Email marketing is one of the best methods of communication in the B2B industry. It is less intrusive than phone calls and walk-ins, and the creation of workflows allows businesses to target qualified leads. A strong email marketing campaign is often 33% less expensive than other methods, and yields 50% more sales. Also, a 2% increase in customer retention actually equals a 10% decrease in operation costs when it comes to ROI. In fact, over 59% of marketers say that email provides their best ROI, and on top of that, 78% of marketers have seen an increase in engagement via email over the last 12 months. With the numbers in favor of B2B email marketing, are you effectively leveraging email automation in your business? HubSpot and SharpSpring are two of the top email marketing platforms, each with their own strengths for different types of businesses. Here’s a closer look at each to help you choose which solution is best for you:

Email Marketing With HubSpot

HubSpot is a powerful inbound marketing platform that enables users to easily manage content production, distribution, and analytics. Subscribers can access email and blog templates, and have the ability to track individual content promotions and highly-integrated campaigns. With portals for social media, email marketing, and blogging, HubSpot allows you to meet your audience via multiple communication channels.

HubSpot is the primary choice among companies that want to manage their digital and content strategies on a single platform. It can also help streamline practices already in place on your current website. For example, if you regularly write blogs, but they are not yielding the traffic increase expected, HubSpot can help optimize content before it is published. Also, the marketing automation giant recently unveiled a free Customer Relation Management (CRM) system that can help you manage over one million contacts.

A sampling of the tools available within HubSpot includes:

  • Keyword Research
  • Blog Template and Content Creation
  • Creation of Calls-to-Action
  • E-Blast Content and Optimization
  • Social Media Monitoring and Analytics

Email Marketing With SharpSpring

SharpSpring is another one of the top email marketing platforms that includes triggers, workflows, and reporting capabilities to nurture contacts. By implementing a comprehensive email marketing campaign to continuously engage customers, SharpSpring users are able to identify email recipients more likely to convert based on past interactions, such as clicking a link or filling out a form. Metrics can be set to score list members and update their stats from contact to lead based on these actions. As a result, SharpSpring is able to increase the likelihood of creating and maintaining strong sales relationships.

SharpSpring is ideal for businesses that are building their contact list with the goal of quickly converting them into sales. With competitive pricing options, SharpSpring supports ROI based on a proven method of lead scoring and email automation. Already have a comprehensive contact list in a different program? SharpSpring’s partnership with PieSync, a contact merging service, allows you to combine, upload, edit, and update contacts from over 30 third-party platforms.

SharpSpring users can implement and manage the following:

  • Lead Scoring
  • Content Creation
  • Email Templates
  • Trigger and Workflow Coordination
  • Creation of Calls-to-Action

Next Steps

Once your platform aligns with your business objectives, it is time to build out engaging content. An eye-catching subject line is only the beginning. After that, you need a simplified message, intriguing calls-to-action, and an intuitive workflow that nurtures contacts to leads to clients. Not sure where to start? Contact Millennium CEO and Strategist Linda Fanaras at [email protected] or call 1-877-873-7445.

Business-to-business (B2B) social media is drastically different than consumer-to-consumer or even business-to-consumer. For example, “you” are not an individual; “you” are an organization or a brand. How you write, when you publish, and what you discuss are ways in which you humanize your business, but it is important to maintain a certain level of professionalism. Social advertising is a powerful way to increase conversions and keep your brand top-of-mind if managed and implemented correctly. If you are on social media and not seeing the return on investment you expected, try incorporating one, some or all of these B2B social media advertising best practices:

1. Create and Maintain a Schedule

Social media is best executed when a six- to twelve-month schedule is determined in advance. This allows content managers to know topics and platforms that will need to be researched and developed well before a draft is due. It also provides a fallback for slow news and events months where a generic topic or retweet will fill the content gap. However, approving a schedule is only step one; setting the standard for sustaining consistent social media advertising is necessary to successfully leverage social platforms. Intermittent Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn posts reduce the likelihood of your overall campaign resulting in lead generation and improved audience awareness.

2. Use Paid Social Media

The average Facebook user has more than 150 friends, LinkedIn members at the CEO-level have around 930 connections, and over 500 million Tweets are sent every day. There is a lot of noise on social media, and the only way to ensure your message is being received is to utilize paid social advertising. All three primary B2B platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook) include advertising options that require a low minimum budget. The functionality is similar to that of Google AdWords wherein a user selects their campaign goal, bid strategy, and creative content. The platforms do the rest, and ROI is significantly easier to analyze and improve.

3. Leverage Social Media Targeting

You have no doubt seen the advertisements on social media that are sponsored by brands and promoters you have not explicitly connected with in the past. This is due to powerful social media targeting that allows marketers to tailor their ads to reach you based on your browsing history, social network, and general interests. By targeting both advertisements and boosted posts, you can reach the audience that is most likely to interact with your content and potentially convert in the future.

4. Engage Your Audience

Marketers sometimes forget that social media is a form of two-way communication. Rather than talking at your audience, start a conversation with them. Plan and execute a unique Facebook competition to generate buzz. Run a Twitter poll and learn more about user opinion on your product or service. Start a group on LinkedIn where you can talk with industry members and potential clients. With a strong strategy and innovative content, you can influence your audience to organically build brand awareness.

5. Track and Optimize Social Performance

Most social media platforms include tools for analyzing new followers, interactions, and audience activity. Like any successful advertising tactic, benchmarks should be set for social media advertising at which time the entire campaign is reviewed and improved. Creative should be updated at least every other week and calls-to-action should be rewritten based on the timeline of the campaign (month-long sale starts today vs. last day to buy discounted items). One of the most common ways social media advertising plans fail is set and forget; you activate a campaign and check back at the end to see how it did. Odds are, you missed out on several opportunities to better reach and engage your audience.

B2B social media advertising best practices are complex, and are constantly evolving and adapting to how clients utilize their platforms. If you are struggling to keep up or need holistic social media tips, check out one of our other blogs, 5 Reasons Why Social Media Is Crucial to Your Digital Strategy, and contact Linda Fanaras at Millennium Agency.

 

Growing Your Social Score

One of the latest trends in digital marketing and public relations is influencer marketing: the process of identifying and leveraging conversation leaders on social platforms.

Social scoring, made popular by companies like Klout, is one of the trending tools for influencer marketing that allows businesses to discover industry members with the best chance of perpetuating a brand message to a massive audience. However, this puts a piece of a marketing strategy out of the hands of agency and company members. Building your personal brand to influencer-levels is the better option that allows you to keep control of the message while growing your own social reach.

Find out the more about growing your social score in the full article published in Prime Women.

Do you need help building your personal brand? Need to transfer your strong person-to-person reputation to social media platforms? Contact Millennium CEO and Strategist Linda Fanaras at 877-873-7445 ext. 201 or connect via email at [email protected].

Which Social Media Platforms Are Best for Your Business?

The growth of social media has been steady over the past decade, culminating in what can be considered the golden age of social platforms. Almost every aspect of the daily routine has some form of social media connected to it, whether that is tracking your physical activity or discussing the latest trends in your industry.

Currently, the most popular social media platforms for businesses are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. That is not to say, however, that your company should be on every social media in existence; choosing the best social media platforms for businesses is a key component in devising an effective social strategy.

The following social media platforms each have their primary function when it comes to social media for business. Understanding if one or all are ideal for your business requires aligning your objectives with your social strategy. Where should your company be seen, heard, and engaged with on the social stage?

Facebook is the Reputation Management System

Facebook is the platform that launched social media into the internet powerhouse it is today. With approximately 1.4 billion users not including subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram, Facebook remains one of the best ways to promote a brand to the masses. Over 30 million businesses have a Facebook company page, and of those around 1.5 million utilize targeted advertising to promote their products and services to followers and friends of followers. Even business-to-business (B2B) companies are finding that having a Facebook page is similar to having a website; it builds credibility and opens a line of contact between the organization and clients It is also an excellent platform to keep track of the public opinion on your brand, allowing you to optimize and adapt as necessary.

LinkedIn is the Business Network

If you are a B2B company, you have (hopefully) heard of LinkedIn. As the premiere professional networking website, LinkedIn includes personal, company, group, and showcase pages that you can optimize and streamline to effectively build brand awareness and generate valuable leads. LinkedIn attracts decision makers from companies in every industry, making it an invaluable tool. However, unsolicited sales messages are often met with disdain; nurture your contacts along the buyer journey before converting them into leads in order to maintain a positive LinkedIn reputation.

Twitter is the Industry Forum

Twitter was once the platform for energetic early adopters who wanted to update followers on every aspect of their life using only 140 characters. It has greatly evolved since then, now allowing for links, images, video, advertising, chat, and follower lists. Twitter provides businesses with the ability to interact with other thought leaders in their industry and share condensed ideas with their audience. The inclusion of 30 second video has nearly doubled follower engagement, increasing the odds of your clients and contemporaries not only hearing your message, but interacting with it as well. Twitter polls, another recent addition to the platform, is an effective way to gain audience insight regarding recent brand news and overall positioning in the industry. The reach and benefit of this platform is not to be underestimated, and should be leveraged to ensure your business is always in the public eye.

Bottom Line

Attempting to build, maintain, and analyze a presence across every social media platform is a waste of time, money, and marketing resources. Instead, identify your audience and research what the best social media platforms for your business are, then execute a campaign tailored to each one. Your company type serves as an excellent starting point; the next steps are determined by both your marketing goals and your sales objectives.

Want to learn more about social media best practices? Check out our blog, 5 B2B Social Media Advertising Best Practices, or contact Linda Fanaras at Millennium Agency.