Diamonds B2B: Why We Need to Embrace Social Media
June 02, 22
by Elle Hill, founder and CEO of Hill & Co., diamond, gemstone and jewelry launch and growth experts.
People do business with people they trust. People do not do business with businesses. The human connection, or lack thereof, is the number one determinant of a business's success.
That's why trade shows and getting meetings are an important part of B2B marketing. These enable buyers to meet you, get to know you and hopefully decide that they trust you.
But these should not be the only marketing methods you use to facilitate human connection.
Social media, text and email have enabled us all to create and deepen human relationships even when we are not together. Virtually everyone today has their own 'portal' online: their personal social media URLs on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. There you can learn about them, get to know them and even determine if you and the business you work for can or cannot help them.
Many B2B businesses have long neglected or misunderstood how to use technology to amplify offline human relationships in ways that contain costs, increase revenue, acquire clients, and increase the lifetime value of each account.
We all know and accept that B2C businesses must use digital marketing to sell a product. No one questions the budgets that Nike spends on marketing sneakers. But think about the B2B marketing budgets that Microsoft Teams and Zoom spent, vying for businesses to use them globally during the pandemic.
Why don't we, in the diamond industry, accept and appreciate that we can and should market to B2B buyers online?
I have found myself on countless calls with CEOs of multimillion-dollar B2B businesses, at every level of the diamond supply chain, who think that, just because they are B2B, social media marketing is not a necessary part of their business strategy. And so, they do not learn how to do it, nor allocate sufficient budget to support it.
But B2B buyers are people, too. They travel along a 'buying journey' just like B2C customers: idea > info > buy > receive > recommend… and the cycle repeats.
At every point along the buying journey, as businesses selling a product or service, we must use marketing to provide them with the information they need to continue along that cycle.
Take a close look. How much of their buying journey is spent in-person with you? In your office? Or on the phone with you? Not much at all. In fact, according to Accenture, 57% of the buying process takes place online, before they ever speak to you or your sales rep.
How do you communicate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to positively influence and support them when they are not with you?
You do it by leveraging social media, marketing who you are and what your business does, authentically.
We must, as authentic people who happen to represent a business, show up where the buyers we want to know or sell to are spending time already - and for most of them, that is on social media. "75% of B2B buyers are influenced by social media when making purchasing decisions" and "80% of business decision makers prefer to get info from social content rather than paid ads," reports B2B PR Sense Blog.
Learn how to execute social media marketing to initiate and deepen relationships with buyers and you will exponentially increase your opportunities to build trust - the trust that drives revenue.