By B2B Marketing, differentiators, competition, social media
If you are trying to find the perfect receipe for promoting your business or services online, then you should know what a difficult task this is. Everyone seems to know all the best practices and guidelines, which sound really good in theory, but when implementing them, not a lot seems to happen. Setting up a Twitter account or launching a website and waiting for the customers to barge in is not the way to go. Sometimes things need a little push in order to move in the right direction.
If you have many competitors, then there is a lot of noise, especially in social media. On a crowded market, you surely feel sometime that there is no other way to reach the top than screaming louder for getting the most attention. You could not be more wrong.
I believe that it is more important how you use the social media tools than what tools you use. Your target audience most probably knows how to discern between the noise and the real content. Therefore, in social media or B2B, you must follow the basic guidelines for communication or marketing, but adapted to the digital era. We try to describe some of them below:
- Find out what your customers are really interested in, and to talk to them about these topics. Your communication should sound like a natural, relaxed conversation, not like an attempt to sell products.
- Always, but always provide great content. Perhaps marketing experts cannot stress enough the importance of content. You surely must be familiar with the expression “Content is King”. It cannot be truer.
- Furthermore, keep yourself informed about what is happening on your market. Use Google Alerts to make sure you are always up-to-date with what your competition is doing. Also, be sure to monitor social media in real time. This will help you gain an understanding of trends, what possible niches could there be for your business, give you ideas for new ways to promote it or to create new products/services in order to meet the needs of your customers and target audience.
- Be inventive! Observe what the competition is doing, but do not ever copy it. Do not be afraid to come up with innovative and original ideas – they might seem riskier, but if you really want to get your target’s audience opinion and generate buzz, you must be able to take chances. Using the usual marketing receipts might seem like the safe way to go, but it also brings in medium results.
- Be patient. As inventive as you could be, you cannot reinvent the wheel, unless you are, let’s say, Apple. So, while trying to gain new customers, do not forget about the current ones. Offer exceptional customer service – you probably heard a million times before about infallible success receipes, but, believe it or not, this one never fails.
- Leave your marketing to the experts! They know the market, the tools, the trends, and ultimately, what is best for your company. Therefore, you should always communicate with your marketing department and allow them to come up with new ideas.
All in all, knowing your target audience, using the promotional methods which best fit your company, and offering great products/customer service may not form the ultimate receipe for success, but they surely are important elements in gaining at least a part of it.
