16 B2B Social Media Advertising Methods for Any and Each Trade [Social Media Trends Report Data]

B2B social media advertising usually will get a foul rap.

It’s handled just like the strict college principal of enterprise. It’s seen as boring and “unfun.” It received’t allow you to inform jokes, speak to your pals on social media, or break with custom. (And it actually wouldn’t allow you to chew gum in school if it may.)

Nevertheless, if my final decade of serving to entrepreneurs promote their companies has taught me something, it’s that these are all simply nasty rumors.

B2B (business-to-business) advertising, particularly social media advertising, will be simply as inventive, relatable, and thrilling as B2C (business-to-consumer), and albeit, it has to be to achieve success.

Fortunately, there are a variety of B2B social media advertising methods and ideas that make it doable, no matter your trade. Let’s speak by means of among the greatest and take a look at examples from manufacturers like Google, Slack, Shopify, and extra.

Desk of Contents

What’s B2B social media advertising?

To grasp B2B social media advertising, you actually simply want to know the distinction between B2B and B2C.

Simply put, B2B means a business’ offering is intended to be bought and used by another business. It has a professional purpose.

B2C, on the other hand, refers to goods and services intended to be bought by individual consumers for personal use.

Pretty straightforward, right?

Knowing that, B2B social media marketing is when your business uses social media platforms to promote its product, service, or brand to other businesses that may buy them.

Think Shopify targeting eCommerce businesses or Slack, businesses that need real-time digital communication.

But let’s be real — it’s not like Slack or Shopify themselves are scrolling through your Instagram feed or slapping subscribe on YouTube. It’s still an individual.

So, I usually recommend my fellow marketers to think of B2B social media marketing as when a business uses social media to reach individuals who make purchases on behalf of businesses or can influence those purchases.

So, how is B2B social media marketing different from B2C?

Even though B2C and B2B social media marketing both technically speak to individuals, there are still some key differences.

And they all primarily come back to what messages and content you share.

In B2B social media marketing, you speak more about professional and organizational pain points and goals (i.e., profitability, productivity, and team morale) and very rarely about personal goals (i.e. better home life, improved health, or beauty).

B2B is also less about developing personal, one-on-one relationships on social media like B2C and more about communicating value and bottom-line results to a greater organization.

However, none of this is to say that B2B social media marketing is cold, heartless, or impersonal.

If you’re working B2B social for the first time, it simply means you want to focus on the collective interests, not personal ones.

Share customer success stories or content that speaks to common organizational pain points or experiences. Post data or actionable advice businesses can use in their projects or initiatives.

Slack does a great job of this across its social media.

Now that you know what B2B social media marketing is, how can you do it successfully?

B2B Social Media Marketing Strategy Best Practices

First, you need a solid B2B social media marketing strategy to guide you. Let’s discuss a few best practices for creating yours.

1. Shape your strategy around SMART goals.

Like any marketing strategy, a B2B social media strategy must be shaped around goals to succeed. Goals guide you and ensure you’re working toward the right things.

Whether your goals are focused on brand awareness or acquisition, the best way to outline them for your team is using the SMART methodology — specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

This helps your team know exactly what it’s trying to do and by when, how it will track its progress toward achieving it, and why it’s something they can actually do.

Let’s illustrate with an example. Say your goal is “To build brand awareness on social media.”

Thinking this through with the SMART methodology, this becomes:

• Specific: I want to boost our company’s brand awareness by posting regularly and frequently on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. I will increase our posts on X from once to four times a day, post daily on Instagram, and increase weekly publishing frequency on LinkedIn and Facebook from four to seven times per week.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 4% increase in engagement rate across the board.
• Attainable: Our engagement rate increased by an average of 2% last month when we increased our weekly publishing frequency and spent more time on thoughtful, engaging copy.
• Relevant: By increasing the engagement rate, we’ll boost brand awareness and generate more leads, giving sales more opportunities to close.
• Time-Bound: End of this month.

Putting that all together makes our SMART goal:

“By the end of this month, we will increase our average engagement rate across our social media channels by 4% by increasing our post frequency and concentrating on thoughtful, engaging copy.”

See the difference?

Pro tip: If you need help thinking through the SMART methodology, we have a template to help.

Out there as an Excel and Google Sheet, this template supplies step-by-step directions for setting a SMART objective, calculates achievable numerical targets, and helps you consider the roadblocks to attaining your advertising targets.

2. Take inspiration out of your rivals.

Social media may give you a glimpse into your competitor’s advertising technique. Monitoring them ought to undoubtedly be a part of your routine.

You wish to know what campaigns they run, how audiences reply, what new merchandise or options they could launch, and what questions or issues audiences could have.

All of this perception helps you higher perceive what you’re up in opposition to and the way you might want to regulate your technique.

You additionally wish to “Discover a white house,” as HubSpot Senior Social Media Supervisor Emily Kearns advises.

“The B2B panorama is comparatively easy, related, and uninteresting. Deep dive into your rivals, see how they’re executing on social, and attempt to decide a novel space the place you may add worth and stand out.”

In case your competitor is not responding to trending information, then possibly your model can prepared the ground. In the event that they discover success sharing movies with actionable recommendation, how are you going to incorporate an identical type and enhance upon it?

Search for alternatives to emulate issues which are doing properly and differentiate your self.

3. Set up a novel model and voice.

You additionally must develop a constant voice on social media. Not solely does this make your feed look extra organized, cohesive, {and professional}, nevertheless it additionally permits guests to acknowledge your content material even out of context.

For instance, you may spot a Canva submit from a mile away with its constant fonts and colours.

Ask your self:

• What makes your online business completely different?
• How will its content material feel and appear?
• What would make somebody be capable of acknowledge it even when it wasn’t in your platform?
• What feelings and phrases do individuals affiliate with you?

The solutions to those questions will type the inspiration of your voice. If you would like extra ideas for constructing your model voice from the bottom up, here’s a useful slideshow to get you began.

Professional tip: LinkedIn found that 64% of executives choose “a extra human, much less formal tone of voice” over “an even-toned, mental voice.” So, maintain it pure and conversational.

“Consider your model as an individual, a buddy to your viewers,” particulars HubSpot Senior Model Social Staff Lead Chi Thukral.

“What would they sound like, what would they be fascinated with speaking about, how would they be at work, what would their FYP appear like? This all will humanize your content material. B2B doesn’t should be critical and dry.”

When you need your social media voice to be constant together with your higher model and firm tradition, you’re nonetheless speaking to fellow human beings. Put up accordingly.

4. Put up on a constant schedule.

Alongside together with your voice and visible model, intention to be constant together with your posting schedule.

Having a set time to submit content material offers you a deadline to observe and offers your viewers a particular time to anticipate listening to from you.

Create a content material calendar for as far into the long run as you may. I like to recommend mapping out no less than two weeks and having your content material prepared per week earlier than publishing, so that you aren’t left scrambling on the final minute.

HubSpot has a social media calendar template that can assist you get began.

Professional tip: One other option to preserve consistency is to schedule posts forward of time utilizing a social media instrument.

HubSpot’s social media administration software program means that you can run all of your social media from one central location, together with scheduling to Fb, Instagram, X (previously Twitter), and LinkedIn.

5. Concentrate on authentic, thought management content material.

Trying on the success of all of the meme accounts on social media, you might suppose curating content material from different sources is a fast ticket to success — however this strategy is short-sighted.

Chances are you’ll get a like or share at the moment, however why ought to anybody observe you over the unique supply long-term? Sharing third-party content material showcases the expertise, distinctive worth, or experience of its authentic creator, not you.

So, reasonably than simply curating content material from others, intention to share high-quality, authentic content material frequently. Your viewers can be extra inclined to share authentic content material, in flip exposing your title and data to new audiences.

However what sort of authentic content material do you have to submit?

Think about your viewers’s pursuits, questions, and targets, and create content material that addresses them together with your distinctive perspective. Present solutions and factors of view solely your group can; insights out of your staff’s expertise.

The probabilities are limitless, however when you’re having bother arising with concepts, you’re not alone. Creating partaking content material is the #1 challenge marketers expect with social media within the subsequent 12 months, nevertheless it doesn’t should be.

We’ll get into specifics within the subsequent part, however you may as well head to The Final Information to Content material Creation for some inspiration.

6. Diversify your content material mediums.

There is a purpose we social media entrepreneurs get excited when platforms launch new options. They’re new mediums to play, get inventive with, and possibly ring a bell with our audiences.

Instagram Tales, Fb polls, TikTok Slideshows, and LinkedIn paperwork are all examples of multimedia codecs that added new methods to have interaction with audiences on their platforms and diversified content material mixes.

However why does this matter? Consider it this manner — For those who scrolled by means of Instagram and solely noticed pictures, you’d most likely get bored fairly shortly. Or when you solely created the identical format everybody else was, you’d doubtless get misplaced within the crowd.

A part of the rationale Instagram retains individuals hooked is due to its selection. In a 10-second scroll, you may come throughout a meme, a Reel, a Story, a picture with a ballot, a carousel, or a reside video. There’s a potpourri of choices to maintain individuals and interacting.

That is one thing you need to emulate in your model’s particular web page.

Totally different individuals get pleasure from consuming data in numerous methods, so when you solely create one sort, you might be ignored by many in your audience.

Plus, not each subject lends itself to each format. For instance, a software program tutorial is probably going greatest suited to a video reasonably than a sequence of pictures. So, let your material information you as properly.

Workplace house supplier Regus makes use of a wholesome combine of various mediums throughout its social media profiles. On Instagram, you’ll discover short-form movies, Tales, single pictures, carousels, and even graphics to diversify its feed and spotlight gives in numerous methods:

And their LinkedIn follows swimsuit with movies, slideshows, and graphics:

Professional tip: Repurpose your current content material for various mediums with synthetic intelligence (AI). Repurposing is one among smartest methods to get essentially the most out of the work you’ve already completed and it doesn’t should be time consuming, due to AI.

Share a weblog article with ChatGPT and it will probably shortly spin up drafts for social media posts or captions. It might probably even create video scripts and even photos and graphics.

There are additionally an rising variety of AI instruments being explicitly constructed with content material repurposing in thoughts like HubSpot’s Content material Remix.

With Content material Remix, Skilled and Enterprise-level customers of Content material Hub can repurpose current content material into new codecs.

This may be supplies you’ve got hosted on HubSpot (i.e. photos, social posts, textual content messages, adverts, and weblog posts) or new content material you add to the instrument.

7. Use AI — however sparingly.

Talking of AI, it will probably dramatically make it easier to save time in B2B social media advertising in quite a lot of methods. It might probably make it easier to:

As tempting as it may be, nevertheless, use AI strategically in your B2B social media exercise because it does have its shortcomings.

For example, on the subject of writing, the comfort and pace additionally comes with considerations of plagiarism, privateness, and even bias. In reality, our analysis discovered that 96% of the time, the content material AI creates isn’t prepared to make use of as-is. So, by all means, use it to get you began, however be ready to edit.

Take what the instrument offers you and form it into your closing product together with your model’s particular voice, persona, and authentic thought.

As for social media engagement, trendy audiences can normally spot automation, like this message from Lyft, from a mile away.

Messages like this could come off as chilly and inauthentic, particularly on social media platforms the place the objective is connection. So, maintain your exercise as natural and human-to-human as doable, each time doable.

Be taught extra about how AI to in your B2B advertising.

8. Lean into the precise platforms.

There are dozens of social media platforms, however that doesn’t imply it’s a must to be on all of them.

Kearns defined, “You don’t must do every thing on all social channels. Begin small and centered and put sources behind one platform to know how your viewers engages with that content material.”

According to our research, the highest 5 channels for B2B entrepreneurs are Fb, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and X.

She continued, “Get to know your viewers: It’s crucial to analysis to know the place they’re spending their time on-line, what their pursuits are, and what they’re searching for in social. This must be the inspiration of your content material technique and channel technique.”

B2B Social Media Advertising Ways That Work for Any Trade

Together with your technique set, let’s dive into particular ways.

9. Share knowledge and information.

Knowledge isn’t just fascinating, it’s arduous to argue with. It provides an air of credibility to any message and may seize consideration. That’s a method for excellent B2B social media content material when you ask me.

With this in thoughts, look into your analytics or, in case you have the means, conduct authentic analysis. Pull essentially the most compelling knowledge or number-based information associated to what you do and share it together with your viewers in an attention grabbing video or graphic.

What sort of knowledge do you have to share?

Search for stunning developments and insights — ones that go in opposition to fashionable perception. This type of data stops somebody as they’re scrolling, makes them wish to hit share, and even sparks a dialog.

Take this instance that includes HubSpot’s State of Gross sales:

You may as well share knowledge to assist your viewers enhance their work or make higher choices. Reddit for Enterprise, for instance, often shares consumer choice knowledge to assist companies and advertisers ship simpler content material on its platform:

It additionally cleverly makes use of knowledge to assist “promote” its providing.

10. Give inspiration.

I’m not speaking concerning the cliche, nameless inspirational quotes all of us see on Fb occasionally, however skilled inspiration.

Assume quotes or keynotes from well-respected thought leaders in your house or people who’ve overcome relatable challenges.

Content material like this resonates together with your viewers on a deeper stage and offers them one thing to not solely aspire to, however wish to observe for extra.

I’m an enormous fan of how Shopify combines this technique with social proof; sharing inspirational tales from its profitable clients.

Talking of which …

11. Showcase your clients.

Individuals join with different individuals, so even when you’re a B2B model, it’s sensible to include human tales and relatable personalities into your social media content material.

Have some actually blissful clients or followers of your merchandise? Put up about them on social media like Slack does on its LinkedIn firm web page:

These options act as social proof of your claims and help audiences better envision themselves as potential customers.

Plus, according to Gartner, 86% of companies contemplate verified evaluations crucial of their buy choices, so having a real-life buyer communicate to your worth can do wonders for gross sales.

Professional tip: Don’t be afraid to lean into user-generated content. When your followers or clients love your model, they’ll usually be blissful to share their experiences and ideas on social media.

Create a branded hashtag and encourage them to make use of it. Then you may then reshare this content material to your individual social media

12. Spotlight your workers.

You may as well introduce your social media followers to your workers. Spotlighting your staff lets audiences to place faces to the corporate and humanize the model.

That is vital for small and enormous firms alike, as a result of whether or not you are promoting computer systems or provide industrial cleansing providers, clients wish to know who their cash goes to and in addition who can be there in the event that they run into points.

Google and Pinterest each do an exquisite job of this:

Moreover, highlighting your workers permits for employer branding—or the fame your organization has as a spot to work. This may help entice expertise and make you extra likable to clients total.

Showcasing your employees can also enhance your attain and engagement. For example, as an alternative of simply posting a photograph of your new product, you may additionally submit a photograph of the 20 individuals who designed it.

This is able to doubtless get shared by these 20 individuals and seen by their networks if tagged.

At HubSpot, we’re no strangers to highlighting our workers on social media. On this instance, we highlighted HubSpot workers who could be performing as “correspondents” for INBOUND this 12 months.

By doing this, we get to acknowledge and present appreciation for a few of our staff members whereas additionally giving our viewers real-life people to attach with on the occasion.

13. Accomplice with related manufacturers and influencers.

In response to Matter Communication, 69% of consumers belief messages from influencers, pals, and household over manufacturers themselves. In different phrases, you want others to vouch for you.

Discover which influencers, creators, or different companies your patrons interact with. Collaborating with them can enhance your attain and the belief others have in you.

Figma often collaborates with influencers and real-life customers of its software program for partaking social media content material:

Be taught extra about your choices for influencer advertising.

14. Use related humor.

In response to a recent study by HubSpot research, 97% of entrepreneurs plan to proceed or enhance their funding in humorous content material on social media within the subsequent 12 months. And why not?

Additionally they reported that humorous content material delivers extra ROI than every other sort.

Humor grabs consideration, is memorable, encourages sharing, and makes you likable total. So, search for methods to include it naturally into your social media content material like Sprout Social.

Shopify additionally does an amazing job on its Instagram profile:

Professional tip: Preserve the humor you incorporate on model and match to your viewers. As you may see within the Shopify instance, they use some profanity, albeit censored. For his or her model and viewers, this is smart, nevertheless it doesn’t work for everybody.

Humor is subjective. There’s at all times an opportunity your joke received’t land everybody, however the very last thing you wish to do is offend a possible buyer. So, know your viewers.

15. Begin and interact in dialog.

Social media was created to assist individuals make connections with different individuals. Regardless that manufacturers have entered and occupied the house for some time now, that sentiment hasn’t modified.

Your model received‘t be capable of join together with your viewers if all you’re doing is pushing your product at them. It’s essential slot in naturally and provide actual worth.

The important thing to staying related on social is to begin and interact within the conversations your audience is fascinated with having.

One of many best methods to do that is by asking questions. For example, on LinkedIn, Shopify began with a ballot.

This was a sensible strategy for a number of causes:

• It took benefit of a enjoyable, interactive medium to face out in feeds
• It encourages dialog within the feedback
• It additionally gathered authentic knowledge within the course of

You may as well immediate questions or discussions in your photograph or video captions or in texted-based posts like this tweet from HubSpot.

Image Source

Whereas this explicit subject isn’t essentially associated to HubSpot’s product or trade, it’s associated to enterprise and digital advertising and is a dialogue its potential clients are fascinated with.

This reveals we perceive our viewers and what’s on their minds and are additionally updated on what’s occurring on the earth.

16. Experiment and refine.

Clearly, there is no such thing as a scarcity of greatest practices for social media, however the fact is that each viewers is completely different, so you may wish to run experiments to determine what works greatest to your model.

HubSpot’s Kearns shared, “Social is the one channel the place you’ve got a possibility to experiment and get viewers suggestions each day. Attempt new issues, iterate, and optimize! Take learnings out of your viewers and apply them to future content material.”

There are limitless experiments you may conduct in your channels. Listed below are some concepts to encourage you:

• Use questions and statistics in your copy to see which pulls your viewers in additional.
• Check completely different hyperlink positions to find out if it makes customers extra more likely to click on.
• Add emojis to see if it will increase interactions.
• Run adverts to a video and a nonetheless picture on the identical subject to see which performs higher.
• Phase a special a part of your viewers to check how they react to an advert.
• Check completely different hashtags to see if it impacts impressions.
• Spend extra time replying to posts to find out if it will increase your follower depend.

Experimenting together with your content material is how you determine your individual greatest practices, which can at all times be extra customized than trade requirements.

Put the spark again in B2B social media.

With the ideas and methods we outlined, B2B social media advertising doesn’t should be boring, stoic, or forgettable. The bottom line is merely to know your viewers and their targets and let their preferences information you.

The extra you take heed to their suggestions and take lead from their behaviors, the higher outfitted you can be to craft a social media technique that drives actual bottomline outcomes.