Social Media

The only metrics worth tracking for your B2B social activity

B2B and professional service firms often challenge the value of social media - they are right to do so.

Social media tends to attract a disproportionate amount of attention (and therefore budget) due to the fact that it’s not only new and exciting, but also more visible. You can’t easily learn what your competitor's email strategy is or what exhibitions they’re attending, but with one click you can hop onto their Facebook page and see every bit of content they’ve ever shared.

Social has a role to play, absolutely, but in order to understand that role you need to be clear on the metrics by which you’re judging success.

I’d suggest that there are three things worth tracking (with one clear priority). Everything else is noise.

1. Driving sales qualified leads

The first and hardest to achieve is sales qualified leads. In other words, those people who are actually seeking to buy.

For most B2B and professional service organisations, it’s almost impossible to do this directly via social, particularly if the price point is high. Social is great for driving impulsive action, but complex B2B buying journeys are a different beast. If you’re a gym hoping to drive new members, Facebook is one of your hottest channels, but if you’re hoping to create beautiful content that “inspires” someone to spend £100k on a cyber security solution, you may be waiting a along time!

What is likely to happen instead is this:

• The lead finds you via another source - a google search query, referral visit or perhaps a direct brand visit having seen you at an event or heard about you from another customer, etc.
• Then they click on your social media to get a better sense of what you’re about as a company. A bit like the "About Us" page (one of the most trafficked pages on most B2B / professional service sites) but far more revealing and engaging, or at least it should be!
• Having spent a few minutes scrolling through your content and building up a picture of your expertise, communication style and culture (are these people they want to do business with?) they then go back to the website and make contact.

Every year we will have half a dozen decent leads arrive via social media. Of those, 4 or 5 will have followed the path described above. The other one may have taken a more direct route straight from the social platform in question - perhaps we were just in the right place at the right time..?

This my not sound like a lot and it isn't reason alone to invest in social, but it's certainly something to be tracked. It's a metric that senior decision makers will understand and if just one of those leads comes off, it'll pay for all our content and social activity for the next two years.

2. Clicks to the website

The second priority metric is clicks back to the site. To be clear, clicks carry zero inherent value, but there are two reasons why I personally include them in the KPI’s:

• It is possible that referral traffic from social media platforms may act as a signal in your SEO efforts. This point is highly speculative(!) and is likely to be market dependent as Google’s algorithms are now primarily driven by machine learning, therefore the signals that apply in one vertical may not apply in another.
• It demonstrates an increase in the level of commitment from the audience (most people do not like leaving their social platform for another site) and that commitment is essential in driving the third and most important metric.

Which is…

3. Capturing MQL data

For me, this is the real point of your social media efforts. To build your database.

By MQL’s (Marketing Qualified Leads), we mean the contact details of anyone who falls within your target audience and has given you permission to make contact. They may not have a requirement today, but they tick all the boxes of your ideal prospect.

The data you receive may include telephone number which if you have an outbound sales function is fantastic. However, the real value for most companies is in the email, as this is an asset that can grow over time without a directly correlating increase in cost (unlike telephone numbers which are only as valuable as the sales people you’re paying to call them!).

The data you capture may feed into an automated email sequence that takes the user through a pre-defined journey, or they may just be added to a list of people who will receive targeted information every week/month. Either way, you are building one of just two real digital assets your company owns (the other being your website), and the compound value, if managed well, is likely to surpass the potential of any other single channel.

So, how does social drive this email capture? Lots of ways. Perhaps by driving clicks to the website which then generates a lightbox, or maybe you’ll be more aggressive and run direct response campaigns on the social platform itself. However, with likely cost per acquisition of anything from £5-£50 for most B2B organisations (depending on your audience, content and brand), the latter is probably only viable if you have a sales function making direct use of the resulting data.

And a bonus - the non-sales objectives

It’s also worth mentioning that not all the benefits of a digital channel can be measured in pounds and pence. Social media, as the name suggests, is probably the single greatest digital channel for communicating and strengthening company culture, making it a powerful tool for both recruitment and engagement of existing staff.

Unless you’re a really large business, however, this is likely to be more of a side benefit than anything that can justify direct commercial investment.

Final thought

Most B2B organisations manage to somehow  underestimate the power of social whilst simultaneously overspending on it. Social absolutely has a role to play. It’s a key touchpoint and has enabled companies to reach their audience in more targeted, cost effective way than ever before. However, in order to extract that value companies need to understand its place in the sales/marketing funnel (right at the top!) and the corresponding activities that need to surround it.

Above all, they need to know how to measure success.

by Dan

Image is everything - 7 rules for choosing the right stock photography

Marketers all agree that great copy is nothing without the right imagery, and yet somehow 90% of blog, social and website imagery continues to be a rushed afterthought that communicates absolutely nothing unique or interesting about the brand.

One explanation for this is that you simply cannot teach good taste. You either have an eye for selecting great imagery or you don’t.

Bollocks.

Of course you can teach good taste. Just compare my wardrobe now with the one I inflicted upon the world prior to my girlfriend teaching me that grown men should never wear t-shirts with tie-dye or disney characters. I can’t pretend to understand why she is right (what’s not to love about a florescent Mickey Mouse?) but now I understand the rules, and that’s enough.

So here are some rules I’ve learnt for choosing the right imagery. You don’t need to particularly agree with them, you don’t even need to understand them, you just need to follow them.

Rule 1 - keep it candid

Your subjects need to appear 100% in the moment, or how can you expect the reader to believe the image or feel an emotion?

This is the problem with most stock photography - painted smiles and lifeless eyes that do nothing to suggest the moment being portrayed in the image is real.

Rule 2 - look away

This ties in with the first rule. After all, how can someone believe the image is real if the subject is looking directly at the camera? The person needs to be lost in the moment, seemingly oblivious to the photo being taken.

This also helps the viewer to imagine that they themselves are the person in the image, particularly if the face of the subject is out of view or obscured.

Rule 3 - consider softer lighting

Soft light reduces harsh shadow lines or sharp transitions and ensures a more gradual and flattering transition from light to dark. This is the reason images shot at dawn and dusk often sell better than those shot in the middle of the day.

Rule 4 - keep it on-brand and consistent

If people are to immediately associate the image with your brand then it must adhere to clear guidelines. Should it be serious or informal? Energetic or relaxed? Accessible or aspirational? Modern or traditional?

What is the brand’s colour palette and how will you ensure this is respected in the imagery? Will you use a particular filter to achieve consistency, or can your designer edit the imagery to bring out your key brand colours?

Rule 5 - capture an emotion

It’s okay for the image to be obscure in literal terms, as long as it is crystal clear in emotion. What I mean is that in many instances the image need not specifically portray the product, but it must portray the specific feeling you want the product associated with.

Rule 6 - think about the relevance of the subject

The person within the image can either represent your product/service, or your target audience, usually you would favour the latter. This may be an aspirational version of your audience, but it still needs to be within the realms of reality or the viewer will be unable to project themselves into the scenario being portrayed, and that’s precisely the point of the image.

Rule 7 - Rule of thirds

The rule of thirds is one of the pillars of great photography and something to look out for when selecting your images.

It could not be more simple - imagine you place two evenly spaced horizontal lines and vertical lines on your image. The goal of the photographer is to place the subject on one of the four crosshairs, and they will choose which crosshair by whichever will make the more interesting image. For example, if the image is of the sea and there are stunning clouds then the photographer will probably choose to place the subject on one of the bottom two crosshairs, but if they wanted to show great crashing waves then they would place the subject on one of the top two crosshairs.

When choosing your image you should look for this rule and feel confident that the photographer has placed your key subject in this optimal position. Here's a great video by the photographer Mike Browne explaining the concept...

Rule of thirds from Mike Browne on Vimeo.

by Dan