This year, 37 percent of B2B buyers said they spent more time using social media, almost double the 20 percent of respondents in the previous study. Additionally, the number of B2B buyers who connected directly with solution providers via social media increased by more than 57 percent. This is according to this year’s Demand Gen Report, “The 2014 B2B Buyer Landscape.”
These numbers prove something we’ve known for awhile: B2B social media is worth the investment. Social media is where buyers are today, and as such is among the richest sources of data you can draw upon for customer insights. As Demand Gen notes, the B2B buying process is getting longer and increasingly characterized by buyers conducting significant research to interpret the vast amounts of data they themselves have available.
Last month we outlined the best ways to leverage Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to reach your audiences, and offered a guide to making sense of the data you’ll generate through your social media channels. Demand Gen finds that senior executives prefer LinkedIn for their social networking, while non-executives prefer blogs. Further, they find that social media plays an important role as a second and third source of information as buyers research solution providers.
A lengthened buying process means that marketers have a chance to, and indeed are expected to, convey a full picture of their brand and the solutions they provide. Social media both provides an ideal medium to communicate your brand, and allows you to use the big data that belongs to social networks to connect directly with new leads. Social media’s treasure trove of data will help you measure engagement and adjust accordingly.
In 2014, B2B is shaped by the trifecta of Big Data, which allows for an unprecedented amount of customer insight, Customers, who investing more time in researching their solution providers, and Social Media, which brings the two together.
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