Three [Data-Backed] Marketing Tactics B2B Brands Need to Consider

With ever tougher trading conditions across the board, staying on the pulse of customer needs is crucial for B2B marketers.

Our latest GWI research indicates that B2B decision makers are influenced in multiple ways when researching products and services and we’ve identified three of these which can be quickly harnessed and used to your advantage in your marketing strategy…

1. Make Your Social Channels Work Harder

While it may seem obvious to maintain a strong social media presence, it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of posting lots and hoping something sticks, or worse, letting AI do the heavy lifting and hoping it resonates.

With 49% of B2B decision makers in the UK saying social media posts from companies are useful for product research, it’s important not to underestimate the power of quality social content.  But what should this look like exactly?

• Prioritising quality over quantity: It’s all too easy to assume you need to be on every social channel because a competitor is, but it’s much better to own the space you’re in, and create solid foundations for two to three channels before moving onto a new platform
• Prioritising quality over quantity…again: Likewise with post frequency — more is not necessarily better, both from an algorithmic point of view, and in terms of the outputs you’ll be producing.  Instead, try to send out three posts a week that will really land with your audience and drive action, rather than six posts that aren’t well thought through
• Don’t be afraid to experiment: You may have noticed more and more LinkedIn posts using the carousel layout, enabling you to scroll through several images. The format is designed to compel the user to keep reading (in fact, a client recently told me she’d reached slide 89 of one such post without even realising, which – anecdotally at least – illustrates how effective carousels can be!). Many brands won’t have tried out this new format because they stick with what they know, and this is where their ability to keep their audience engaged takes a hit. By retaining the same old content formula, the audience begins the see the posts as wallpaper, scrolling past. Adding variety to your feed helps to combat this, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of what your audience is receptive to

2. Thought Leadership is (Still) Key

While thought leadership has long been a valued tool in the armoury of the B2B marketer (see my colleague Tom’s thoughts on this), it’s easy to mistake simply using a person within the business as a vehicle for promotion for creating a true thought leader. And with more than one third of UK B2B decision makers saying posts from thought leaders are useful in product research, it’s important not to get it wrong.

I could cover the myriad ways you can build an industry profile (via media, blogs, speaker opportunities etc.), but my focus here is on social media, more specifically on LinkedIn, which possesses an algorithm that prioritises people content over that of a company page:

• Don’t create a corporate mouthpiece: As I alluded to above, what we want to avoid is simply copy and pasting company page content onto a personal profile. Ensure that any post includes value, an opinion, a question. Don’t just look to sell because that’s not what your audience wants to hear (think how much of that they already get)
• Resharing is good…resharing with a comment is much better: While I love to see people using their profiles to support the company page with a reshare, I can’t tell you how much more effective it is to add a comment. Not only does it avoid the reshare looking tokenistic, but it also adds context, commentary and value, and generates more buy-in from the reader

3. UGC Lives ON!

Is UGC a topic we’ve talked about before? Absolutely. Do brands continue to maximise it for the content-rich tactic it is? Not necessarily.

And with our research showing that 56% of B2B decision makers in the UK say posts from current users of the product are useful, it’s not one to ignore.

In a world of AI, bots and spam, trust and authenticity are buzzwords that aren’t going anywhere, and are only going to grow in importance as the world tries to make sense of what is real and what is fake news.

Credibility is a huge part of any brand make-up, and harnessing the sentiment of peer word-of-mouth is a surefire way to cut through the noise in the growing space of mistrust that is the internet. So, what could this look like for you?

• Don’t shun low-fi content: I’ve heard marketers reject the notion of using UGC on the basis that the images and videos aren’t high-production enough, like their other more polished brand assets. The world, however, says otherwise: we’ve moved on from high-spec corporate videos and the rise of more raw, authentic social media has made room for even the most corporate of B2B businesses to join the trend and consider including more naturalistic content. If anything, viewing a product in its true environment, without the sheen of an expensive camera lens, can make the user feel more trust and gain more buy-in
• Hashtags are your friends: Users may not always tag your product, but they’ll often use hashtags searchable by you, which can help you find them. If a heating engineer proudly displays their latest install on social media, they’ll often use a hashtag related to said install, and sometimes as specific as the brand of the boiler they’ve fitted. The moral of the story? Don’t rely on being tagged to find the people endorsing you

So, there you have it, the data doesn’t lie and your B2B marketing strategy would do well to pay attention to it!

If you’d like to learn more about social media strategy, feel free to reach out to Alex Dixon, our senior social media strategy director.

The author: Alex Dixon is a senior social media strategy director at WPR who specialises in using LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X to keep clients ahead of the curve when it comes to social media marketing.