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Socail Media

Marketing B2B via Facebook: The Most Common Mistake You’re Probably Making

by Bill Cullifer on December 14, 2011

Interview with Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal.com of Portland. Ore.

Marketing B2B via Facebook: The Most Common Mistake You’re Probably Making Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Let’s say you run a business making websites for dentists. You might buy the keywords “dentist”, “dental marketing” and “dental websites” on Google. In between the consumers who are looking to get some cosmetic dentistry, teeth cleaning, or other procedures done, there is a sprinkling of dentists who are looking for marketing help.

Depending on the term, it could be 90%+ of these searches not being relevant, and at $5-10 a click, that’s a lot of irrelevant clicks to pay for to find a winner, even if that winner will pay you $10,000 for a new website.

The biggest problem with B2B is that when someone types in “dentist”, you don’t know if they are a dentist or if they are looking for a dentist.

The die-hard PPC folks will argue that you’re just not choosing the right keywords (go for more specific terms), don’t have enough negative keywords (exclude anyone searching with city terms—since these are likely consumers), or you’re not writing specific enough ad copy (supposedly, consumer won’t click on your ad if your title is “Hey Dentists!”) While these comebacks are true, they are missing the big point.

In B2B marketing, you must target WHO the user is, not WHAT they are searching on.

In search, you don’t know who the user is, but you have a clue by the nature of their search terms. In social, you know WHO the user is and you’re catching them before they search.

STEP 1: Isolate the Target

So while you can get a ton of consumer traffic by targeting “dentist” in Google, when you interest target “dentist” on Facebook, you’re targeting by job title and profession. Try it. In fact, try a number of job titles and see just how many chiropractors, teachers, plumbers, administrative assistants, and marketing managers there are out there.

Voila! Now you’ve pinpointed all the dentists, dental assistants, students studying to be dentists, retired dentists, and folks who have a dentist fetish—all of them on Facebook. Now narrow down to the specific target you want by age, location or even specialty—maybe you want to talk to just cosmetic dentists in California.

Add in lateral targets—magazines they read, associations they’re a part of, and so forth. You can read more about micro-targeting here.

STEP 2: Get Your Testimonials and Trust Signals

You probably thought I’d next talk about ads, which is what most people do. Nope, in social people don’t search—they are interrupted with banner ads. You can focus on ad copy in Google PPC because people are actively looking. In Facebook, you have to gently nudge people to take a look at you and momentarily distract them from spying on their friends, or whatever they happen to be doing on Facebook.

So you need distraction-worthy content, which comes in the form of what their friends are doing. If that potential dentist client of yours is perusing through what her friends did yesterday, she might be persuaded to click on news where those very friends are talking about your business—maybe how they used your software to get more traffic to their website, streamline billing operations, etc.

When you have a TON of testimonials (across Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on), paired with content that you’ve published in major outlets, paired with positive things that other reputable organizations have said about you—then it’s more likely they are coming to you versus you coming to them. Some people call this “inbound” or “pull” marketing because you’re leveraging that prospective friends to do the selling for you. Because, despite your Harvard MBA and years of business experience; sorry Charlie, they trust what their friends have to say more.

Ideally, get this content to live on your website or Facebook page, although this is not completely necessary. Let’s say that you wrote some compelling article in an industry journal. Send ad traffic directly to that site so you can leverage their trust. If you wrote your article correctly, the by-line (about the author piece at the end) will have a line or two about what you do. And if you did a good job creating real value in that article, as opposed to selling, they’ll contact you. No need to scream at them or place popup windows in their path—they’ll find you.

Step 3: Turn Your Ads On

You wouldn’t have a grand opening party without first making sure your place has plenty of food and drinks, right? In the same way, make sure you have the compelling content from Step 2 before you start advertising. Otherwise, you’re just wasting money.

Take the interest targets that you set up in Step 1 and pair it against the content you have in Step 2. Think about WHO you are talking to, not WHAT they might be searching on. For example, if they are a dental hygienist, what content is most compelling to them? What if they are a receptionist—what might they find interesting? You’ll find that you might not have super relevant content for everyone. That’s okay—you’re just testing at this stage. Later you can mix and match what combinations work best.

Note that this is NOT landing page optimization, which is more superficially about elements that comprise the landing page—the image, the size of the button, the headline, and so forth. We’re talking about the whole lead gen. lifecycle—creating a clear path between the targets, what we say to them, and what we want them to do. That last piece is the landing page—to get them to call the phone number, fill out the form, watch the video, etc.

Step 4: Run the Math

Set your Facebook campaign budgets low, perhaps $10 a day. Use the default CPC bids, since you don’t need to get into the nuances of how bidding works—this is not Google. What you care about is your Cost Per Click and conversion rates. CPC divided by conversion rate is your cost per lead, by the way. We created a calculator for your use, in case you are rusty on first semester statistics:

This is B2B, so your cost per lead could be over $100. Maybe you’re at $2 a click and 1 in 50 clicks results in a phone call. Maybe it’s a lot more because you’re selling something that costs thousands, so that a hundred dollars is an acceptable price. Or maybe you’re competing in New York City, where the price is exorbitant from all the advertisers that overlap one another from poor targeting.

Whatever the case, if you’re doing this on Facebook, you have to be prepared for seemingly negative ROI for the first few months. Why? Because we are catching people well before they are searching, so it could be months before they want that new website, CEREC machine, billing system, or whatever it is you’re advertising. With Google, the conversion timeframe might be that same visit. This is unlikely in your case, unless your product is an impulse buy and also under $100.

Some final thoughts:

We are often asked a common set of questions, so let’s address some of them here:

How big should my interest target be? You don’t need a thousand ads—just a handful that target just the people that you want to hit. If your interest target is over 10,000 people, then either you’re doing something wrong or your audience is nationwide.

Do I need new landing pages for Facebook? Probably. Video is what converts nowadays, so you probably need to fix your other landing pages while you’re at it. Camera shy? They aren’t choosing you for your good looks, so get your Flip video, some good lighting, and film a 2 minute intro. Say what you’d say if that dentist was sitting right in your office—don’t be “fake” or talk like a newscaster.

Will BlitzLocal do this for me? Sure, if you have at least $10k to spend in fees, not counting advertising budget. If you’re a dentist, we require only $2k a month in total (labor plus ad spend), since we’re targeting just one region and because our dental campaigns can be replicated. If we have to build something that is not reusable across many clients, then we have to charge more for it. We are not the cheapest game in town.

Do you offer free articles and training? I would love to use your service, but cannot afford it. Sure. Send a note to info@blitzlocal.com and we’ll send you some of our internal training materials. You can also post a question at facebook.com/blitzlocal, where others can see and benefit from what you ask.

About the Author:

Dennis Yu is Chief Executive Officer of BlitzLocal, a Webtrends partner that builds social media dashboards to measure brand engagement and ROI, specializing in the intersection of Facebook and local advertising. You can reach him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, his blog, or good old-fashioned email at dennis@blitzlocal.com. BlitzLocal is a leader in social and local advertising and analytics, creating mass micro-targeted campaigns. Mr. Yu is an internationally sought-after speaker and author on all things Facebook, and has been featured in National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Entrepreneur Magazine, CBS Evening News, and other venues.

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Social Media Marketing – ROI and Building your Brand

by Bill Cullifer on September 13, 2010

Social Media Marketing – ROI and Building your Brand Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Being Optimally Social – How Not Talking about Your Product Can Bring Huge Rewards

Today’s podcast “Being Optimally Social – How Not Talking about Your Product Can Bring Huge Rewards” interview with Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder SEOmoz took place at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, CA.

In this three minute audio podcast WOW’s roving reporter Jeri Hastava asks Rand for his advice regarding how to best to respond to clients who want immediate response from social marketing activity.

She also ask about the next big thing

Thank you Jeri and thank you Rand!

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Social Media for the Enterprise: A Cautionary Tale

by Bill Cullifer on July 12, 2010

Social Media for the Enterprise: A Cautionary Tale Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Social Media: A Cautionary Tale: Focus on Enterprise

Today’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Web 2.0 event that took place in San Francisco, CA. late last month.

Title of session: Social Media: A Cautionary Tale: Focus on Enterprise with Mike Gotta. Principal Analyst (Burton Group), Alice Wang, Director (Burton Group)
As social media solutions become more complex, IT organizations are becoming more involved to work with business strategists on ways to mitigate risks. Security, compliance, confidentiality, data loss prevention, brand reputation, and human resource concerns (i.e., ethics/conduct) are issues that organizations cannot ignore.

Related article recently published in the Sacramento Bee

Social media can help business, but it can bite back too
By Darrell Smith
Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 1D

Companies are swarming to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, hoping to boost their brands, connect with customers and even find new employees.

But they’re also struggling to rein in potential problems. Employers cringe at the thought of employees revealing proprietary information, hackers making mischief or a roomful of workers busy reconnecting with old high school friends on Facebook instead of doing their jobs.

The ubiquity of social networking – 77 percent of workers have a Facebook account, for example, and 61 percent of those access Facebook on the job, according to Boston-based Nucleus Research – complicates matters.

“Everyone’s on Facebook, even grandmothers,” said Amelya Stevenson, president of Granite Bay human resources consultancy e-VentExe. “Companies don’t want to limit their activity, but they have to arm themselves. It depends on the culture and if they trust their employees.”

Nucleus last July estimated that on-the-job use of Facebook alone costs companies 1.5 percent of total employee productivity.

Policies on employee use of social networks are all over the map, from total bans on internal access to no policy at all.

A 2009 survey by the Minneapolis-based Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics found that just one in three businesses have a general policy for employee online activity including use of social networks.

The survey – titled “Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Compliance: What are Companies Doing?” – also found that half have no policy for employee online activity outside work, and just 10 percent have a specific policy addressing social networking sites.

“So much of the Internet seems to come out of nowhere,” said society vice president Adam Turteltaub. “The pace of change is such that technology continues emerging and taking on a life of its own that we can’t control.”

Roy Snell, the society’s CEO, said employers should have a clear policy in place and supervisors to enforce it while encouraging their employees to use social media to network with their industry peers.

There’s no doubt that many companies and government agencies are finding ways to use social media as a highly effective information gateway.

Nearly 70 percent of small business marketers are employing social media, according to e-mail marketing firm AWeber Communications.

And social networks have become the go-to recruiting tool for employers who are hiring, said Burlingame-based Jobvite Inc. in its 2010 Social Recruiting Survey, with 83 percent using or planning to use the sites for recruiting.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson posts Twitter feeds on everything from his Greenwise Sacramento initiative to the NBA finals and has built a following in the thousands.

The Sacramento Police Department has its own Facebook page and posts updates on incidents across the city on its Twitter page.

Sacramento-based medical group Sutter Health posts Facebook updates, blogs on its MySutter sites and uploads video to YouTube, in an effort to better communicate with patients and utilize the expertise of its staff members.

Such activities have become a valuable tool linking physicians to patients and to other medical experts, said Sutter communications director Karen Garner, who helped develop the medical group’s social media policy.

Sutter does not block Internet access at many of its facilities, but much of its social media policy dovetails with its standard communication guidelines: Do not identify a patient’s identity or condition; do not share confidential employer information or trade secrets; keep personal Internet and e-mail use to a minimum.

Social media sites are “an integral tool” for city of Sacramento employees, said assistant city manager Cassandra Jennings, but internal use is monitored and tracked by IT staff to guard against abuse.

Some Internet sites are blocked; on others, a prompt asks employees if they have permission to view the site, Jennings said.

At Verizon Wireless, which has call centers in Folsom and Rancho Cordova, employees routinely use Facebook and Twitter in an official capacity to connect with customers, but access to those same sites and nearly everything else online is blocked to employees internally.

“The majority of networks are locked down to the essentials you need to do your job,” said Heidi Flato, a Verizon spokeswoman.

Verizon uses an intranet site to communicate with employees. The main focus, Flato said, is productivity.

“Most (employers) are playing catch-up on this,” said Alden Parker, an employment attorney at Sacramento law firm Balsam Parker. “You have to make sure that you’re not losing employee hours to these time-sucking activities.”

But potential problems go beyond simple time wasting. Disgruntled employees, dissatisfied customers and malicious hackers can seriously damage a company’s image.

A 2009 survey by Sunnyvale-based Internet security firm Proofpoint found that 45 percent of U.S. businesses were “highly concerned” about employees leaking information via posts on social network sites; 41 percent were similarly concerned about leaks posted on Twitter and other short-message sites.

One in three companies said they had investigated leaks related to social media postings, Proofpoint reported.

“There’s proprietary information, but there’s also the suggestion of disloyalty, something that doesn’t portray the company in a positive light,” said Parker. “Good will is the last surviving value at a company.”

Like many organizations, the Sacramento River Cats baseball team uses Facebook and Twitter to connect with its customers. But the club’s Facebook account recently was deactivated by a hacker.

The site is now back up, but the team faces the task of reconnecting with the more than 5,500 fans who were followed it as “friends.”

“We use these tools to reach our fan base, but at the same time, they’re vulnerable devices,” said Nicholas Lozito, media relations coordinator for the team.

When High-Tech Institute Inc., which has a school in Sacramento, put out a news release last week announcing it had changed its name to Anthem Education Group, the company was surprised to learn from a reporter that its Wikipedia entry had been rewritten by an unknown party.

The revised entry, ridiculing the company’s schools as overpriced and ineffective, had been online for more than a week.

With so many ways for customers to interact and comment online, protecting and managing the company’s brand and reputation can be a full-time job, said Dave Marcus, director of security and research at Internet security firm McAfee Labs.

“Bad guys are clever and tools are automated,” Marcus said. “This is a Web 2.0 world. You don’t want to give up control of your brand.”

So how do companies negotiate the world of social media, taking advantage of its benefits and avoiding its pitfalls?

“There are no easy answers,” said Turteltaub, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics vice president. “It may be that companies will never figure it out. There’s not an off-shelf answer to this.”

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/11/2880623/social-media-can-help-business.html#ixzz0tUwUYLZH

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