B2B social media marketing: What works–paid or organic?
B2B companies, or those who provide products and services to other businesses, rather than directly to a consumer (B2C), know that social media is an essential part of any good marketing strategy.
While you’re not necessarily targeting shoppers who might buy immediately through Instagram Shop, you still need to ensure that your target audience (the decision-makers at the businesses you serve) are aware of what you have to offer so you can continue growing your reach, attracting new customers, and expanding your business.
Whether you are starting from scratch to develop a B2B social media strategy for your business or are re-thinking the plan you currently have in place, both paid and organic should be on your radar.
You’ve likely heard different things about both of these kinds of marketing tactics, but how can you apply them in real life to your social efforts? Let’s take a look.
Organic vs. paid: Strategies, pros and cons
First, a quick refresh on organic vs. paid social marketing.
Organic social media marketing includes posting to your social media accounts, where your followers will be able to see your content. Those using hashtags to find content or your followers’ network may also see your content through hashtags or sharing.
While it doesn’t usually offer the kind of reach that paid social does, it’s typically the best way to nurture a genuine connection with current and potential customers at a large scale because it’s more authentic and establishes a brand voice and personality.
Paid social media marketing, on the other hand, is social content that you pay for to target a specific audience. It’s essentially digital advertising on social media platforms. You pay the platform, and they will share this content with the people you tell it to. It’s usually the best way to target new audiences and convert them into customers.
Both of these options have their pros and cons in terms of B2B social marketing, so let’s see what they bring to the table for your business.
Some of the pros and cons for organic B2B social media marketing include:
Pros:
Build brand awareness
Act as customer service
Build relationships
Cons:
Limited audience reach
Time-consuming
Meanwhile, the pros and cons for B2B paid social ads include:
Pros:
Micro-targeting smaller audiences
Reach new audiences that are not followers
Fast results
Guaranteed visibility
Cons:
High competition
Costly
Less authentic
Know your platforms
Before diving into any specifics, you first want to know where your time and energy is best spent, platform-wise. While B2C brands may find the most luck on social networks like Instagram and Facebook, B2B companies have a different audience, and they aren’t normally spending their days scrolling on Instagram looking for vendors or partners.
Data shows that Twitter and LinkedIn are by far the two most powerful social media platforms for B2B businesses that want to grow and expand their reach. Between these two platforms, however, LinkedIn is showing a lot of great potential as of late.
In a 2020 report from Leadtail, B2B companies showed 2.01% follower growth on Twitter as compared to a 7.79% follower growth on LinkedIn. Results were similar for engagement. Twitter showed a 1.06% engagement rate, while LinkedIn produced a 3.53% engagement rate.
You should also know what kind of content works best on each platform. LinkedIn is a great place to share thought leadership articles, while Facebook can be a great place to showcase your amazing company culture. Twitter can be amazing for connecting with customers, especially in a customer service light, and it can also be great for announcing events.
Paid marketing where it counts
Paid marketing is an excellent way to hone in on specific audience groups your business wants to target and convert them into leads or customers. However, because you’re paying for the content and the coverage, you only want to use paid social marketing where it counts so you can get the most bang for your buck.
To figure out where your audience spends time, and thus, what the best platform is to use paid social, start by developing buyer personas.
When you understand who your buyer is, what motivates them, where they spend their time, how they scout for vendors or partners, and what challenges they face, you’ll have a better game plan on how and where to approach them, what message to use, and what call to action to employ.
This process may reveal that your C-suite executives spend most of their social media time on LinkedIn, which may then lead to paid ads for your services targeting demographics and locations of that persona.
Alternatively, it could show that the mid-level managers are more apt to be on Facebook, and thus you’d want to allocate your paid social dollars and attention to that platform.
Don’t forget organic
While paid marketing can be a highly effective tool to target and convert specific groups, organic marketing cannot be overlooked and is the foundation for any successful social strategy.
Organic social is the backbone of your social presence. It’s the daily or weekly posts that you create and publish, it’s the time spent responding to messages and comments from customers, and it’s even commenting and engaging on other brands’ posts to take part in the social community. It’s also a direct connection to your existing customers.
While it takes a lot of time (and effort), organic B2B social media marketing is always worth it. It builds trust with your audience, builds your SEO reputability, and forces you to focus on content that performs well and adds value.
Whereas paid content will get to the right people no matter what, organic content’s reach is determined in part by the ever-changing algorithms and engagement, so the better the content, the better its reach.
A happy medium
Paid and organic social media are inextricably tied together and both are important for B2B social media marketing. You can’t run a paid social campaign without first having an organic social presence.
The trick to getting the most out of both paid and organic social media? Find a happy medium and balance between the two, setting the tone with a solid organic content strategy and embellishing it with paid content as needed to attract and convert specific audiences and expand your reach.
Want some help thinking through your B2B social media strategy? Set up some time to chat with us.
