Building a B2B social media campaign skyscraper: A step-by-step guide
So you’re about to run your first, second, or millionth B2B social media campaign? Where do you begin? What are the proper steps you need to take? How do you measure the success of your campaign?
Launching and executing your social media campaign does not begin when you first create a piece of content or when you promote your first Facebook post. You must go through a process that could take days, weeks, or even months, depending on the goals you want to achieve and the results you want to see. A B2B social media campaign focusing on organic outreach is not something you whip up in a few hours. Similar to building a skyscraper, the process involves three distinct stages: planning, execution, and maintenance. Each stage is an integral pillar that holds your campaign together; remove one, and your campaign will fall apart.
1. Planning
The planning part is the cornerstone of your campaign or your skyscraper.
For starters, you need to pick your ideal architectural design, look for inspiration, brainstorm, and draw a few sketches – or, in marketing terms, identify a central idea for your campaign: what will it revolve around? For example, it can focus on a webinar you’re trying to promote, an upcoming event, or a conference.
Next, you need to establish the purpose of your skyscraper—will it be for commercial use, residential use, or maybe both? In parallel, you need to decide the purpose of your campaign—aka your campaign goals or KPIs. These will define the success of your campaign, so they must be measurable and trackable. Do you want to drive your brand awareness? Boost your engagement? Perhaps you want to increase the volume of leads?
Instead of solely focusing on the easy and “feel good” metrics like reach, followers, likes, and shares, your social media campaign efforts should be aligned with business outcomes. In this regard, you should aim to track the lead conversion rates generated by your social media campaigns. While this may seem challenging, a B2B social media management platform can make tracking conversions much easier for your marketing team!
Once your goals are set, you need to choose the perfect location for your skyscraper – will it be near the beach, in the city center, or on the riverfront? Take into consideration the characteristics and regulations of the area. Similarly, in your campaign, select your primary social networks. Every social network has its own unique personality, much like your target audience. You want to create a good match between your audience and social channels. Since you’re focused on a B2B campaign strategy, then LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook should be your first choice. Similar to your audience, which is made up of businesses, these networks are considered to be more “professional” in nature.
What about the target audience of your skyscraper—who’s going to reside or stay there? Businessmen, families, and wealthy individuals? In your social campaign, you will also need to define your target audience. By identifying their characteristics, such as industry, region, seniority, job function, and language, you can execute a campaign that caters to their specific needs, interests, and challenges.
How long will it take you to build the skyscraper, from planning to execution? It’s important that you consider the duration of your campaign. When will it start, and how long will it run for? Keeping an editorial calendar will help you organize, categorize, and measure all of your social content. You need a comprehensive editorial calendar that provides a company-wide perspective on all your social content and running campaigns, ensuring your pipeline is always full.
What are you going to call your skyscraper? Every great skyscraper has a name. Similarly, your campaign also needs a custom hashtag. This hashtag will stick with you throughout the campaign’s beginning, middle, and end. Every social post, every piece of content, every time you mention something about your campaign, this hashtag will be your signature.
Now that everything is planned, it’s time to build the skyscraper!
2. Execution
This is the most active part of your campaign.
Yeah,…not that active 😉
This is where you want to ensure you’re listening to your target audience. For example, when building a skyscraper, it is essential to be in tune with key stakeholders, including the media, public opinion, and environmental groups. Anything they say ultimately affects the steps you take moving forward. There will also be a lot of chatter surrounding your social campaign. With a social listening tool, you’ll be able to monitor in real-time specific conversations, words, or mentions that you choose.
Staying connected to your audience shows you care about what they have to say. It allows you to follow up by responding to their comments, resolving an issue, and participating in any discussion that could potentially impact your campaign. Be personal and friendly with your audience – reach out to them by tagging or mentioning their name across your social networks to help bolster the positive sentiment around your campaign.
Among all this noise, you might come across interesting findings that could inspire your next content idea! Perhaps a blog post that addresses a frequently asked question. The more you engage in social listening, the more your content efforts will tap the hearts and minds of your audience.
Next, ensure that the skyscraper has state-of-the-art amenities to meet the needs of your tenants, guests, residents, or anyone who will occupy it. Will it have a pool, a gym, and childcare? All of these amenities make up the experience you want to deliver to your target audience. What does this have to do with your social campaign? The most important element of your campaign is your content. Take all of the information you’ve gathered from your research and social monitoring and start creating the right social content. Continue sharing links and articles that direct people to landing pages, blog posts, webinars, or other content types that tie to your campaign and are likely to drive conversions.
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3. Maintenance
The skyscraper is complete! The media is talking about it. The tenants have moved in. Now, it’s time to evaluate the success of your process and maintain successful results! What do people think? How could you modify your process to make it run more smoothly next time you build a skyscraper?
Based on the KPIs you selected in the campaign’s first stage, you can analyze how your social campaign performed and its impact on your sales funnel. A sophisticated social analytics dashboard should provide you with deep and visual insights into how you missed, reached, or surpassed your initial goals, while identifying the channels and messaging that drove results for your campaign. Feed any leads you generate into your CRM or MAP to help you see and nurture their journeys over time.
Once you’ve built the skyscraper, what are your future steps? Do you plan to expand it? Maybe invest more in advertising and PR? All of these decisions should be reported to your stakeholders. This perspective is analogous to the final stage of your social campaign. Regardless of the goals you set for your social campaign – be it to drive traffic, brand awareness or conversions – you need to gather all of your analytics and share them with people in your organization. Sit down with your team, break down what went wrong or went well with your campaign, and turn any failure into an accomplishment in the next campaign round. After all, you can’t improve what you can’t measure!
Want to manage your next social media campaign effectively?
Your B2B social media campaign checklist:
- Pick an idea for your campaign
- Decide your KPI’s
- Choose your main social media networks
- Manage a social media calendar
- Consider your target audience
- Come up with a campaign hashtag
- Monitor your social networks (social listening)
- Create and promote the right content
- Analyze your campaigns
- Push campaign leads into MAP or CRM platform
- Report results to the organization
