DISQUS

markwilliamschaefer · 2 months ago

Kate, thanks for referencing my blog.

The answer to your question is simple. In business, success ultimately must be defined by money. Whether your goal is "awareness," or "page views," or "re-tweets," at the end of the day these measures must lead to a direct or indirect (i.e. brand equity) monetary return or the enterprise will not survive. If you are engaged in any activity, social media or otherwise, that does not somehow increase shareholder value, desist.

That's one of the reasons this case was special. While you project that other B2B efforts "probably" resulted in sales, we really don't know. Success stories in B2B have been few and far between. I know ... I've looked!

I believe this will change as the economy improves and B2B gets serious about these new media channels.

I hope you will conitnue to read my blog and actively cotnribute to the discussion. Thanks again!

Kate Brodock · 1 month ago

Mark, interestingly, I agree with you wholeheartedly!

I think we're applying "success" differently. I this case (and in many of our client cases) we look at social media separately from the website. In a situation where website traffic, which has been pre-identified as the goal of social media, increases due to social media efforts, then the social media component was successful. If there were no sales as a result, then usually the website needs to be re-evaluated because it's own effectiveness to convert is probably low, or perhaps the sales team needs some work.

I tend to look at social media as a channel that brings someone to the point at which they must make a decision. Much of what happens in the social media world can effect that decision, yes (emotion, brand awareness and image, conversation, relationship building) but at the end of the day - and especially with B2B companies - it usually comes down to website/sales team etc.

Hope that makes more sense, but I think we're on the same wavelength, just doing the breakdown differently :-) (Again, HubSpot is a fantastic example of the type of success that you're looking for, and they have the numbers to back it up).

Caitlin Marco · 1 month ago

Lol that video was amazing. I think this is a very timely and interesting topic for b2b marketers because the success of a viral/social media marketing campaign is on a different level than b2c due to the longer buying process. i think the success of a viral campaign can not be determined by sales, or leads for that matter. The success has to come from page views, submissions, and over all awareness. The internet is the easiest way to get reccomendations on products and services so the more people out there who have your company's name in the back of your mind (and a good impression of it) the more likely a lead will come from them. A successful viral b2b marketing campaign that comes to mind is from Serena Software and their Mash It video that took over facebook and drove tons of traffic to the website. I think the amount of awareness a company can get from viral campaigns is how you need to gauge the success.

Suparna · 1 month ago

Kate, thank you for this post. It's great to have some examples of b2b cases that have worked. I agree with Mark that ultimately everthing boils down to money coming in and that is what will convince . However, other aspects such as driving traffic to a website and brand awareness are also what some businesses find important. So thanks to both you and Mark and I look forward to reading future posts.

Jason Ball · 1 month ago

Thanks for the post Kate, good stuff there.

I agree with the other commenters that ultimately the business must make money from its activity. However, the link between social media activity and final sales is not often a direct one. It's important to determine what role social activity plays in the entire process and to be clear about the specific metrics for that individual part. (This is especially important in B2B where we are typically dealing with complex sales often over extended timelines.)

So we may decide that one facet of our activity is there to generate awareness and visits to our site. Another maybe to deliver engaging content at different stages of the sale.

This is where social media ties in to marketing automation and where we can plan in the different triggers that improve our chances of a sale. Then we get a far better picture of precisely which activity is delivering which results (and tune our approach as we go). It's in no way perfect, but it's a start.