Thanks for showing some B2B love! I work in B2B enterprise software, and humbly contribute some additional thoughts:
- A big difference in B2B software is that the purchasing cycle can last months or even years, and often takes dozens if not hundreds of marketing touch points before a decision is made. And while there may one ultimate decision maker, larger deals involve committees representing multiple departments. For social media, this means you have to 1) play the long game and 2) work very closely with your marketing counterparts, PR and sales teams to map out a desired journey for your prospects.
- For companies like Airtable and Notion (shout out Alex Hao!), there’s additional complexity because our products often start with one single department and then spreads through WOM across a company. So we have to market to both the individual user (the buttons-up approach) and company-wide decision makers (the top-down approach). This is where platform-specific strategies and understanding audience behavior on social is key.
- That said, one commonality between B2B and B2C is that you’re still marketing to human beings, so creating an emotional connection is still vital (though many B2B companies have a hard time with this..or they try too hard and it falls flat. We’ve all seen examples :-))
Hope this helps contribute to the convo. Really appreciate this community!
Thanks for showing some B2B love! I work in B2B enterprise software, and humbly contribute some additional thoughts:
- A big difference in B2B software is that the purchasing cycle can last months or even years, and often takes dozens if not hundreds of marketing touch points before a decision is made. And while there may one ultimate decision maker, larger deals involve committees representing multiple departments. For social media, this means you have to 1) play the long game and 2) work very closely with your marketing counterparts, PR and sales teams to map out a desired journey for your prospects.
- For companies like Airtable and Notion (shout out Alex Hao!), there’s additional complexity because our products often start with one single department and then spreads through WOM across a company. So we have to market to both the individual user (the buttons-up approach) and company-wide decision makers (the top-down approach). This is where platform-specific strategies and understanding audience behavior on social is key.
- That said, one commonality between B2B and B2C is that you’re still marketing to human beings, so creating an emotional connection is still vital (though many B2B companies have a hard time with this..or they try too hard and it falls flat. We’ve all seen examples :-))
Hope this helps contribute to the convo. Really appreciate this community!
I am so happy we finally got a B2B example and such a good one too! Thanks, Rachel ❤️