It’s called social media for a reason, but for many B2B marketers, becoming social with customers online can be challenging. For many, setting up and managing a branded customer community has proven essential for B2B social marketing. 

DNN Webinar with Forrester Research

To examine the trends and best practices associated with branded communities, DNN turned to Kim Celestre, a senior analyst at Forrester Research to lead a webinar called “Why Branded Communities are Essential to B2B Social Marketing Success.”

In the hour-long webinar, Celestre walked participants through the compelling findings released in a recent Forrester Research report titled "Benchmark B2B Social Marketing Efforts." The results served to inform us about how B2B marketers are currently using social media to connect to their customers, their experiences and what the future of B2B social marketing may hold.

B2B SOCIAL Media marketing

Overall, B2B marketers are generally optimistic about social media marketing in 2014, even though a majority of them are only investing 1-5% of their budgets on social media efforts. Still, within the next twelve months, many expect to increase it, even if only by 10%. Not only does this signify a healthy growth in marketing budgets, it also shows that for more and more companies, social media marketing is becoming a priority.

While B2B marketers are optimistic about the future, they aren’t necessarily satisfied with the ways they’re using social media to generate leads, increase sales and improve customer loyalty. Their dissatisfaction may speak to the social platforms across which they are most active.

73% of B2B marketers surveyed by Forrester are using Facebook, while 59% are using LinkedIn and Twitter. 53% use YouTube; and 36% are making the most of Google Plus. Just as budgets are forecasted for growth, so are the networks across which marketers intend to extend their reach: 21% say they plan to use LinkedIn next year.

LOW Satisfaction with Social Marketing

To learn more, Forrester compared marketers’ adoption of social media against their satisfaction of the tactics used across networks. The results fell neatly into four main categories:

1. Optional tactics (low adoption/low satisfaction)
2. Essential (high adoption/high satisfaction)
3. Overvalued (high adoption/low satisfaction)
4. Undervalued (low adoption/high satisfaction)

According to Forrester, most B2B marketers haven't achieved meaningful results with marketing on YouTube or posting updates to Twitter and Facebook. In addition, paid ads on Facebook have not resulted in much success. The tactics that have proved essential to most marketers include branded blogs, building communities and marketing on LinkedIn. 

Why Branded Communities are Essential

Most interesting, however, is the one item plotted as undervalued: “customer ratings and reviews on our site.” Celestre said it’s worth noting that of the essential and undervalued tactics, most, if not all are elements that can be incorporated into online communities. Therefore, as B2B marketers look to develop new ways to connect with customers, they should approach communities more holistically, so they can offer a variety of ways to engage customers across all stages of the customer journey.

Communities Serve the Customer Journey

Image source: Forrester.

Speaking of the customer journey, Forrester has determined that the stages of the customer journey: Discover, Explore, Buy and Engage overlap quite nicely with the company’s Marketing RaDaR model, which looks at the world the way customers do: as an ongoing sequence of reach channels, depth channels, and relationship channels. 

Customer communities are relevant throughout each stage of their customer journey: to gain information about new products and to ask questions of other users during the Discover and Explore phases. In addition, customers can interact and develop relationships with sales representatives during the Buy and Engage stages.

In fact, when asked, buyers cite support and discussion forums as a primary source of information when researching and evaluation technologies and services to purchase. Yet, marketers indicate that hosting a branded community or forum are only minimally relevant to building brand awareness, brand preference, driving direct leads or sales, increasing customer loyalty and providing customer service.

To help B2B marketers better understand that the benefits of communities often justify the investment, Celestre outlined the qualitative and quantitative benefits that they can bring. While the success of any initiative can never be guaranteed, companies can increase leads and conversion rates, deflect support calls and improve the quality and functionality of products and services through ideation.

Examples of Branded Communities

Putting concepts into action isn’t always easy. So, it was helpful that Celestre provided examples of successful branded communities. Each example helped us to see the different ways communities can be implemented, managed and sustained to promote customer engagement.

Who: Hotcakes Commerce Community

What it does: The e-commerce platform company’s branded community lets users ask questions, submit ideas, participate in upcoming events and stay up-to-date with news.

Why it works: The community helped Hotcakes generate leads, which allowed them to reduce overall marketing costs, while increasing revenue and improving ideation. As customers became more engaged, it was easier for Hotcakes to interact with them online in a supported space. When customers shared ideas for new functionality, the company was able to improve their product, which resulted in more sales.

Who: Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) Bridge Social Community

What it does: While not a B2B, MSOE’s experience is very relevant. The school was looking for ways to transform their admissions experience to be more engaging and connect with a generation that lives on social media. MSOE partnered with 7Summits to develop a rich online "owned" community and integrated application tool that engages prospective students in an ongoing discussion. The robust online community, Bridge, creates a space where students, parents, and counselors can share resources and engage in conversation.

Why it works: The MSOE Bridge Admissions Social Community has been transformational for the school and its admissions process, providing real business value and a number of benefits including reaching their application and acceptance goals months ahead of schedule, while decreasing summer melt, and helping admissions counselors foster relationships with prospective and enrolled students. MSOE was selected as the winner of Forrester’s 2013 Groundswell Awards for Social Depth Marketing (B2C).

Building the Business Case for Your Branded Community

If you’re convinced that a branded customer community is the right tactic for your company to focus on, you’ll probably have to build the business case for community. Celestre recommended that, in addition to the information already provided, companies should follow these steps:

Confirm that your buyer’s social profiles are a good fit

Not all social media users are the same and as result, not all of them may want or use a community. Take the time to understand their behaviors so you can best engage with them in the right way.

Define community objectives

If a community makes sense for your customers, define what it is exactly you want to do and get from it in return.

Choose a community strategy

There are many different ways companies can implement online communities. Communities can be:

• Owned (branded and supported by the company)
• Sponsored (not branded, but discretely supported by a company)
• Member and promoter (not hosted by the company, but rather by third party solutions, like social media)

Celestre recommends either using an owned or sponsored community as they allow for the most control and can be leveraged the most successfully for customer engagement.

Identify key design elements

Once a strategy has been selected, a company will need to figure out how it will be managed, determine workflows and other various controls.

Determine costs, benefits, and risks

Companies must determine how much time, money and effort into creating, managing, promoting and sustaining the community.

Communicate proposal to key stakeholders

After outlining each of these elements, it’s time to present to key company stakeholders. Be sure to keep information relevant to their individual’s goals and objectives. For example, how you sell the idea of a branded community will be different when talking to IT or the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

Now that you why branded communities are essential to B2B social marketing success, it’s time to start reaping the rewards of branded communities by driving lead generation and revenue, as community members influence both prospects and customers.

Related Resource

To get started with your own branded community, have a look at an Online Community Playbook.