Why Industrial Companies Need to Reconsider Social Media Marketing

 

I know you hear about it, because according to an Intel survey, 85% of U.S. adults share information online, and one third of U.S. adults are more COMFORTABLE using online communication than talking in person.  You probably hear about it from your kids, colleagues, even customers. Maybe you’ve done a little snooping and found some competitors on Twitter, or Facebook.  Even so, you simply can’t envision how it can benefit your manufacturing or industrial service company.  Tweet about pumps?  Fill a Facebook page with status updates about mechanical seals?  It’s Social Media Marketing: and it’s so misunderstood in the industrial arena.  The unbelievers usually fall into one of three categories:  the ones who have never used social media themselves; the ones who are interested but don’t know how to use it in a way that benefits their company; and those who think there is simply no value in social media marketing for an industrial business.  If you fall into one of those three categories, I hope I can make you reconsider.

Social media naturally creates more traffic to your website: primary and secondary.

Primary traffic is visitors to your website who come directly from your social media pages. Secondary traffic is referral traffic from people who share your posts.  When someone shares your post on their Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media page, it is exposed to a whole different group of followers, and some of those followers will also visit your website.  This is called viral marketing, and the beauty of it is that you only had to make one post: then the viral effect takes over without any further action on your part.

Social media marketing will eventually raise your search engine ranking.

Your social media posts will create back-links to your website.  Simply put: back-links = higher search engine ranking.  Here’s the way Google looks at it: when a website has a large number of natural links from trusted domains, it has more “authority.” Consistent social media posts will eventually build more links to your website, which will in turn bring more visitors to the site via search engines.

Social media generates business opportunities as you form a network.

Social networking connects you with a vast number of online users and can generate leads of all kinds for most businesses. The opportunity won’t always lead to a sale; but you may form strategic alliances, or partnerships, find new vendors, investors, or employees.  As the people in your network come to recognize you as a leader at what you do, they will HELP you find business opportunities by sharing your posts or referring you to a colleague.

Social media can improve the image and increase the credibility of your company.

A strong social media presence is a great way to improve (or create) a company’s image, or persona.  Even if you have multiple individuals posting for your social media pages, there should be a strategy in place that outlines the tone and style of the posts.  By sharing content that is relative and has true value to your networks, your company will build credibility in its field, and increase its trustworthiness. Over time, this will increase brand awareness and recognition.

Social media is the new “cold call” and accelerates the sales cycle.

If you are truly engaging with individuals you’ve identified in your network as potential customers, you have already become someone they “know.” It could take months of voice mail messages and finally, a face to face meeting to cultivate this impression before the days of social media.  Creating an online relationship is important, but it’s the conduit for a phone call and then face-to-face meeting.  At the end of the day, in the B2B world, you are probably not going to get a sale from someone who has never spoken to you on the phone or met you in person.

Social media marketing is relatively low cost with the potential for high returns.

If done by someone in your company, costs are limited to the time that individual spends on social media marketing.  Even if you hire an outside firm to manage your social media for you, over the course of a year, the total cost would be less than one print ad every month in a decent trade journal.  And what do you actually get from those?  Brand awareness?  Maybe …  Unless you have deep pockets for marketing, there’s no better bang for your buck than social media.

Social media integrates well with other marketing initiatives.

Content marketing (blogs, video, white papers, webinars) naturally feeds your social media pages.  You ARE blogging, right?  Developing content is hard work.  Why not use it in as many ways possible?  You know the old marketing saying: “Tell ‘em, tell ‘em, and tell ‘em again.” People are exposed to so much messaging between email and the Internet in a day’s time, you’d better expose them to yours in numerous ways, or it will just get lost in the chatter.

Social media use is not going away, in fact it is accelerating.

Industrial companies disregard social media at their own risk.  The larger consumer population is adopting this form of engagement, and if industry doesn’t get in the game, one day they will realize they’ve been left in the dust.  Industrial companies, just like other B2B and B2C brands, need to speak to the larger issues that their end users care about–and they need to do it online in the places where their end users go to learn, do research, find vendors, and decide which companies are worthy of following and which are not.  Industrial companies may never have millions of Twitter followers or Facebook fans, but the more they do to build brands with an image of customer value and social responsibility, the better positioned they will be in the future. In the Digital Age, speed and transparency are the rule, not the exception. That means every B2B needs to start marketing like a B2C.