Facebook marketing for B2B is a tricky subject, mainly because the behavior of people on this social media platform tends to be geared towards personal conversations with friends, not necessarily business networking. However, we shouldn’t forget that the business contacts who perform purchases for their institutions are actual people and they may very well have a Facebook persona.
Thus, if your business has determined that your target audience lives on Facebook, and if you’re ready to invest in building personal relationships, then it’s worth taking a look at the new capabilities for tracking activity on Facebook pages.
Measure Facebook Metrics Together with Your Other Analytics
Social media metrics that track in the same place as your other aggregate or lead generation analytics have been a long-time wish for me personally, so the news that Webtrends launched Facebook analytics as part of their On Demand offering seem like a step in the right direction. This is no longer a clever hack around Facebook platform limitations that someone figured out how to integrate with Google Analytics. Webtrends has a legit approach that meets Facebook guidelines.
First Solid Attempts Always Come with Caveats
Granted, the Webtrends Facebook analytics offering is limited by a few details for now. First, in the next couple of months, this feature will require a service engagement with Webtrends. Second, the Webtrends method will only allow you to track page activity within custom tabs. If you want to know more about the capabilities, I highly suggest attending one of Justin Kistner’s webinars on the topic. The good news is that the long-term plan is to have Facebook analytics as a “do-it-yourself” offering, so if you’re not in a terrible rush, this may happen by the summer.
A Final Word of Warning: Use the Momentum and Find the Right Solution for Your Organization!
If your business has decided to have a presence on Facebook, make sure that it is about building relationships and use the cultural momentum of social media and of specific platforms. If Facebook is for you and you have good employee advocates, plan your move and make your move, do not wait 2 years. To balance out that advice, I also highly suggest reading Steve Rubel’s thoughts on dropping .com URLs in favor of Facebook and other social media destinations. There is no solution that works for all businesses, so whichever direction your organization decides to take, make sure you do so with full/transparent intent, dedicated resources, and a way to measure your success.
Images courtesy Webtrends
About the B2Bblogger: Rodica Buzescu (@rodica) is marketing manager at Amazon Web Services. She enjoys combining interdisciplinary knowledge and various agency & B2B experience in digital marketing to solve larger marketing challenges. Rodica sometimes blogs on various marketing, management, and bigger strategy ideas at http://morphingthrough.blogspot.com.
