Toward strategies for B2B marketing

Next week I’ll be hosting a B2B Marketing webinar with Circle Research‘s Andrew Dalgish, when we’ll be talking about social media marketing strategies with particular regard to Circle Research’s excellent new Social Media Benchmarking Report. The report analyses the thoughts of B2B marketers from 274 different organisations about social media and how it currently fits within their wider marketing approach.

According to the research, 78 per cent of respondents currently use social media in their B2B marketing activity, although only 25 per cent have a clearly defined strategy. Even within this 25 per cent there appear to be some significant gaps: only 21 percent reported that they have received any training in social media.

In a blog post summarising the findings, Andrew notes that “only 21 per cent can consistently demonstrate ROI from their social media investment”. “Only”? I was surprised the figure was so high given the difficulties involved and that somewhat foreboding “consistently”.

Certainly it’s a short jump from there to the number one challenge identified by the marketers: that of getting internal buy-in for social media projects. Scary stuff, no doubt, but like any challenge it looks more manageable when broken down into small, discrete stepping stones.

The chart below, taken from the research, highlights just one area with readily available social media ROI that doesn’t seem as integrated as it could be in the marketers’ plans.

Expect these “mini-strategies” to be a key theme during the webinar – once we’ve reviewed where B2B marketers are right now, we’ll also be discussing how they might get where they want to be.

You can sign up for “How to Build a Social Media Strategy – Based on Social Media Benchmark Data” here.