B2B marketers and sales professionals continually work to influence the decision making process of their audience to ultimately drive sales, however succeeding with this can be difficult.
Research by Google (Decoding Decisions, making sense of the messy middle) and Gartner (New B2B Buying Journey & its Implication for Sales) provide strong evidence about what we know of the customer journey and how decision making behaviours work. ie. The B2B buyer journey is messy, it has never been more complex than ever before, comprising multiple decision makers, multiple touchpoints across a non linear process.
For several years we’ve been collecting data from business executives, and recently explored what the data is telling us about how they are using social media. Our research reinforces the under utilisation of peer to peer (P2P) social marketing by brands today, despite the impact it has across the entire customer journey from shaping brand awareness and on demand.
The key takeaways from our preview research report revealed a surprising gap between business executive usage of social media and road blocks that are getting in the way of effectiveness, despite overwhelming positive employer sentiment and support.
Digging deeper into how business executives (from middle management, department heads /GMs, C- suite, board and non executive professionals) spend their time on social media, our research found that:
• 61% of employees spend up to 1 day per week on social media
• Road blocks include measurement gaps to understand if it is working (How do I know it’s successful?)
• The number one activity is research
• Time constraint is a challenge
• Not having a strategy and plan is a challenge
As The Social Revolution works to deliver B2B social marketing like you’ve never seen it before, we believe P2P social marketing provides long-term value to B2B organisations, allowing them to deliver incremental gains.
To read more download your copy of The 2020 Peer to Peer Social Marketing Report Preview below.
