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What the B2B Marketer Should Know About Facebook
Facebook: You either use it or you only have a vague idea what I’m talking about. But it’s a growing presence online and B2C marketers are coming up with ways to leverage the social network to grow and audience of customers or potential customers. Is Facebook also for B2B marketing?
Jeremiah Owyang’s recent article “What the Web Marketer Should Know About Facebook” provides a useful summary of Facebook and marketing. Here are a couple of takeaways for business-to-business.
Can you build a community around your product or service?
If you sell highly-specialized equipment or services, the answer might well be no. But in some cases you can get creative. Maybe you have a system that needs extensive customization. Could your end-users benefit by networking with others who are solving the same problems? You could build a presence for your product or company, develop helpful resources, mix in some thought leaders, gregarious evangelists and loyal customers and see what happens.
How networked is your sales force or your marketing team?
For complex sales with an extended consideration and buying process, keeping in touch is important over the long term, and networking offline and online can keep your people top-of-mind with prospects. First seek out those you know in your company to be well-networked, see what tools they’re using and if it’s making a difference. Consider implementing a department-wide or company-wide set of services such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or others, and encouraging those inside your company to link with prospects and current customers. It’s one way to stay in the know about what the market needs and to let them know when you’ve got a new solution to help their business. One issue you might be faced with is maintaining the quality of communication and a consistent public message, but this is also true of phone conversations, sales visits, emails, etc.
Facebook and web services like it may not be a gold mine for business-to-business marketing, but if you research it and get creative, you can expand your online presence into a new frontier and could gain valuable insight into the marketplace.
Technorati Tags: marketing, b2b marketing, online marketing
[...] a great question! There have been plenty of articles written on the use of Facebook in a B2B context. In terms of how relevant it is, [...]
Posted by: How relevant is a presence on Facebook for B2B organizations? « Ask MarketingSavant | Dec 3, 2008 at 7:12 pm