Is Twitter good for B2B marketing?
To start, Twitter has over 180 million active users. And among these people are some of the most authoritative decision-makers in today’s business world. So having a Twitter account gives B2B companies an excellent avenue to connect with their professional target audience. This immediate networking platform can produce quality leads for everyone, from a company like NetEnt providing systems for gaming sites to a corporation like Xerox selling printing services.
But here’s the thing: Social media keeps evolving, as does social media usage among industrial audiences. That means the strategies you used for your B2B marketing campaigns last year might not work in 2021. If you want your enterprise to stay relevant, it’s good to review your tactics every once in a while. So check out our opinion on what works and what doesn’t when it comes toTwitter for B2B marketing in 2021. Then you can start using the platform for maximum profitability.
How to Use Twitter to Raise Brand Awareness
To make your B2B brand more visible online, start by offering your audience free valuable content that helps them solve various business problems. If you do it regularly, your readers and viewers will begin to see you as the go-to source for advice. Your reputation will grow, and people will become more willing to buy from you.
The first thing to keep in mind is that Twitter requires a very compressed format. Although in 2017, the maximum character limit of a tweet got raised to 280, it remains a short form. So does that mean using Twitter for B2B marketing and raising brand awareness requires that you to fit your entire message into three or four sentences? The short answer is no. Instead, post little snippets of your content that have the potential of capturing your audience’s attention. These previews can be a few lines from a blog post, a quote from an influencer, or even a 15-second video clip.
The goal on Twitter should be to entice customers to click through to your website or enter your sales funnel. But wherever your Tweet is sending them, remember this: Most of Twitter’s audience accesses the platform from a mobile device. So make sure your website — or any other target destination — is optimized for mobile screens.
Twitter Lets You Experiment With Your B2B Brand’s Personality
The thing is that you probably have numerous B2B competitors who have a product very similar to yours. How will you stand out? One tried and tested way is to develop a unique personality for your brand.
For example, if everyone in your niche tries hard to keep a serious tone, you can experiment with a more humorous presence. And Twitter is perfect for testing different ideas because the Tweets and other forms of communication are brief and don’t require much effort to create. If an approach isn’t working or not getting the expected response, you can quickly adjust and try something else.
Fleets: A New Feature to Promote Your Messages
Twitter marketing also has a new feature that can further improve your visibility on the platform. The Fleets, similar to Facebook Stories, are photos, texts, or videos in vertical format. They also get uploaded for only 24 hours. And if your DM settings are open, anyone who has a profile on Twitter can react to your Fleets with messages.
So how would you use Fleets that users cannot like or retweet for B2B marketing? They’re perfect for one-day promotions or webinar announcements. As Fleets are still a new and fresh feature on Twitter, they are sure to get people’s attention and amplify your message.
Finding the Right Influencers for Your B2B Company
Working with influencers who have a large following is an excellent way to increase your B2B company’s credibility. But how can you use Twitter to find influencers interested in endorsing your products and services? One way is to turn to the platform’s search function. It sorts through millions of possible candidates with numerous filtering options. However, if the accuracy of the results is not good enough, you can also use third-party tools like FollowerWonk or BuzzStream to find your perfect collaborators.
After identifying the influencers you’d like to work with, your next step should be to start following them. Then you can interact with their Tweets. And if you do it regularly and engagingly, the influencers will begin to notice you. They might even make the offer to advertise your products themselves. If not, you can ask them after about a month of active interactions with their Tweets. That should be enough time to form the beginnings of a relationship.
Communicating with Your Prospects
Twitter is the perfect platform to hold conversations with your audience. But to make sure you make a good impression, you first need to get to know your potential buyers. Only then can you offer thoughts and content that’s relevant and meaningful to them. Once you’ve done your research and found out how to address your prospects, here’s how you can send B2B marketing messages via Twitter:
- Initiate one-to-one conversations. It’s a straightforward B2B communication, and as long as your offer is enticing enough, you are very likely to get a response.
- Send out your sales messages to a group of followers. That’s a classic B2B marketing technique that enables you to address a large number of people at once.
- Start a group conversation. Some of your followers will participate, while others will observe the replies. It’s an excellent way to make your potential clients feel included in what you’re doing as a business.
Get Ready to Answer Your Customers’ Questions!
The latest trends when it comes to Twitter for B2B marketing might surprise you: Many people use the platform to send service requests. That means your B2B customer service would do well to focus a portion of its efforts on Twitter. If you’re not there to provide valuable responses to prospects’ questions, they might turn to your competitors’ Twitter profiles.
The cool thing is that Twitter itself is perfect for facilitating some initial research regarding what sorts of questions your customers and prospects are already asking on the platform. You can search for your product and see which questions about it pop up most often. Pay close attention to the answers. You might find that people have a completely wrong understanding of the proper use of certain features. That is your chance to step in and clarify the issue.
Another tactic every B2B marketer should use on Twitter is researching competitors with similar products. See which answers they’re giving to the same type of questions your business receives. If a specific answer seems to get an overly positive response, copy it.
Analyze Your Results
If you want to get a direct answer to whether or not Twitter is working for your B2B goals, it’s vital to review your results. You can use third-party tools like FollowerWonk to get detailed reports on how your audience reacts to your Tweets and messages. But perhaps even a better way to get an overview of your progress is using Twitter Analytics: the platform’s own tool that’s available to all users. It gives you data on your profile mentions, visits, impressions, tweet count, etc. You’ll also learn which are your best-performing tweets over a specified time.
But the most valuable information comes from the audiences tab. It shows you many details about your followers’ lifestyle, behavior, and demographics. Knowing this data will enable you to refine your marketing messages and tailor them to your specific audience.
Should You Adopt Twitter for B2B Marketing?
The bottom line is this: Whether you choose to use Twitter for B2B marketing is entirely up to you. The platform has plenty of features to raise brand awareness, promote your messages, find influencers, and communicate with prospects.
But to make it work for your specific goals and get the most out of using Twitter for B2B marketing, you need to research your customers first. Address them with content that’s valuable and relevant, and you’re bound to get a fantastic response. Let it help your B2B company reach new heights.
