While referrals and word of mouth have been the B2B industry’s go-to marketing tactic for years, the popularity of the internet has caused marketing campaigns to evolve to include a digital marketing strategy. All business owners want to effectively reach prospective consumers and turn them into loyal customers. With the surge of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, social media has changed the way that businesses interact with their target markets.
At HAWKER®, we have been actively and successfully engaged in multiple social media platforms for over two years now, and we wanted to share some insights and tips we've learned along the way to help you better market your business.
Currently, there are 3.2 billion social media users worldwide. For businesses, social media can be a powerful tool to reach your B2B audience, create leads, and build your brand. That said, we at HAWKER would like to share a few best practices we’ve implemented for using social media platforms for your marketing efforts.
1. Finding your brand voice
86% of customers and prospects prefer an authentic brand personality on social networks. On our HAWKER social media sites, we have a professional yet conversational tone when we write our social media posts. Our goal is to encourage our audience not just to read our posts but to engage with them.
Moreover, having a unique voice when you post on social media builds brand recognition and allows your business to stand out from your competition. Social media is just another way to have a competitive advantage that defines and differentiates your company’s products and services.
2. Understanding and engaging with followers.
Having a strong grasp of the demographics of your target market, you will be able to tailor your post messaging to fit the market with which you’re trying to engage.
For example, our target market is motive power fleet managers and our authorized dealer network. By sharing information that is targeted, compelling, relevant to this audience, we are educating our target market and showcasing our thought leadership which allows us to gain trust with the marketplace.
3. Choose the right social media platforms
With over 800 social media sites, it can seem overwhelming to start a social media campaign. It can be tempting to select the most popular sites, but just because a social media platform is popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right fit for you and your business.
Each social media platform has its advantages that cater to specific demographics. For HAWKER, we chose to focus on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. For most B2B companies, social media sites such as LinkedIn have proven to be incredibly effective.
4. Have a social media plan
Being effective with the messaging on your business’ social media platforms requires intentional strategy and planning. Long periods of inactivity on your social sites will not produce the results you need to establish your brand and increase referrals. At HAWKER, we outline business objectives and pair them with our social media goals, tracking our success through established metrics and reviewing our progress and making adjustments along the way.
Knowing your goals guides you in the content you post that is most likely to engage, educate, and inform your target audience. For example, one of our top goals with our social media efforts is to grow our brand recognition. Therefore, we gauge our success by measuring our volume of social media followers and post shares and likes. We also measure traffic to our blog and website as a result of a social media post.
Some B2B companies are under the impression that social media is not impactful for our industry. However, we’ve seen that social media participation enables us to reach out directly to our target market and achieve impressive results for our business’ growth and success.
Two of the main advantages of participating in social media sites for B2B companies are:
● Connecting with potential and current customers and influencers
At HAWKER®, we not only post about our products and services but rather showcase our company culture, relevant news, and our blog posts in an easily accessible way. Social media also gives us a way to connect with and provide support to our customers.
● Showing up on the first page of Google search results
Your social media accounts are often the first sites to appear on a search engine result when people are searching for your business. There are several tools we use to show up more widely on the search engines in this manner.
A valuable way to engage our audience and increase our visibility online is through the use of hashtags. We’ve found that some of the hashtags that rank well are #forklift, #materialhandling, and #supplychain. Using these hashtags in our social media posts attract our target audience to our social media pages, even if they don’t actively follow us.
By implementing a well thought out social media strategy, we’ve seen growth in our brand recognition, engagement, and strong results on search engine queries. By following these four best practices with your company’s social media efforts, you will promote your business in a way that drives new business and maximizes customer engagement.
With authorized sales and service centers across North America, Hawker Powersource, Inc. provides the best solution for your business’ motive power needs. From forklifts to AGVs, we offer a range of solutions that will bolster production while keeping your operation sustainable and environmentally-conscious. Contact your local HAWKER® representative today by calling 1-877-7HAWKER or click here.
Are you struggling with creating a digital marketing strategy for your business? Click here to see how we've developed our own strategy over the last year.
