Social Media Marketing That Sells The Way It Should

Social media marketing helps your customers trust you.

Schedule a call with kristin to discuss your social

We provide the full range of social media marketing services.

Social Media Audit: We assess and report on your current social media presence, engagement levels, and brand perception across the various platforms you’re utilizing, then recommend how your social media can be improved. Recommending how your social media can be improved. We can also analyze what your competition is doing and what we can learn from them.
Social Media Strategy Development: Your social media strategy will meet your business objectives, including the type of content and channels that will work best for you, and the best type of content to post in each channel.
Content Creation: We create engaging, entertaining, and educational content that includes copy, graphics, and video. Optimized for each channel and each type of buyer.
Social Media Management: We post, schedule, and monitor all of your social media channels to maintain a consistent online presence and engage with your audience.
Podcaster Outreach and Collaboration: We identify relevant influencers in the industry and then initiate partnerships to expand reach and credibility.
Community Building: We’ll foster relationships with your followers, respond to comments, and build a loyal community around your brand. We can build new social groups and build communities within those groups, as appropriate.
Reputation Management: We’ll proactively manage online reviews and address customer feedback to maintain a positive brand image.
Paid Social Advertising: Creating and managing targeted ad campaigns across social media platforms to reach specific buyer demographics and drive conversions.
Analytics and Reporting: We will monitor your key metrics, analyze performance data, and provide actionable insights and recommendations to optimize strategies and improve results.

What can social media marketing do for you?

Branding is the promise that you make. Your brand is the promise that you keep. Your social media posts should constantly prove to your potential buyers how dedicated you are to keeping your promises, and how you do that for your customers.

One thing to keep in mind about social media—and all aspects of your marketing—is that how you market your product or service is driven, in no small part, by the amount of scrutiny your customer applies to the purchase.

As Kristin talks about in her book, all of the world’s products and services fall into one of four “buyer scrutiny” categories: Light, Medium, Heavy, and Intense. Knowing the amount of scrutiny that your buyers apply to your B2B product or service will ensure that your marketing dollars deliver a higher return on your investment.

Once you’ve skimmed through the following definitions of the four scrutiny levels, you will know where your product or service falls, and you will be able to make smarter decisions about your marketing and sales.

The Buying Process Scrutiny Spectrum

Light Scrutiny:

These are the least expensive products, normally costing from $1 to $10.
The buyer has a couple of questions.
There are typically no other buyers involved.
It only takes a few seconds to decide to buy.
Examples include candy at the checkout counter and very simple app.

Medium Scrutiny:

Cost: $10 to $100s of dollars.
The buyer asks 5 to 20 questions.
The buyer might consult one or two other people.
The buying process takes minutes or hours.
Examples include clothing, appliances, or more complex software programs.

Heavy Scrutiny:

Cost: Thousands to millions of dollars.
Buyers ask 25 to 50 questions or more.
Multiple buyers are involved, each with their own set of questions.
The buying process takes weeks or months.
There is a salesperson and a contract.
Examples include cars and houses, or complex business systems for B2B.

Intense Scrutiny:

It’s everything listed in the Heavy Scrutiny category, but you get married. If it is a service, there is a long-term relationship involved, or if it is a product, it consists of a long-term, multi-phase project.
Cost: Thousands to millions to billions of dollars.
Buyers ask hundreds of questions.
Multiple buyers are involved, each with their own set of questions.
The buying process takes months or even years.
There is a salesperson and a contract.
Examples include very expensive custom products, medical services, professional consulting services, and major contracts such as building an aircraft.

Social media that matches your buyer’s scrutiny

Light: Your social media can be more entertaining than educational, although it always helps to entertain with a purpose. Your goal is to gain wide awareness so that people are totally comfortable selecting your brand without giving it much thought.

Medium: This decision is a little more serious and requires more information. Your social media should emphasize your dedication to providing ethical and sustainable products that are well-designed and well-made. You can certainly use entertainment to engage your buyers, but the main goal is to educate while enticing buyers with beautiful images and videos.

Heavy: Now you are playing the long game. Consistently useful and relevant posts are key. You aren’t expecting the person to buy off of one social post, nor are you necessarily expecting serious buyers to “follow” you. But when they do click into your social channels, they want to see what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. One of the most important questions for a Heavy Scrutiny buyer is “What’s going to happen to me after I buy?” Your posts should answer that question in numerous positive ways.

Intense: These are the most cautious buyers. They need proof of solid business practices, successful outcomes, and thought leadership. All of your content should communicate how serious you are about the way you manufacture your B2B product or deliver your service. Your buyers will care as much (or maybe even more) about how well your company is run as they do about what you’re selling.

How social media marketing works for a B2B company.

When potential buyers come to your site, the first page they will visit after skimming through your homepage is your About page. Thousands of B2B customers have told us they go there because they “want to see who is running the company.” They want to know the backgrounds of the company leaders and what they care about because they are often buying a “high-scrutiny” product or service. They know you will become a partner in their business and “who you are” matters quite a bit.

Another link they click on is one or more of your social media icons which are usually displayed in your site’s header or footer. The same principle applies here; they want to know what you care about. In other words, they want to know if the things you care about are aligned with what matters to them.

This is why you should hire a social marketing agency that understands this, so these high-scrutiny, serious buyers will be turned off by postings that are:

“Cute”
Bragging on your behalf
Filled with industry news that has little to do with what your customers care about
Linking to so-so content on your site that is simply a regurgitation of content published elsewhere

These types of posts will “unsell” your prospects, which is exactly what you don’t want.

Social media that will encourage your buyers and convince them to continue checking you out will include:

Real-life examples of how you’ve helped your customers
Helpful information on how to use your product or service
Decisions you’ve made as you designed and manufactured your product, or created and structured the services you provide
Recent discoveries and developments that are leading to new product improvements or the designs of new products
How your customers are using your products and what they like about them
Comments about the industry that will establish your company as a thought leader
Teasers leading to excellent blog articles that appeal to your potential buyers

There’s more, but you get the idea. Your social media should reveal to your potential customers what makes you helpful, relevant, and special.

Of course, in all cases, engagement is key. Your posts should be good enough to share.

Does B2B social posting lead directly to sales? Not as a general rule. It usually serves as a necessary component of your overall marketing strategy, and it definitely plays a support role in the buying process.

A steady, on-target social program will assure your potential buyers that you are a vibrant, up-to-date company that understands the modern marketing landscape and uses it effectively.

A languishing social channel with only a few, outdated posts will make your prospective customers think that no one is paying much attention to their concerns and questions.

You’ll want to be the vibrant, up-to-date, and relevant company that appeals to your prospects. We can do that for you.

Why Zhivago Partners can give you more

Our agency was founded and is run by a revenue coach. We are laser-focused on helping your company grow.

Social media is one of the tools in an overall campaign aimed at meeting your business growth goals. There’s a lot of “social for social’s sake” out there in the market, which can actually do a company more harm than good.

As Kristin says, “The saddest thing about marketing in general is how much you have to spend before you realize you’re wasting your money.” Clients who come to us have had this experience, and they are beginning to think that marketing simply doesn’t work.

But we have proven to our clients that it can and does work. When the right approaches are taken, it can pay off in the form of a steady stream of qualified leads.

We would be pleased and honored to build a marketing machine that works for you.

Where could this start? Spend some time discussing your business, goals, and experience with Kristin, and visualize with her what your own smooth-running marketing machine could do for your business.

Schedule a free call with Kristin Zhivago