Written by Eric Pedersen, Project Manager

That’s the million-dollar question for many B2B companies. Marketers are used to pushing things out to their potential buyers. They use billboards, radio, TV and direct mail. Today, social media can be used to do the same thing. You can post a coupon or promotion. Chances are, however, you’ll see the same result—one that lacks ROI.

Let’s step into B2C land for a bit, where social media is a maturing marketing practice. Many big B2C brands have thousands of fans. These fans, however, usually are not generated because people love the brand, but because they love the incentives of following the brand. Skittles recently gave away a full-size vending machine via social media. This campaign generated tons of fans, according to an Advertising Age article. People love Skittles, of course, but they “like” Skittles because of the incentives. Ad Age refers to this as “Pavlovian fanboy territory.” You’re conditioning your followers to get excited about something that isn’t necessarily tied to revenue.

In the B2B world, you have to be targeted and intentional in your online approaches or else you’ll end up like the dogs in Pavlov’s experiments: hungry. You could run the same campaigns as Skittles, but can you risk the investment?

Here are some questions to ask as you and your team create your next social media campaign:

1. Do our total activities in social media revolve around adding value to conversations?
2. Are we affiliated with any groups or forums? If so, are we asking questions that will help us give the customers what they want? Are we answering questions that might spur more conversations or connections?
3. Are we making any effort to find our target market and engage them other than offering them coupons for free stuff?

If you answered no to these questions, chances are you are missing the real value of social media.

What are your thoughts? We’d love to hear from you!

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