IT

Posted: August 27th, 2021

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Question 1 – Benefits and Challenges for Businesses Using Social Media for B2B Sales Today

Benefits

Business to business (B2B) companies sell directly to other businesses. B2B businesses take advantage of technology to enhance the performance of their business particularly by investing in social media platforms to extend their customer access. Notable social media platforms commonly utilized include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, among others. Thus, the utilization of social media platforms has several benefits for B2B companies. First, the use of social media enhances accessibility to variety of customers available on social media (Press). As such, B2B businesses are capable of exploring on a variety of products that customer needs besides creating awareness for the retailers who lack incentives to increase their online presence. Second, online platforms work as support programs for customers (Press). Online platforms avail opportunity for customers to present complains about their products. In this way, therefore, suppliers manufacture, or retailers who are part of the production chain can provide the necessary support.

Challenges

However, B2B business utilization of social media platforms also has some challenges. One notable challenge is difficulties in defining their marketing goals. Sometimes they tend to develop strategies that do not align with customer expectations. Equally, it is difficult identifying customer needs (Press). Unlike in brick-and-mortar marketing where customersavail themselves to identify their preferred brands, a social media based market requires setting up a brand preferred by customers (Press). However, sometimes this fails because it is all about guessing based on unlimited research information. Whenever such occurs, some B2B businesses are likely to face an uphill task recovering. Hence, a lack of clear strategic plans can ultimately destroy the benefits accrued from Social Media marketingB2B businesses.

Recommendations

For businesses to succeed, they should evaluate their Social Media B2B performance in the future. These include the use of various metrics like awareness, level of reach, and engagement to ascertain performance of their products on the market (Press). In this way, therefore, they can estimate response of customers to their products.

Question 2 – Reasons That Facebook’s Competitors Failed

Before emergence of Facebook, other online giants were slowly controlling the internet platforms. Notable ones include Myspace, Friendster, and Orkut. These platforms had the resources and ability to become online giants (Press). However, the entry of Facebook changed the online market and ultimately defined the death of some of these first entrants (Schimel). Facebook’s success is based on different strategies that its competitors failed to appreciate. First, Facebook sought to solve the pain of customers. The basic objective of initiating the website was to address challenges faced by customers on other platforms (Schimel). Hence, this gave Facebook a competitive edge against others. Secondly, Facebook was keen on controlling its growth and worked hard to avoid the temptation of rapid expansion even though it had the potential. The company began as a local network and gradually expanded into the global arena after strengthening its base (Schimel). This approach was different from other similar websites such as Myspace which took a rapid expansion both regionally and across different social groups, bypassing standard limitations. Thus, Facebook’s competitors failed because they lacked a strong customer base and paid little interest in providing customer pains as well as unfocussed niche. Below is Facebook’s growth chart over time from 2004.

Source: Richter (n.d)

Facebook took a slow growth between 2004 to 2008 but drastically improved onwards.

Problem Areas Facebook Should Avoid to Remain Successful

Major problems Facebook should avoid is mishandling of confidential customer information. Customer information security is key and careless handling is likely to undermine customer trust in the company (Schimel). Also, Ad load saturation can discourage customers from using the website, therefore, reducing the company’s customer size.

Works Cited

Press, Gil. “Why Facebook Triumphed Over All Other Social Networks.” Forbes, 8 Apr. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2018/04/08/why-facebook-triumphed-over-all-other-social-networks/?sh=140730db6e91.

Richter, Felix. “Infographic: Facebook’s Remarkable User Growth.” Statista Infographics, 4 Feb. 2013, www.statista.com/chart/870/facebooks-user-growth-since-2004/.

Schimel, Elliot. “Strategic Social Media Is Essential for Driving B2B Sales.” Forbes, Forbes Agency Council, 22 Mar. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/22/strategic-social-media-is-essential-for-driving-b2b-sales/?sh=924b6451db02.