As you probably already know by now, social media marketing is an essential part of any comprehensive digital marketing strategy. With millions of people browsing through social media feeds every day, you have an opportunity to expand your brand’s reach, improve visibility across various platforms, and achieve many sales and marketing goals in 2022 and beyond.
And, according to the latest content marketing statistics in the social media realm, over 84% of B2B decision-makers use social media nowadays. With that in mind, to maximize the potential of your social media campaigns and efforts, you need to know the difference between B2C and B2B SM marketing. It can be difficult to differentiate between the two if you are a decision-maker without a lot of experience in social media marketing, but these differences can make a big impact.
That’s why today we are taking a look at B2B and B2C social media, what sets the two apart, and how to optimize your own social strategies according to your industry and niche.
1. B2B vs B2C marketing funnel
First things first, we need to differentiate between the B2B and B2C sales funnels in order to better understand the journey, and the steps, that your customers need to reach a successful sale. Keep in mind, though, that modern marketing and sales funnels don’t end there, and in fact continue towards loyalty, repeat sales, and lifelong brand advocacy.
Knowing these differences will allow you to create a winning social media funnel for your brand and business model.
Both in the B2C and B2B marketing funnels, we can map the same steps, but the actions required from your sales and marketing experts can differ greatly to achieve the desired results and outcomes.
You can use that information to optimize your social media funnel. While B2C campaigns might focus on delivering product information for customers in the interest stage, B2B campaigns should focus on using social media to build social proof through reviews, testimonials, and case studies.
2. Lead generation and building email lists
Social media marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads and build your email list, but the way you do it in the B2B and B2C spheres will differ greatly. From the content you create to the messaging and tone of voice, all the way to the kind of incentives you promote to engage with your audience - there are differences in style and execution that you should follow.
Remember that you need to optimize your messaging and content on professional social media platforms like LinkedIn, depending on where the customer is on their journey. When building a B2B lead generation strategy on social media, you will be using incentives such as free product demos and subscription discounts to get people to your website or to interact with you directly on the platform. As for LinkedIn lead generation, it requires a professional tone of voice, focusing on establishing credibility and providing valuable insights to your target audience. By strategically utilizing LinkedIn's features and targeting options, you can effectively reach and convert qualified leads within the professional community.
When it comes to B2C lead generation and building email lists, on the other hand, you need to focus on delivering compelling, personalized content that will inspire people to keep up with your brand. If the products are relevant to the consumer, they are more likely to join your email list.
3. Optimizing dynamic advertising for B2B and B2C
A big part of social media marketing is social advertising, which goes hand in hand with regular social media management. While social media management is not as costly as advertising, it’s important to remember that investing in dynamic creative ads in particular can have a big impact on your lead generation, website traffic, and conversion potential.
Facebook dynamic ads, for example, will provide different types of ads for the same products depending on a variety of audience factors.
Dynamic creative ads are ads that are specialized and personalized to the individual, and these ads will differ between B2B and B2C. These ads will lead to your website and your social media landing pages, and they can serve a variety of purposes depending on the user intent.
While B2C oriented dynamic ads will focus on product variety and, for example, free shipping and other perks, B2B dynamic ads can focus on curating the product or service selection to the unique needs of potential clients.
What’s more, location is a big component of these ads. For local businesses like a chiropractor in Calgary, for example, dynamic ads can bring in only local customers and prevent wasting advertising potential on different regions.
Combined with demographic and geo-targeting data, these ads can become very nuanced to ensure high CTR and engagement, for a specific type of audience and their location.
4. Getting people from social media to your site
One of the main reasons why you’re investing in social media in the first place is to guide your followers to your website and turn them into paying, loyal customers. Your dynamic ads will serve this purpose, but so will every piece of content you publish on social platforms.
On your website’s side, however, you want to collect important visitor data and use website visitor tracking to figure out where your visitors are coming from, who they are, and get other valuable information. Why is this important? Because visitor tracking leads to effective lead scoring, meaning that you can qualify your leads better and use their data to better optimize your approach to different social media platforms and how you manage them.
This can be especially beneficial for businesses operating in different locations. If someone is looking for custom home builders in Delaware, they need to come to a localized landing page on the website that will fit their needs. This is one of the reasons why website visitor tracking is important, as it allows you to see which of your localized social media pages led the customer to your site.
It’s a closed loop that feeds other parts of your digital marketing strategy, so to empower your social media efforts, be sure to track who comes to your website and where they come from.
5. Optimizing social media copy for maximum engagement
Content will always be king in digital marketing, and while it may change types (video is currently the most popular content type), there’s no denying that content is what gets people engaged on social platforms. Both in B2B and B2C you need exceptional content and you need to know how to write headlines that will capture the people’s attention and inspire them to act.
Remember that your content and overall tone of voice is an integral part of your social media style guide as well, as you need to ensure consistency across all platforms. To optimize your content, you need to know your audience first and foremost.
B2B followers will differ greatly from B2C followers, and will want to see different types of content, at different times, with a unique brand voice. Make sure to research your audience, identify their values, wants and needs, and pain points, and start creating highly-relevant, personalized content.
6. B2B and B2C social media mistakes to avoid
There are many social media marketing mistakes that business leaders, and marketers, make on a daily basis. These include:
- Not researching your audience
- Not having a consistent brand identity
- Not having a social media planner and posting schedule
- Using a generic tone of voice and messaging
- Focusing on yourself instead of your followers
- Ignoring negative feedback
- Not diversifying your content
- Not offering occasional incentives such as special offers
- Not using live events to engage with your audience
You need to avoid all of these mistakes to build a stronger relationship with your following, but it’s important to optimize your approach for B2B or B2C.
Key takeaways
If you want to maximize the potential of your social media efforts in 2022 and beyond, you need to differentiate between B2B and B2C, and apply the right tactics for your industry and business model. Now that you know how the two are different and what sets them apart, go ahead and build a more concrete, strategic approach to your SM marketing and take your brand to new heights in 2022.