Recently, I’ve been receiving a variety of text messages from companies such as Guess and Amazon promoting their post-Christmas/new year sales. I don’t even read the text messages, instead deleting them immediately (I guess I shouldn’t have opted in to receive their texts).

Clearly, SMS text messaging can be an annoyance to me, but it got me thinking about what experts are saying about SMS marketing and if it provides value in B2B.

Best Text Marketing, a site that provides reviews and ratings of SMS marketing services, outlined the benefits of SMS marketing in an article this past year. These benefits include:

• Cost control
  You can control the cost through your choice of plan, whether it is domestic/international, the number of texts per month you require and the service features.

• Control message arrival
  SMS text messages are nearly instantaneous to transmit, and the character limit means they will open more quickly. You can send a message at the exact time you see fit for your marketing campaign.

• Freedom to do it yourself or hire an expert
  You have the choice to set up the marketing campaign that is appropriate for your target audience.

• Target your audience more effectively
  Use an opt-in marketing method so you’re targeting only those people who are interested in your product or service. Use short codes so you can segment your audience and send to customers who you know are interested in your product or service.
  

I agree that SMS marketing can be effective in the B2C space as long as the right customers are opting in to receive information about the company’s products or services. For me, I need to make sure that I have a high interest in the company’s product or service before I opt in to receive text messages.

So how does SMS marketing provide value in the B2B platform? I found a great article that outlines specific uses for text messaging to                                                                                B2B customers:

• Share information
  Provide customers with industry-specific news updates, white papers, etc.

• Product updates
  Make decision makers the first to hear about product launches, updates, etc.

• Trade shows
  Keep customers informed of your trade show appearances—notify them of booth changes, contests and promotional items

• Appointments
  Send appointment reminders to prospects that include parking info, directions and other details via text

• Customer service
  Set up an automated system where customers can receive order status

• Polls and surveys
  Give customers the option to provide their opinion about you

• Promote your other offerings
  SMS can be a great way to promote a new tool or resource

• Emergency notifications
  Inform your customers of a serious problem with a product

I think these uses for text messaging to B2B customers are all  great ways to find a qualified lead. Do you agree or disagree?

Every day, more businesses are taking advantage of social media to reach their customers. You can “like” a business on Facebook to get access to special offers and if you tweet about a business, you could be re-tweeted and be included in a promotion for its product.

Businesses are clearly using social media, but how much business is actually being generated from social media outreach?  The problem is there are few data points for sales impact. There are many studies about B2B social media successes (see these Top 10 examples), but no information regarding the correlation to actual sales metrics.

So, what is the best B2B social media resource?

I found a great article in Fast Company that takes a look at LinkedIn being a great resource for B2B businesses to find information on companies and people. And, a recent study by Performics said that almost 60% of active social networkers claimed that LinkedIn was their most important social network.

Image: splashmedia.com

I found a great example of an active B2B social networker company using LinkedIn— IBM. IBM has over 450,000 followers on LinkedIn, making this B2B company the most followed company on the network. IBM features recent blog posts, tweets and stock prices. More importantly, IBM features over 300 job postings and recommendations, driving viewers to learn more about particular jobs and departments of interest.

So, what do B2B companies need to do to grasp this kind of following in social media?

Before incorporating any social media channel into your communication plan, you must ask yourself a couple questions. Is your target audience using these channels? And, if so, how can you calculate the sales impact from using social media? And how does your company plan to define B2B success from a social media perspective?

How is your company using social media? Have you found any sales impact?

All my co-workers know that Christmas is my favorite time of year. The holiday spirit immediately kicks in for me on Thanksgiving Day when watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, and of course, the Black Friday commercials.

Every year, stores around the nation brace themselves for Black Friday as bargain shoppers camp out to get the greatest discount. One could say that Black Friday is the bargain consumer’s paradise and it has turned into the traditional start of the holiday shopping season in the U.S. Not only has Black Friday store spending become the holiday norm, but online spending as well. This year, Black Friday saw $52 billion in store sales and $816 million in online sales.

This year’s outrageous holiday shopping activity got me thinking about ways B2B can take advantage of Black Friday strategies offline and online. Is there any way we can do something like this in the B2B space?

I found a great article that outlines how the end-of-year consumer supply and demand benefits retailers around the holiday season and how B2B companies could potentially match the same supply and demand.

Consumers have continued to cut back on money, leaving them with more money to spend at the end of the year, creating strong profits for many companies, and in return, giving these companies more money to spend. So, what is the supply in B2B? This article outlines what B2B companies can do to match the demand and the ability to spend:

• Make it easy for companies to spend with a range of prices to meet their budgets
• Address the need to invest, i.e. Communicate that the product or service will bring opportunity to grow and advance the business
• Know your customer’s budgetary cycle
• Understand customer needs and wants; prepare way in advance for the holiday season

Do you think it’s possible to promote B2B business sales on Black Friday? Why or why not?

Whoever is reading my post, I hope you have wonderful holiday and a happy new year!

Groupon’s business model is (seemingly) based on offering deals that sound too good to be true. As a Groupon user and B2B marketer, I’ve always wondered if Groupon could ever work for B2B buyers considering that Groupon is more of a consumer-oriented platform.

I came across a great article in B@B Magazine that explains Groupon’s first encounter into the world of B2B sales. A Chicago-based consulting firm, Ajilitee, used Groupon to offer $25,000 worth of consulting services for only $12,500. Turns out, the three week deadline passed with no takers and the firm realized they were too early to the game.

Groupon works on point-of-sale decisions (fertile ground for consumer marketing) while business (and B2B) decisions tend to take awhile longer. Right now, B2B companies are more focused in longer CRM-type sales. However, marketing tools such as Groupon are becoming a growing area of interest across the board, and dozens of similar sites have popped up crowding the marketplace.

So, what does this mean for the B2B market? How could businesses potentially use Groupon to build a qualified customer base?

B2B companies would need a longer duration of the Groupon offer and a long time to execute the purchase. Offering this this would give prospective clients/current customers time to evaluate the offer and time to budget for the offer in the long run, but this kind of marketing will take time for B2B companies to adapt to and execute since most businesses aren’t used to buying “on the spot.”

Do you think Groupon could potentially be a great marketing tool for B2B companies? What was the last thing you bought with Groupon?