Whether your company focuses on complex strategies or you use it as a convenient source of marketing, social media is an important part of a business’s everyday marketing. As a largely free and convenient method of marketing your business, you are likely promoting your creative on a variety of platforms in an attempt to make relationships and grow your audience. What you may not know is that B2B and B2C social media strategies are unique from each other in quite a few ways. In our Ad Brief, we have social media experts discussing the differences and focuses between B2B and B2C social media strategy.
Our first expert, Ariel Brooks Benz from BB3, starts by clarifying different social media platforms should be utilized for different strategies. That being said, Brooks Benz has seen that B2B social media leans towards Twitter and LinkedIn, with Facebook and Instagram becoming a growing focus amongst B2B companies. However, it’s still fairly traditional. Comparatively, B2C is where things get more fun by working with influencers. “What that has allowed us to do,” explains Brooks Benz, “It’s allowed us to create more authentic content using real people.” She believes this is a more relatable method of marketing for the consumer, which has created an environment conducive for telling new and unique stories that couldn’t be told in a traditional social media strategy found in B2B.
Adding on, Jared Yellin from Project 10K says the key for both B2B and B2C is to build relationship capital. However, you can’t focus on just any relationships. You need to define the relationships you’re targeting as relationships that can create the most acceleration for you, regardless of whether you’re in early or late stage with your company. A common strategy is to create “a power 100.” You take 100 relationships from all your platforms and categorize them by those you know, those one degree away, and those you don’t know. Your goal on social media is to convert those you don’t know and those one degree away to the category of people you know. “Leveraging social media as a mechanism,” says Yellin, “Is the single greatest path for elevating your early stage idea or even your mature company.”
Ryan Pfeifer from Nektyd says that he has largely seen Facebook and TikTok growth within B2B. In turn, these B2B companies will then use Instagram and Facebook as their B2C focuses. While this is rather traditional, the growth of TikTok seems to have changed social media strategy as a whole for both B2B and B2C.
