The screen on the average BlackBerry measures just 60mm across. Yet for many of today’s B2B buyers, this is the main source they have for information about the products and services they will buy in the coming year. More than this, it is also the main way that they will engage in the various communities that influence their buying decisions. It’s not surprising then that B2B marketers should be wrestling with how to make the most of mobile social media. The phenomenal success of social networks can be transferred directly to mobile, enabling customers and prospects around the clock access to an array of social networking services. Consumers and professionals alike can now engage with brands, collaborate in real time and stay informed from any location at any time using web-ready devices optimised for social interaction.

1. B2B mobile
social media
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B2B mobile
social media

2. Introduction
The screen on the average BlackBerry measures just 60mm across. Yet for
many of today’s B2B buyers, this is the main source they have for information
about the products and services they will buy in the coming year. More than
this, it is also the main way that they will engage in the various communities
that influence their buying decisions. It’s not surprising then that B2B marketers
should be wrestling with how to make the most of mobile social media.
The phenomenal success of social networks can be transferred directly to
mobile, enabling customers and prospects around the clock access to an array
of social networking services.
Consumers and professionals alike can now engage with brands, collaborate
in real time and stay informed from any location at any time using web-ready
devices optimised for social interaction.
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B2B mobile
social media

3. Part one – 7 lessons in social mobile
Short attention sp...
A recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that Americans are now spending
nearly three hours per day on their mobile phones. They’re educating
themselves, conducting business, managing finances, instant messaging,
emailing and importantly using social media sites and applications. The thing
is, however, they’re jumping from one task to another to another all the time.
This has also led to a change in behaviour, with professionals now demanding
content in more manageable chunks.
For B2B marketers used to 5,000 word white papers, this presents somewhat
of a challenge. Many B2B products are complex – certainly too complex to
do justice to in 140 characters. The sales cycles are long, often six months or
more. Yet, social mobile users have neither the time nor patience (or for that
matter the screen real estate) to deal with long-form content.
Forrester calls this behaviour ‘snacking’. The analogy is a good one. Social
mobile users dip in and out of content based on where they are, what they’re
doing and how much time they have available. It’s no surprise that micro-
blogging is so popular – sharing a short-form status update whether via
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or new kid on the block Quora takes little time and
can be done pretty much anywhere. Crucially sharing a short URL is just as
easy and offers additional ways to track engagement.
The answer is to create bite-sized information. Split longer content into smaller
chunks that link to each other and which can be shared and commented on
easily. So instead of the 5,000 whitepaper, think more in terms of 10 articles
of 500 words each. Look to roll these out over time allowing for feedback and
comment in between. Not only will this be more appealing to a mobile user, it
will also help increase engagement and boost pagerank.
LESSON 1: THINK SNACKS NOT MEALS
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4. Nomads not farmers
B2B is not, for the most part, about a large mass audience. As B2B
professionals, we aren't trying to convert millions of individuals into
consumers, we’re typically trying to convince a smaller group of companies
with larger budgets to engage in a conversation with us. Importantly, when
talking about mobile, we are focused on an audience on the move – whether
room-to-room or country-to-country.
So rather than imagining customers sitting sedately at their desks following
your every communication, think of them scanning 352 RSS feeds, checking
their friends’ Facebook updates and answering a text from the boss, all while
ordering a double-shot latte before making a dash for the train.
The key point here is that while they are intimately connected to the digital
world around them, your customers are more often than not, remote from
an actual buying decision.
Study after study shows that most users (mobile or otherwise) will be socially
passive – they will read, view and share content but will not engage in any
form of online conversation. Of course this content will inform their buying
decisions. It will also help them shape their view of the brand. But for the
most part, expecting them to engage in the form of comments and customer
generated content will lead to disappointment.
What this means is that you need to ensure that whatever you produce will stick
in their heads until they get closer to a buying situation. Part of this comes back
to good content marketing practices – be useful, be timely, have an opinion,
make it easy to share. This will get you followers, retweets and referrals. But just
as important (and all too often forgotten these days) is brand.
With so little time and so many competing messages, the power of a
compelling brand should not be underestimated. Putting it bluntly, if our
coffee-buying persona above has two seconds to think of a vendor, a strong
brand can ensure you’re the one that comes to mind.
LESSON 2: MAKE IT MEMORABLE
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social media

5. You are here
Much has been made of location-based services such as Foursquare and
Gowalla. And while everyone seems to be clamouring to become the mayor
of their local Starbucks, many B2B marketers have been struggling to see how
they can use these kinds of services.
Some uses are pretty obvious. Allowing your customers to find their nearest
reseller for example. But when we speak about social mobile, the emphasis
turns squarely on our ability to bring people together. And when we talk
location, that means real live bodies.
B2B marketers and customers are still heavy users of face-to-face events –
whether trade shows, conferences or executive briefings. Add to this the more
socially-driven meet-ups, tweet-ups and unconferences and you have an ideal
use of location-based mobile social media.
A good example is the creation of BlackBerry Messenger Groups for events
(facilitated with personal QR codes). This allows likeminded people to make
connections both at the event itself and afterwards.
Mobile social media can, in effect, provide the bridge between the digital and
the physical worlds. It can deliver a physical networking platform that helps
like-minded customers make real world connections. And even in B2B, people
buy people.
LESSON 3: HELP CUSTOMERS MAKE REAL WORLD CONNECTIONS
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6. Don’t cross the channel
For many B2B marketers, the channel is key to success. They are often the
primary route to the customer (sometimes the only route). Vendors will spend
a massive amount of time and effort incentivising and accrediting their channel
partners. When it comes to marketing through the channel, they will create
elaborate marketing kits, offer co-funding and still embark on the occasional
SPIF day. And yet, channel loyalty (or the lack of it) is little less than a running
sore for many marketers.
When we consider that for the most part channel professionals live on their
smartphones, require up to the minute information and want vendors’ help to
close sales, social mobile must have a role to play.
The range of options probably deserves a chapter in itself, but as a starter:
• Private channel communities offer partners the ability to get the
information they need where they need it (i.e. on the road)
• Real-time pricing and offers can help them seal the deal
• Access to vendor specialists via instant messaging, Twitter or LinkedIn
can help them answer customer questions quickly and insightfully
• Apps (smartphone or tablet-based) that help them specify and configure
a solution can help them be more responsive to their customers’ demands
In truth, almost every mobile social media option can be applied successfully
to the channel. And it can reinforce their loyalty right at the moment it matters
most – just before a sale.
LESSON 4: HELP THE CHANNEL MAKE SALES
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7. How did you get this number?
Mobiles are personal – at least in many users’ minds. This extends to
company-issue devices too. Communications feel intrinsically more intrusive
than on other devices and media. For users, being marketed to on their
mobile can feel more like stalking than talking.
While this will in all likelihood change over time, there is still a heightened sense
of privacy when it comes to mobile. And yet, we know that B2B mobile users are
reaching out to their networks from their phones. The critical factor here is that
when it comes to mobile social media – and particularly with SMS and instant
messaging – the contact is on their terms. They initiate it. They end it.
Mobile social media is fundamentally a pull medium. You can entice, you can
encourage, you can barter for people’s attention but you must remember,
their psychological spam filters are set to maximum. In fact, we would almost
never recommend that you try to begin engaging customers via their mobiles.
Start online or in person and then extend from there.
For customers to let you in, there must be something in it for them. Simply,
you must trade access for value. The value could be in preferential access
to information, to something that saves them time or money, something that
helps them get stuff done – but unless they see the value, they’re unlikely to
let their guard down.
Of course, many marketers have come unstuck by failing to understand their
customers’ ideas of real value (what do you mean they don’t want to read
our ebook on migrating from X.25 to frame relay?). There is no substitute for
taking the time to do the due diligence – research with customers, surveys of
what else is available, a look at what is being shared right now. Only then can
you look for gaps where you can deliver real value.
LESSON 5: PULL NOT PUSH
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8. There’s an app for that
The latest smartphones are breeding apps like rabbits. Understandably, the
temptation for many marketers is to jump on the bandwagon with one of their
own. Of course, for most of the existing social media sites and services, there
are already mobile apps available. Beyond this there are also apps to aggregate
services in one place. So where does this leave the social mobile marketer?
The first thing to focus on is utility. Does your app help users get stuff done?
Does it make their lives easier? Will it be able to fight for its place among the
84 other apps they already have installed?
Beyond simple utility, if we’re serious about the social aspects of mobile
marketing, what can you do to ensure your app stands a chance? Here are
three things you should consider right away:
1. Social is about making connections between people, look to fully exploit
their existing connections by linking to where they already are (eg
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc).
2. Understand that users are busy and on the move – keep it simple, give
them the option of limiting the amount of time they spend and allow for
easy one-click sharing.
3. Be clear how your app fits into your overall strategy – is it focused more
on acquisition or retention? In an acquisition-focused app, the emphasis
will be more on demonstrating difference, growing brand and giving
users a dry run at the relationship they can expect. A retention-focused
app however will help them get more from the products they already
have and help them evangelise the brand.
Finally, while many of us are in love with our iPhones and big-screen Android
handsets, this is not necessarily mirrored in our target markets. The vast
majority of corporate buyers use a BlackBerry. Not the Torch either but the
smaller screen Bolds, Curves and Pearls. This means that focusing on the right
platform and working within its limitations will be vital to success.
LESSON 6: MAKE APPS USEFUL BEFORE MAKING THEM PRETTY
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social media

9. Influencing the influencers
We are still in the early days of B2B mobile social media. In fact, in many ways
we are in the early days of any sort of B2B mobile marketing. Audiences are
still comparatively low, the available media channels haven’t yet settled and
there are few verifiable best practices. So why bother?
The primary reason is because the people using social mobile are the early
adopters, they are the ones who set the agenda for what follows. They are the
most influential people you can speak to (the “knowledgeable friends” so many
of us turn to before making a purchase decision).
These are the people who are already sharing information from their
smartphones. They are the ones who will help mobile social media go truly
mainstream, who will influence which sites and properties will lead and,
of course, which brands will thrive. Now is the time to connect to these
influencers – before the competing noise becomes a deafening roar and the
budgets required to catch up accelerate out of reach.
It is also the time to experiment. Right now, the cost of failure is not high.
Marketers can dip their toes in the water, discover what works for their brands
and their objectives, and refine as they go along. Their more active customers
can be engaged to help create the right social mobile approach, in turn
helping to create the kind of communities they need.
LESSON 7: YOUR MOST INFLUENTIAL CUSTOMERS ARE THERE RIGHT NOW
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10. Part two – how will you know if it worked?
The current costs of entry to mobile social media are not high. Many of the
enabling technologies are easy to access and relatively low cost. Even simple
apps will not overly trouble the budgets of many B2B organisations.
But whatever the money you spend, how will you know it was worth it?
Considering proving the ROI of many social media programmes is still difficult,
add in the extra complexity of the mobile platform and you’d be forgiven for
running for the hills.
The good news is that it needn’t be as complex as you think. Many of the
same metrics you currently use can be just as easily applied to mobile social
media. The exact measures you use will depend largely on the specifics of
your organisation, but the following represent some measures you could use.
Revenue
Did your mobile programmes increase your pipeline of leads/sales? Tracking
where leads come from is second nature to many B2B businesses. Assigning
a notional value to those stemming from mobile social media (as identified
through analytics, tracking codes or simple qualifying questions on online
forms) will show the bottom-line impact of your activity. However, tracking
revenue down to a single tweet, for example, is more complex. It can be done
through using unique short URLs (such as bit.ly) which can then be analysed
through to sales. But simply assigning revenue to an overall mobile social
media programme will generally be enough for most companies starting out.
Importantly, you can then integrate this activity into your marketing
automation platform. This means your subsequent communications can build
on interactions across all your social channels and devices.
Brand
We have highlighted the role of influencers above and the ability at this
relatively early stage to identify your brand with mobile social media-savvy
customers. Whether this is a measure of awareness or, better still, relevancy,
tracking the effect of your efforts on generating increased brand equity is
key. Of course, isolating the effects of mobile social media is difficult if the
approach delivers the same overall messages as other brand communications.
However, it is possible with careful ongoing tracking to identify spikes in brand
awareness that coincide with programme activity. It is also possible to track
sentiment among key influencers as the campaign progresses.
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11. Retention and loyalty
We briefly discussed retention when we looked at apps. But there is a wider
role for mobile social media here. It is possible to A/B test customers, offering
some access to beta programmes for your mobile social media activities and
then measuring the effects versus those without access. This also applies to
channel partners.
Spread
Fundamentally, a key role for social media activity (mobile or otherwise)
is to replicate or enable word of mouth. A vital measure of any activity is
whether it succeeds in amplifying and extending the reach of your marketing
messages. Measuring how far your users spread your content will give you a
good benchmark for how effective your mobile social media programmes are
performing. This can be done with many of the social media monitoring tools
now available such as Radian6 and Brandwatch.
There are of course many other measures you can adopt – sentiment tracking,
cost savings, site visits, sign-ups, reach, yield, etc – but the key is to keep what
you measure simple and meaningful in terms of overall business performance.
That way, when your leadership asks what you’ve been spending the company’s
money on, you can link it directly back to the factors that matter to them.
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12. Part three – 5 things you should begin doing right now
So you can see that mobile is going to be massively important to B2B
organisations in the coming months and years. And, within that, mobile social
media will have a key role to play. What now?
No one should be running headlong into spending their entire marketing
budget on mobile social media but there are some relatively low cost activities
you can begin doing right away. Some will apply to all mobile marketing but
are crucial to gaining the insight you need to make mobile social media work
for your business.
1. Check your site analytics – how many users are accessing it via mobile
devices? What operating systems are they using? What is your most
popular content? Where are people dropping out?
2. Ensure your site and blog are optimised for mobile devices – while
your main site may be a fully immersive Flash-based extravaganza,
your mobile visitors won’t thank you for it. Fortunately, mobile sites are
virtually the definition of simplicity. As long as you ensure you have a
competent CMS in place, repurposing your content for the (very) small
screen should not be too traumatic.
3. This also applies to your other content – from videos to PDF
downloads. Importantly, ensure that social sharing and bookmarking
are quick and easy with buttons big enough to be hit first time even
when the user is on the move.
4. If you sell through the channel, begin to create mobile-friendly material
to help them sell your products – a closed reseller community, cheat
sheets, playbooks, demo videos, podcasts – and add these resources
to a specific mobile-focused area of your partner site.
5. Begin researching your customers’ use of mobile social media and look
to see whether you can create meaningful segmentation and personas
to inform your activity.
While these are all baby steps into the world of mobile social media, they do
offer the potential to create a profitable foundation for your future activity.
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13. Part four – a glimpse at the future
Looking to the future, there’s a lot to be excited about if you’re a B2B social
media marketer. We’re just starting to realise how powerful social media can
really be for organisations. And the long-term future almost certainly belongs
to mobile devices (whether phones or tablets).
While the benefits are clear in using social media to spread your message,
as a channel it really starts to shine once you begin using the tools and
platforms available to deliver additional value to your customers and
differentiate your business.
With that said, there are three key points to remember about the future of
social media for B2B companies:
1. B2B social media of all kinds will transgress outside of traditional
boundaries and become more about driving thought leadership,
providing better customer service and defining business through crowd
sourced feedback.
2. Twitter and Facebook may be huge now, but the way in which we use
social media changes by the day and companies need to be able to
adapt in order not to be left behind.
3. The true ROI of social media in B2B won’t necessarily come from
broadcasting your message, but rather the long term engagement and
relationships you can create in return.
It’s worth investigating how mobile can be used to manage your social
initiatives. There are new platforms that enable you to track your customer and
prospect profiles and activities across multiple social streams and aggregate
them into a single view of that individual. This means marketers and sales
are able to react 24 hours a day to changes in status and be able to quickly
respond to discussions relating to your brands or products (Gist is a good
example of a tool you can use).
Many companies will also be looking to platforms that will help them to
manage their social streams across a number of channels. That will mean
creating content and promotions that can be displayed on Twitter, Facebook,
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14. LinkedIn, corporate blogs, etc. And these platforms will also create custom
content units that will be optimised for different mobile devices (check out
EngageSciences for example).
Mobile social media may be in its infancy but it’s growing up fast. It’s
time for B2B marketers to begin examining how it can deliver results and
differentiation for their businesses.
Want to know more?
In this white paper, we’ve merely scratched the surface of how social
media should be used by today’s technology marketers. If you would like
to delve deeper into the current research or discuss how social media can
be used to deliver tangible results for your business, please get in touch.
We are happy to meet you for a no obligation discussion. Simply contact
Michael Wrigley at michael@b1.com or call him on 020 7349 2266.
Follow us on: Twitter: @bannercorp
And keep up to date at: www.b1.com/blog
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