Your B2B social marketing strategy may be mapped out months ahead, but it’s no better than a mishmash of last-minute inspiration if it isn’t strategic. If it isn’t holistic. If it doesn’t offer something that makes you proud of the effort you’ve put into it. Yes, it goes that far. Getting there takes work – and this post will get you started. And no, it doesn’t require meditation… usually.

Holistic B2B Social Marketing Strategy Must Haves

The goal of holistic marketing is to provide a seamless, consistent, exceptional experience for customers – those target businesses you hope to attract to your services. And doing so requires everyone on your team to be working with the same big picture in mind. That requires exploring and coming to a consensus on some big picture questions about your target audience:

  • Who is our target audience, specifically. Industries, company size, niche, etc.
  • Get granular as possible about it: What positions do decision-makers hold?
  • What are our target business’ challenges/pain points? How did we gather this information? Is it time to re-evaluate what we think we know and gather better information? If so, how?
  • What are our priorities right now? What should they be?
  • What is our mission statement and how do/will our priorities connect back to it?
  • Is every cost center aligned on what we’re offering and participating in discussions around it?

This is where social media insights in particular can be helpful. Here’s an example for those that want to reach and engage CIOs.

Next you need to decide on internal priorities – the guideposts you’ll use to check back against and ensure consistency:

  • What is our marketing budget? How is it currently allocated and does that speak to our priorities?
  • Who is directing our social media presence and what guidelines have we established for this?
  • How are we vetting and recording leads? What is the follow-up plan as they progress through our sales funnel? Mapping out this process is critical.
  • Are we creating unique content for each level of decision-maker in target businesses?
  • Is our database accurate and consistently updated? If not, the rest is wasted effort.
  • How are we measuring success overall and social media success, specifically? And it should not be number of retweets, likes, etc in isolation.

Every bit of everything you’re doing to market your business and services needs to be part of a cohesive whole, working toward a common goal. Most importantly, the execution must be flawless, with all activities aligned to leave your audience marveling and how completely dedicated you are to winning its business. Firing on all cylinders at once requires an intimate understanding of everything above, as well as a commitment to getting it right. Some activities would include:

  • Creating consistent branding to be used in every effort, from logos on products to imagery for collateral, and defining when and how it could be used (and by whom).
  • Clearly defining the brand’s persona, along with customer service scripts that ensure the experience is consistent regardless of medium.
  • Training employees to understand the value of capturing and sharing target data, and how to do so efficiently.
  • Creating marketing campaigns that employ the latest social media account based marketing techniques and creating corresponding collateral that keeps your business’ mission statement in mind.

Beyond all of that, holistic marketing may actually require a bit of meditation after all. Your business’ employees are possibly stressed from trying too many things at once – throwing handfuls of moderately cooked pasta at the wall – and may be suffering from fatigue. And tired minds aren’t the best team players. Setting aside time to clear their minds (and their desks) each day may help everyone stay centered and focused on the overarching roadmap you offer and make this rat race seem a little less so. It couldn’t hurt to consider, as you’re rethinking things, at the least!

Still looking for more help with your B2B social marketing strategy? We’re here to help! Send us a note at hello [at] leadtail.com, or give us a call at (888) 705 4777

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