Latest Forrester Report Provides A POST Up Strategy For Firms To Tap Into Social Media

Authored by Forrester’s Senior Analyst Laura Ramos, the report, titled “Making Social Media Work in BtoB Marketing,” showcased the learnings between what consumer based social media marketing has evolved into, and what BtoB social media may look like in the future. As the report highlights, those marketers who focus shortsightedly on social media tools rather than the behavior of the audience, will fail to recognize and follow the practices and disciplines needed to embrace the strong community aspects of the Web 2.0 world.

Ramos notes that many BtoB marketers simply have not been able to see the value in Web 2.0 tactics just yet. “Few marketers can say that these media help them to fill the pipeline,” she says. “It's a lack of track record and experience at work here. Social media also requires marketers to stick with it in order to build community trust and following. Today, I think too many B2B marketers approach social media as if it were just another channel. They expect to write a blog and have it generate leads without first determining if they have the right audience, the ability to reach them and something interesting to say - over time - once they get their attention.”

While 25% of the survey’s respondents think social networks and online communities help to build brand awareness, they can’t connect these tactics to the sales pipeline. Respondents don’t know how to size or measure the impact that social media has on buyers. While they see Webinars, microsites and rich media apps delivering qualified leads, respondents scratch their heads about the value that viral video and social network marketing provide, with 31% saying it is “too early to tell” for social networks and 68% saving the same for video marketing.

Ramos says BtoB marketers cling to traditional tactics because they are more familiar with them.
“We looked at cost per lead about 18 months ago and found two main problems: marketers don't know how to apportion lead costs to opportunities or they have very different definitions of what a "lead" is,” she says. “ Even if you normalize reported lead costs by average cost of the sale, the numbers vary from a few dollars to several hundred. So cost per lead, we feel, is a difficult thing to benchmark.”

Emphasizing that many BtoB buyers are more willing to listen to peers than seek advice from a vendor’s sales representative, the POST methodology suggests BtoB firms should focus on audience and objectives first and avoid deploying social technologies as just another communication channel customer will choose to avoid. The four core steps of Forrester’s POST strategy are:

People: Ramos emphasizes it is essential to understand buyer’s social behavior. She suggests conducting primary research to differentiate which social behavior—and tendencies to engage—work w across industries and geographies, then create processes that build on customer profiles over time.

Objectives: After learning about the social behavior of your customers, the report suggests companies should then build objectives based on audience. Besides the five consumer-centric strategies—listen, talk, energize, support and embrace—Ramos points out that BtoB social strategy can also help vendors spread their influence and relationship inside customer accounts as social activities help customers adopt vendor products and services as a new business capability.

Strategy: Long-term social activity helps firms change relationships with customers. Once marketers know what marketing should accomplish, the report suggest the next steps in setting BtoB social media strategy are to describe how marketing will facilitate new relationships with customers; identify the assets and resources needed to sustain the relationship; anticipate any barriers or impediments; and, most importantly, determine how to measure the impact of the relationship change.

Technology: Understanding target audience profiles lets marketers know which technologies they will adopt and at what rate. The report emphasizes aligning objectives and strategy against profiles puts marketers in the best position to evaluate which technologies matter most in the marketing mix. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, BtoB marketers can avoid turning social tactics into outbound marketing tools, Ramos states.