Can’t avoid social selling in B2B marketing
Autor: Robson Niering | Publicado: 2013-03-18T11:43:00-07:00




By M Muneer	 Feb 25 2013
Tags: News

The idea of business-to-business (B2B) marketing being very industrial and not too social has been ingrained into our minds by B-schools for long. However, this need not necessarily be the case. The traditional industrial way can be moved more into the social space as buyers are slowly moving towards the social experience with their B2C buying. Perhaps, it cannot be fully moved into the social space, but many bits and parts can indeed be.

For instance, many B2B buyers are keen on non-traditional way of buying when it comes to smaller transactions and consumables. Not every purchase needs to be done the B2B way. This is mainly because of two reasons — First, buyers get social experiences in the real world as individuals. Second, the advent of technology has made transactions far more transparent and decision making more participative resulting in less secrecy in transactions.

Today’s progressive B2B buyer wants to be engaged. With the workforce getting younger at many purchase departments, they do not have the patience for just transactions. They want transparent, collaborative and open relationships. They are no keener on accepting products and services at face value than building relationships afresh. Social media helps dramatically in this as it is not a one-way street.

According to experts, today’s B2B buyer expectations can be categorised into four major streams:

Openness

Buyers expect the sellers to be transparent in dealings, pricing and specifications. They would also demand more open dealings into seller costing.

Co-creation

They are keen to partner the seller or supplier in various ways to co-create solutions. They wish to be included in research and development, product modifications, knowledge sharing, specialised services and productivity improvements. Some buyers are also willing to help their suppliers with knowhow in certain areas so the relationship feels more like a partnership.

Relationship

Normal industrial buying, whether it is simple or complex, requires a lot of presentations and iterations back and forth before the buyer says okay. However, with the new technologies and thinking, most buyers prefer a consultative approach with both parties working together and arriving at the best solutions including pricing mechanisms. It is all about building the relationships and thereby aligning the goals of the buyer to those of the seller.

Value Addition

Following from the earlier point, the relationship is all about two-way of communication. So buyers are always looking beyond the agreed terms and value additions. It could be in the form of improvements to the productivity of the buyer. Once the value addition is proposed, the buyer would prefer to take it to the next level by putting it into a pilot. These could be also in the form of sharing knowledge on social media platforms.

The new B2B companies must learn how to become social organisations. In order to do so, B2B firms must be open to changing the current structures to drive openness and interaction within and outside their organisations. Buyers need to be aligned with the supplier goals too for creative, result-oriented pricing. For instance, for long, no supplier has the willingness to share their cost structures or developments of products. The fear was that they would lose the negotiation edge if the secret were out. This status needs to change and B2B companies need to become more collaborative and participative.

They need to work with buyers in creating right solutions and recommendations with solid back up data. At times, the big buyers can also improve the cost structures of small suppliers professionally.

According to a recent study on the marketing channels being used by B2B companies, more than 60 per cent of them use social media followed by 45 per cent in online content, then email and search engine. Print and TV together were accounted for by only 11 per cent. Mobile marketing is not yet fashionable in this sector, but it would seem to be a critical component next year. This is in line with the penetration of this sector by B2C. It appears that B2B marketers are planning to focus on strategies that will results in new customers in the coming years.

In any case, the prediction for the top five trends in B2B marketing in the coming year is social media marketing, content marketing, lead management, sales and marketing alignment and search engine marketing. With all these global changes in the B2B sector, will India be far behind?

The shift towards social media is imminent for B2B sellers. It is all about empowerment at the hands of the buyer. So start now to move closer to social selling! zz

(The writer is the CEO and MD of CustomerLab)

http://www.mydigitalfc.com/news/cant%E2%80%99t-avoid-social-selling-b2b-marketing-336