process for social media management, including content creation, scheduling, image, graphic, and video requests, and responding to comments or messages. A tight process will help keep your social media presence consistent and organized – and allow other departments in your org the opportunity to contribute without overwhelming your team.
- Track Performance Metrics Regularly: Monitor the success of your social media campaigns by keeping tabs on impressions, clicks, conversions, and other important KPIs. Make adjustments as needed based on data insights. (Typically, I recommend monthly reporting, with additional analysis after specific campaigns, product launches, or events.)
Ready for Something a Bit More Advanced?
Once you have the basics of social media marketing down, it's time to get more advanced. Social listening can help you understand what people are saying about your brand, analyzing conversations from sources like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. This data and analysis informs your team about upcoming trends, potential white space in the industry, brand threats, pain points related to your competitors' products, and much, much more.
Using social media effectively requires a balance between paid promotion and organic sharing – along with an understanding of the nuances of each social network. By following the above steps and using data insights to inform decision-making, you’ll start to develop social media campaigns that drive real results for your B2B tech business. With these tips, CMOs and VPs of Marketing can better use social media to grow their B2B tech businesses effectively.
Social media remains one of the most powerful tools for reaching new customers and staying top-of-mind, and when used strategically, it can be a major driver of success and growth. It’s an essential piece of the puzzle for B2B tech companies. With the right social media strategy and tactics, you will generate leads, build brand awareness, and drive revenue growth.
Good luck – and happy socializing.
Take the Next Step: Check out our social media services, from strategy to content creation to listening and analysis, to see how we can help you create and execute a strategy that gets real business results. Just ask Jeff Spicer, former CMO of Yellowbrick (current CMO of Rimini Street):
"Tom Basgil displays that rare combination of strategy and creative execution that makes social media programs sing. And he delivers! Tom increased one of our social KPIs by 1,700%."