Using social media in business-to-business marketing

If business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing is the waves and the froth on the surface, business-tobusiness (B2B) is the ocean underneath. Considerably larger, substantially hidden, rather mysterious, containing poorly understood but powerful currents, and with un-plumbed depths. While B2C marketers, perhaps obsessed with the excitement and glamour of big budget TV advertising campaigns, came rather late to the realisation that customer retention and relationship building were the key to generating shareholder value through marketing, B2B marketers have always known that customer relationships matter. Of course, it is the waves and the froth that people mainly see, and so most people think of marketing as consumer marketing. In particular, when it comes to the application of information technology to marketing, it is consumer-related activities that come to mind—such as websites for heavily branded consumer products, online retail, and consumerfocused social media campaigns (great social media campaigns have recently come from the likes of Nike, Cadbury and Heinz). However, B2B marketers have always known that relationships with customers are their most valuable asset, so it is hardly surprising that they have striven to recruit information technology to the cause of identifying, developing, maintaining, managing and enhancing profitable customer relationships. The latest tool, or rather, set of tools to be recruited, is social media.