Social business in the context of sales and marketing, specifically in the technology sector.

1. …and adding the new
22 November 2012
Leigh Hopwood
B2B Technology Marketing Consultant
Website www.reddmarketing.co.uk
Email leigh@reddmarketing.co.uk
Call 07746 249132
Skype leighhopwood
LinkedIn /leighhopwood or /reddmarketing
Twitter @leighhopwood or @reddmarketing

2. Social Business
• Organisations that have adopted the social business
model utilise social media tools and social
networking behavioural standards across functional
areas for communicating and engaging with external
audiences, including customers, prospective customers,
prospective employees, suppliers, and partners.
• Combining social networking etiquette (being helpful,
transparent and authentic) with business engagement
on LinkedIn (for one-to-one interaction), Twitter (for
immediacy) and Facebook (for content sharing) more
fully involves employees in the organization and
increases customer intimacy and trust.

3. Buying Cycle
The Process Typically
• Identified business • Information is power!
challenge • Long sales cycles
• Research possible • Complex decision making
solutions unit
• Define technology • Less visibility of pricing
requirement • Multiple influencers
• Search for suppliers; • Relationships are key
Google, recommendations
• Strong brand positioning
• Validate potential suppliers and awareness is highly
• Negotiate and purchase influential
• Deliver, service and upsell • Prove you can do it!

5. Why?
93% of marketers use social media for business
Why?
• 84% of B2B tech buyers use social networks to keep up with trends and stay
connected
• 41% of B2B tech buyers use social media at some point in the buying
process
• Web searches and LinkedIn are equally as useful for finding potential B2B
suppliers; Twitter is the most useful channel in final supplier selection
• Of B2B tech buyers:
– 90% participate in Video
– 80% participate in Blogs
– 80% participate in Wikis
– 69% participate in Social Networks
– 53% participate in Podcasts
• 23% of tech buyers are active content contributors on social media
• 21% of B2B companies can consistently demonstrate ROI from social media
investment
Sources: IDC,KnowledgeStorm, Buyersphere Report 2012, IDG Knowledge Hub

6. How?

7. Influence through Social Media

8. Influence through Social Media

9. Influence through Social Media

10. Influence through Social Media

11. Influence through Social Media

12. Focus Your Time

13. What is your Social Business Strategy?
• Who are you engaging with? Employees,
prospects, customers? Define these segments
• Are they on LinkedIn? Are they using other
platforms? Twitter? Facebook? Do you need your
own platform?
• What do they want to know about you and your
business?
• What is your tone of voice?
• Do all channels have a consistent message?
• How often are you active?
• What do you expect to gain?

14. #1 - LinkedIn

15. Be there and be active!
Personal Profile
• Full profile
• Grow connections
• Recommendations
• Status updates
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/stevepipe
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/johndunnet

16. Your Personal Profile
• Summary
– Let your personality shine
– What are you offering others?
– What makes you so credible?
– Use keywords
– Include Specialities
• Experience – don’t create a CV
• Projects – key client projects
• Skills & Expertise – endorsement
• Education – it adds to your credibility
• Websites – change ‘Company Website’!
• Interests – could be your USP!
• Groups – join relevant groups
• Add applications – SlideShark, WordPress

17. Settings and Personalisation
• Consider when to broadcast mass changes
• Apply privacy settings
• Set email notifications
• Manage settings of third party applications/plugins
• Upgrade your account
– To use inmails
– Searching for contacts – more filters and display more
contacts
– Saving profiles in an organised file structure

18. Be there and be active!
Personal Profile Company Profile
• Show credibility • Level the playing field!
• Grow network • Employees connected
• Get recommendations • Get recommendations
• Share knowledge • Grow followers
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/stevepipe
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/johndunnet
• Status updates; link to
website
• Promote URL through
other channels
http://www.linkedin.com/company/philips
http://www.linkedin.com/company/linkedin
http://www.linkedin.com/company/rackspa
ce-hosting

19. Your Business Profile
• Branding – exploit the opportunity!
• Company update – start using it; press releases, white
papers, hiring, tweets
• Overview – use keywords and consistent message
• Adverts – add banner ads/offers
• Products and services – add them and ask for
recommendations
• Video – add YouTube URLs
• Promotions – add offers/downloads
• Disclaimer – seek legal advice
• Careers – use it if you are recruiting
• Analytics – see how effective your pages are

20. Grow your network and engage
Join groups Find people
• Listen • Named accounts/
• Ask questions contacts
• Answer questions • Send direct messages
• Engage – don’t sell! • Engage – don’t sell!
• Save contact history in
CRM

21. Engage…

22. #2 - Content

23. #3 - Twitter

24. #4 - Measure

25. How to measure…
• Social drives traffic to website
• Track where the traffic comes from (short URLs)
• Website generates the lead
• Analytics will track conversions
• Lead generated in CRM
• Contact history created

26. Use metrics to focus your time
• Are your contacts responding?
• Which message creates the greatest response?
• Does one customer type respond more?
• What type or format of content generates most
responses?
• Which of your connections has the greatest
influence?
• What generates the most qualified leads?
• …
Where should you be spending your time?

27. Winning formula
Quality
Network
Measure Quality
and Tweak Content
Profitable
Relationships
Personality Consistency

28. Examples
Technology Company Social Media Result
Lenovo (hardware) Community website 20% reduction in call centre activity
Moonfruit (web hosting) Social media mix 20% increase in sales
Genius.com (marketing Social media mix 24% of its social media leads convert to sales opportunities
automation provider)
Archer Technologies 1) Archer Community 1) 20 new members, 4,000 unique visits and 400+ downloads
(provider of risk and 2) Archer Exchange every week
compliance solutions) (app store) 2) 17,000 unique visits, 90,000 page views and 1,200 downloads
Enhanced product development from user feedback directly helped
form 3 new products
InfusionSoft (CRM) Social media mix Need for less customer service agents, whilst increasing customer
satisfaction by 10%
Avanade (enterprise Twitter and YouTube 9,294 video views
solutions) http://www.youtube.com/user/AvanadeUK
Idea Paint (paint to Facebook and Flickr Social media is the largest source of leads
businesses)
RS Components (electronic Community website 45,000 community members, 60,000 downloads of its PCB tool
components) http://www.freshnetworks.com/clients/rs-components
infoMENTUM (information LinkedIn 75% of leads generated through LinkedIn
management)

29. Examples
• How social media helped Cisco shave $100,000+ off a product launch
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/cisco-social-media-product-launch/
• How Kinaxis achieved 270% increase in website traffic, 3.2 increase in conversions
and 600% increase in registration of community members
http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/06/b2b-case-study-online-community/
• How GE MarkNet gained 3,200 members in a community and saved £250,000 in a
single project http://socialmediab2b.com/2011/02/b2b-social-media-example-ge-
marknet/
• How Hinda Incentives went from start up to winning awards, industry recognition and
authority, improved search visibility, leads, sales and boosted site traffic considerably
in 2 years; LinkedIn is the second source of web traffic behind organic search
http://www.businessesgrow.com/tag/hinda-incentives/
• How Shipserve saw an ROI in 3 months after a $30k investment in content distributd
through social media channels (LinkedIn and Twitter)
http://www.businessesgrow.com/2010/06/20/a-fascinating-hardcore-b2b-social-media-
success/
• How IBM turned sales consultants into industry thought leaders with reported tangible
increase to sales pipeline http://www.text100-uk.com/2012/07/b2b-social-media-case-
study-turning-ibms-sales-consultants-into-industry-thought-leaders/

30. &