Two new surveys demonstrate the increasing importance of social commerce. A recent eMarketer survey found that almost 30 percent of American adults have used social media platforms to make a purchase. A Crowdtap survey revealed that 64 percent use social media to gain ideas for shopping. This figure is up from 51 percent in previous years. To be successful business-to-business firms must continue to effectively integrate organic and paid social media to drive sales and build their brands, says Kyle Lorber, professional social media manager.
Organic social media uses free tools, such as posts, tweets, and shares. It is a key way to continue to engage current customers and to build community, says Kyle Lorber. For example, an IT consulting firm might frequently post or tweet about new hacking schemes, or an office design firm post photographs of newly redesigned offices with captions and a link to more information. The use of hashtags can help group responses for specific audiences and allow audience members to search for responses in the conversation, says Lorber.
Organic social media also helps firms understand and gauge what clients are saying about them and provides a way to support customers. It also can introduce new customers to the business. However, it is a longer-term strategy, explains Kyle Lorber.
Paid social media, or ads, are specifically aimed at driving sales. For example, a company that offers shared office space might target consultants or entrepreneurs who follow their competitors by advertising a discount and directing the potential customer to a landing page. Ads also can be used to drive future sales by collecting data on potential customers. These are called lead generation ads. For example, a consulting company might advertise an exciting statistic from new research, then provide further information to those who click through. Ads have the advantage of reaching a large number of people quickly and targeting the ideal customer precisely, according to Kyle Lorber.
Generally speaking, B2B companies will use organic social media to retain current customers and ads to find new ones, although that isn’t a hard and fast rule, says Kyle. One way to integrate the strategies is to discover what free posts garnered the most interest, then repackage them as ads to reach a wider audience. Most social media offer the ability to create a lookalike audience based on similar demographics to current customers; this lookalike audience is perfect for targeting lead generation and other paid ads, says Kyle Lorber.
Kyle Lorber graduated with a bachelor’s of fine arts in arts management from Long Island University. He is an experienced consultant, having executed social media marketing strategies for one of New York’s top-grossing residential real estate firms.
