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Social Media Marketing

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B2B Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Social Media Marketing

At this point you should already realize that social media isn’t just a place where friends and family connect, share photos and like posts.

Social has become a repository of knowledge, similar to the search engines, but more affinity driven by relationships and trusted sources.

If you want to know who to use for internet law, who can help you with an ESOP or what company is building quality apps, then social is a great place to get real feedback and reviews from people who have ACTUALLY used those services or know their work.

A B2B Social Media Strategy

Understanding how your target customers are using social media is key to gaining visibility, providing education to and engaging with these targets.

  1. Customers are asking their network for recommendations
  2. They are qualifying your company on social media
  3. These targets are educating themselves on your products & services

Has Anyone Heard of this Company?

A go to question asked by many business owners, executives, directors, buyers, managers, etc.
This is very powerful.

If an executive reaches out to their network asking for personal feedback on a company and one of their peers responds with good things to say, then you are on your way to landing new business.

While not every business will get a personal recommendation, if you have been marketing yourself well, then someone will at least know of you and respond with something like “I’ve seen this company and they look like they know what they are doing.”.
This is the next best thing, because you have built a small amount of social capital and trust with this target.

This stage of discovery is very important and completes the infinite loop of growth through marketing, which you can see clearly in our content marketing funnel (which is more of an hourglass), where past customers become salesmen for your business.

Who Are You Really?

Once a customer has been made aware of your business, whether it was from a referral on social media or they got nothing on social and asked the wise search engine Google, they will absolutely look your company up on social media.
Again this is a critical B2B Social Media step.

While the majority of B2B product & services companies are served well on LinkedIn, it is important to understand that these same customer targets have social profiles on many platforms and will look to find you where they are at in the moment (this could be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest in addition to LinkedIn).
Plus, you will have a more diverse result in the search engines with a cross-platform social media presence. More results, Knowledgegraph inclusions, image results, Twitter feed, etc.

These customers will look to see if you are a legitimate business and size you up to see if you are a good fit.
Questions like “Are they too big?”, “Are they too small?”, “Do they think like I think?”, and many more. This is where being clear on your own brand and business is important, because it will qualify buyers for you in a very efficient way, driving better leads into your sales funnel.

At this point two main things will happen.
A customer will contact you via phone, form submission or email (they will find this info on your social profiles, if you have built them out completely).
Or the customer will educate themselves more on a specific product or service.

How Will Your Product or Service Help Me?

This is what most businesses think of as soon as they hear B2B Social Media or Social Media Strategy.
And rightfully so, because it is so critical.

Customers need to understand:

  • What problem you solve
  • What you sell / solution you provide
  • How it works
  • Why it fits their needs
  • Why you are better or different
  • Your process

Social Media is a great place to get this clarifying, compelling and enlightening content in front of prospective buyers.
These customers are comparing you to your competitors and the more you can educate them, the better chance you have of winning that business.

While you will want this content to primarily live on your website, social is the channel you will distribute this educational material to ensure it gets seen and gets the buyer back to your site where you can convert them or reach back out and communicate in other ways.

Types of B2B Content for Social Media

  • Blog Posts
  • Whitepapers
  • Ebooks
  • One Sheeters
  • Video
  • Infographics
  • Research Papers
  • Webinars
  • Case Studies
  • Podcasts

Depending on your product or service the mix of B2B content types will differ and the tactical strategy for each channel can be tailored as well.

B2B Social Media Research & Tactics

As with any marketing you should conduct research to identify key information to that will guide the marketing efforts. B2B Social Media is no different.

Our recommendation is to take the research beyond social as well by using Google search query data (the keywords) and pair it with social media research on your target customers social platforms, including the less thought about forums and groups such as Quora and LinkedIn groups.

Creating an inventory of who your target prospects is very important and taking this even further by identifying the stakeholders in those companies and engaging with their personal accounts on social will drive massive results.

This leads us to a few specific tactics that we recommend for a superior B2B Social Media Strategy.

Following and engaging with the business accounts of your prospective customers, the individual accounts of the decision makers of those businesses and the same for your current customers will create much-needed visibility, awareness, affinity and trust with the organizations that you want to do business with.

  • Like, Comment & Share Posts
  • Favorite, Reply & Retweet
  • Like & Comment using Video

This exposes you to the businesses you want to work with and gets your customers talking about you more, while at the same time you are indirectly getting in front of other potential customers who also engage with the same companies you are targeting.

This works like a charm and very few businesses are doing this!

You can learn more about our approach to social media here: https://acumenstudio.com/social-media-marketing-agency/

How Do I Know If It’s Working?

To be 100% Honest, this isn’t easy for most businesses.
Tracking, monitoring, analyzing, measuring and reporting to identify an ROI on your B2B marketing and social media efforts takes using platforms that can help you measure impact, attribution, and sales.
Most businesses are not equipped to do this (as are most marketers!).

You will either need to educate yourself on using platform specific social media analytics, social media tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, SproutSocial, etc. or hire an agency to help you with this.

What we can tell you is that social media for B2B companies Pays Off BIG!

 

Download a Social Media Case Study Below to Learn More

Or, You can give us a call now at 866-357-7422 to talk.

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    B2B Content Marketing, B2B Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing

    The Everchanging LinkedIn Campaign Manager

    Another day, another change to the ad creation interface. It seems like everytime it’s time to go and create a new campaign, setting up the ad has a different user experience.

    In February, LinkedIn launched the new objective-based campaign experience. Like the name, this new experience is focused on the objective of the campaign first. To put it simply, you as the marketer decide what the focus of the campaign is going to be whether it’s website visits or engagement, then the rest of the campaign creation matches that objective.

     

    While most of the format has the same options and functionality, it’s still something to get used to.

     

    What’s New in the LinkedIn Campaign Manager

    In the objective-based experience, there are a number of new items to be aware of.

    • The objective is at the top of the page and must be selected before moving forward with any other part of the campaign.
    • The audience selection and targeting criteria comes next and is broken out by language, location, audience attributes (company, demographics, education, job experience, interests), then matched audiences (website audiences and list uploads). Each of criteria has deeper criteria listed within. Like the old experience, depending on the criteria you select, other criteria won’t be available.
    • The budget, bid type and conversion tracking also must be complete before setting up the ad creative.

     

    <h2>Benefits of the New Format</h2>

    The number one benefit to this new experience is that it makes the campaign creation simpler by streamlining it to fit what the objective is. It also offers automated bidding for that objective as well.

    Even though it’s another new experience, there are definitely huge benefits to the new experience.

     

    Call Us at 314-736-4434

    Or Submit your information below

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      B2B Content Marketing, B2B Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing

      Google Plus social network will be shutting down soon from security issues and lack of use. Google Plus has been around for seven long years. When Google Plus first came out Google had employees use it and wanted them to encourage others to use it.  Google+ even influenced search results to get more people to use it. For a short time the more +1s a company received the higher their rankings started to climb, until Google slowly stopped pushing Google+ then less Googlers were posting on Google+. Some people liked Google Plus and others absolutely hated it causing a slow death to Google Plus.

       

      Google Plus Data Breach Killed It

      Google Plus data breach was the final straw in killing the Google+ platform.  Here’s how it happened, in 2018 Google started Project Strobe reviewing third-party data access and privacy controls. Project Strobe discovered users were not using Google+ and discovered data privacy issues with APIs. That’s when Google discovered the bug and patched it right away. However, they still covered it up and never told anyone until later. This affected 500,000 Google+ accounts with 438 applications using the APIs. Although, Google didn’t find any evidence of Google+ user data being abused they decided to end Google+ and put it to rest.  

       

      Project Strobe top four findings are:

      1. Consumer Expectations and maintenance. Google+ wasn’t meeting consumer expectations and the challenges of Google+ APIs were complicated.
      2. Consumers wanted more control over the data they share. Google is implementing more control over access. Instead of one screen of requested permission we will start seeing separate requests for each one.
      3. Consumers didn’t like granting access to apps to their data.  It’s finally happening, not all apps will be able to get your information. Google is limiting the amount of the apps that can get permission to your Gmail information. Apps that enrich email will be the only ones authorized to get your data. This includes email clients, backup services and email productivity services from mail merge and customer relationship management systems.  
      4. Call Logs and SMS permissions limited on Android devices. Android Contacts API will no longer be able to get your contacts list information.

       

      Google+ Was Slowly Dying Before The Security Breach

      Google+ was already dying way before the security breach.  Google+ consumer engagement and usage dropped with most sessions only lasting five seconds or less. Most people argue that Google+ is designed for Google and not the consumers. Google+ was dying, but the final death of Google+ was the security breach the bug that ended it all. Maybe, Google has something better up their sleeve time will tell.

       

      Call Us at 314-736-4434

      Or Submit your information below

       

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        B2B Content Marketing, B2B Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Social Media Marketing

        90% of marketers say that Segmenting Your B2B Content Marketing is important.

        BUT only 45% of marketers are actually doing this!

        We’re not surprised by this because we know it’s not that easy.

        The thing is that by doing this level of market segmentation will provide BIG Results.

        It’s not our opinion, This is a Fact!

         

        Here is a real example of how we’ve seen this work (and it’s really simple)

        An Engineering company had a service that was specific to servicing public parks.

        They wanted to get their offering in front of the decision makers who could hire them to do this work.

        They wanted to run ads in specific cities to promote their service.

        But that was it, run ads targeting all people in those cities.

         

        BAD IDEA!

         

        While targeting specific cities is a level of segmentation, it’s not even close to good enough.

        They would have wasted a ton of money.

        So we investigated with them further and found that the people they really needed to get in front of were Parks and Recreation Directors, City Managers and Mayors.

        And guess what? We can target those people!

        We put a campaign in place targeting All Three of those job titles on LinkedIn and Facebook. Created ads that messaged directly to them and led them to a landing page that again spoke directly to them.

        City + Job Title = Winning Combination

         

        “To be honest we went even deeper with them but we’ll keep it simple for our example.”

         

        This is a perfect example of how this works.  Especially when this campaign was generating 5 – 15 leads per day for months!

        Takeaways are to Know Your Audience / Customer / Buyer / Investor demographics, traits and characteristics so they can be targeted and Know their Pain Points, Questions and Philosophies so you can message them correctly.

         

        Know Your Audience for Segmentation

        This is the MOST IMPORTANT part of all because it will maximize your effort.  It’s getting in front of the right people.

        • Geography (country, state, city)
        • Industry
        • Company(ies)
        • Job Title(s)
        • Age Range
        • Sex
        • Etc.

        These elements allow you to target very specifically, not waste ad spend and generate way more leads than you ever have in the past.

         

        Messaging for Segmentation

        Saying what they want to hear and need to hear.

        For us message segmentation is more about solving a problem and speaking very clearly about how that is done.  We don’t fluff it up with ambiguous words that will leave people confused as to what you actually do.

        • What are current industry wide problems
        • What are trends your prospects are talking about
        • What problems do you solve that these prospects are facing most often
        • What does your prospect care about
        • What is your prospects asking most often?

        Answering these questions leads to clear and compelling messaging for your campaign and content strategy.

         

        If you have been struggling to create a content marketing strategy that actually delivers results, leads, customers and revenue then follow the steps we outline in this post or call us with questions if you need help.

         

        Call Us at 314-736-4434

        Or Submit your information below

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          B2B Content Marketing, B2B Digital Marketing, Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Social Media Marketing

          Facebook ads are typically a part of most successful B2B digital marketing & content marketing campaigns.
          This platform has become increasingly more complex over the years, but is very powerful at getting in front of prospective customers.

          To guarantee you’re maximizing ad spend and generating High ROI from your Facebook Ad Efforts we wanted to make sure you had a guide that would give you the best advice possible in making that happen.

          • Only 2 out of 9 B2B companies that run Facebook ads have a strategy
          • 79% of B2B Marketers say Facebook Ads are one on the best places to target buyers
          • 87% of B2B Facebook ads generate at least a 5X return when used in combination with a strategy

          If you are wondering why your current Facebook Ads haven’t produced the ROI you hoped for then take a look at these B2B Social Media recommendations for Facebook Ads in our easy to follow guide.

          Download Your B2B Facebook Ads Bidding Guide

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            B2B Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing

            Mobile video is changing everything.
            We’ve gone from passively consuming video to interacting with it in deeper, more personal ways.

            Twitter is a place where people come to see what’s happening. It’s always been mobile, and always been live. That’s why we’ve seen video take off on the platform – creating a new world of opportunities for brands.

            Here are a couple video stats

            • 220x increase in video views on Twitter over the past 12 months
            • 6x more video shares than photo shares on Twitter
            • Click below for all video stats and case studies

            Download the Full PDF Here: https://acumenstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Acumen-Studio-Video-on-Twitter.pdf

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            Social Media Marketing

            In my many years as a digital citizen, few things have brought more joy to my heart than the schadenfreude of seeing companies firmly plant their feet in their mouths on social media as part of their digital marketing.

            It happens so often, with such alarming regularity, I often wondered how many job openings there would be for someone to work in digital marketing without making their company or client look like, well, an uninformed doofus.

            Thankfully, I found such a position at Acumen Studio, so I feel this platform is a great opportunity for me to share a few tips on how we help our clients with their social positioning. We’ll begin with an anecdote of my own (almost) failure:

            October 11 is “National Coming Out Day,” and we felt it was important as an agency to support the struggle of LGBTQ individuals all over the world by sharing something on social media. Many brands and companies participate in social issue discussions throughout the year, and frankly, some are hit or miss.

            Here’s what I came up with:

            Pretty solid, right? Edgy, without seeming too self-serving or overly corporate. We don’t lend our voice to the discussion to simply increase our name recognition, we do so because we care.

            Others, well…not so much.

            You see, the Seahawks won an important football game after overcoming a significant point deficit and…well, the specifics don’t matter so much as the idea that professional football does not equal the struggle of Martin Luther King. At all.

            Moving along, I wanted a quote for our National Coming Out Day post that spoke to the issue with Acumen’s unique voice, plus something that would fit in an Instagram photo. A bit of quick Google-fu landed me the following: “I hate the word homophobia. It’s not a phobia. You’re not scared. You’re an asshole.”

            This quote was attributed on the site I found it (along with several other quotes I recognized) to one Morgan Freeman. Yes, that Morgan Freeman.

            Seeing the issue yet?

            Having finished the design portion of the post, I was prepping the text and getting ready to publish when that nagging public relations and journalist part of my brain piped up. “Hey, do you remember how it’s the rush to be the first to post about something, or not really having professional input, that usually causes the biggest problems?”

            Thankfully, I heeded that voice; a quick check of Snopes.com told me no, Morgan Freeman had never said that. The “quote” was from a tweet from a parody Twitter account using an image of Freeman as its avatar. It had been falsely attributed around the internet ever since.

            Picture me, then, wiping my brow in relief. This potential bullet flew harmlessly over Acumen’s digital shoulder and we avoided a potential public relations nightmare.

            The point of this anecdote (and this entire post, really) boils down to this: one of the most underappreciated aspects of your company’s digital marketing strategy is public perception. Online communities are almost rabidly tenacious to catch corporate entities with their social pants down. If you want to arrest a ring of thieves, you hire an ex-thief because they understand the mindset of the target. If you want to avoid the harsh brand damage that can come with an ill-advised social media post, you come to me, because I understand social.

            Bane meme social media Tumblr

            What other digital marketing firm is going to offer that?

            To finish up, here’s a nice list, because the internet abhors a vacuum:

            • Don’t be in a rush to post about a trending topic for digital marketing without doing your research first.
            • Don’t let a single person brainstorm, create and post to social, no matter how trustworthy they are.
            • Do allow your brand or company to participate in social discussions, as it builds trust with current and future customers.
            • Do incorporate social discussions into your company culture, as it builds trust with current and future employees.
            • Finally, don’t use a meme you don’t understand. If you don’t quite get it, ask an intern. Or me.

            Zach is a content and digital marketing sorcerer who spent time on the high seas as a Mass Communication Specialist for the U.S. Navy before graduating from Southern Illinois University. Apart from his love of KPIs and the invention of the “Like”, good St. Louis ribs, and Cardinals baseball, he’s also got the greatest job in the world: being a dad.

             

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            B2B Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital Strategy, Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing

            For the 18 years that I (John Bracamontes) have done work online and in the digital marketing space, not once had I ever submitted work to be recognized as a job well done.
            My opinion was that the work spoke for itself, because I drove leads, and leads meant new sales, and new sales meant higher revenue for my clients.

             

            “Why Would I Need An Award To Show Greatness?”

             
            Is how I thought.

            I’ve seen over the years other agencies share in the successes of their teams and genuinely promote how great their clients are, which began to soften my perspective on the benefit of awards and recognition for the work outside of its result.

            I realized that uniting with a sense of pride on what you do for others, recognizing the value and celebrating together is massively powerful.

            So this year, Acumen submitted one entry in the St. Louis Business Marketing Association’s B2B Marketing Excellence Awards.

            That night the team was recognized for the work we did (and do), we had fun and celebrated together, celebrated with others and set a precedent for the future of the agency.

            No longer will we hide our wins and pride for the value we bring to those who choose to work with us!

            And Thanks to Kopytek.com for being such an amazing group to work with!

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