Establishing a business is one thing, but ensuring it succeeds is another. As you know, the success of every business depends on a good customer base. So, companies and brands promote their business in many ways to attract these customers and ensure growth. These methods and practices constitute their business marketing strategy.
Every business must establish and implement an effective marketing strategy to develop. Additionally, you must continue revolutionizing these strategies to keep pace with the changing times and remain effective. So, this article will outline what marketing entails for a business. It will also highlight how businesses can use social media like Twitter, now X, to market a business effectively.
What Is Business Marketing? Getting Back to the Basics
Generally, marketing describes a company’s activities to promote selling a particular product or service. However, if you’re wondering what is business marketing, then you know there’s more to the phrase. This term is specific to Business-to-Business (B2B) relations; hence, other names – B2B marketing and industrial marketing. It refers to promoting a company’s goods or services for sale to other businesses. Simply put, it is marketing to other businesses.
This marketing type satisfies derived demands for a good or service. That is, a demand existing among consumers but only satiable by the businesses who buy your goods or services. Thus, it differs from consumer marketing, focusing on the product or service consumers as the target customers.
Additionally, business markets barely exist in isolation, so this marketing is usually extensive yet professional. However, while it targets business, you can guarantee effectiveness in this marketing by factoring in consumers. This way, you can easily appeal to these businesses based on the demand and characteristics of their target market.
Why Is Marketing Important for Businesses? Critical Reasons for This
If you consider what it takes to start a business, you’d not want to go further than that. But you can’t have a business and not market it; at least, that’s what professionals say. So, why is marketing important for businesses? Simply put, business marketing determines a business’s success, growth, and expansion.
Every business aims to satisfy the needs and wants of certain groups of consumers. However, these consumers will not know about your business’ existence unless you announce it. And that is what marketing does. It makes the target consumers aware of your existence and what you offer.
Additionally, no matter how innovative a business solution is, it always has earlier recognized competitors or substitutes. Thus, you need good marketing to put your product and service at the forefront and above the others existing before you. People may never learn about your innovation unless you market it to them. That is why marketing is pivotal to the existence of a business.
How To Use Twitter for Business Marketing: 4 Helpful Tips
Industrial marketing deals with other businesses’ interests and how to cultivate and maintain them. Yet, it begins with finding this business and discerning their interests. Undoubtedly, social media is now a hotspot for businesses searching for active and loyal customers. That is where most business today find their customers, learn about their interests, and interact with them. But is this also applicable in the B2B industry?
Yes, it is. Recall that B2B marketing aims to satisfy derived demands. Thus, the customers you seek during industrial marketing also seek customers for their products below the chain. So, you’ll find them where their prospective customers are – on social media.
Among the numerous platforms you can explore, X, formerly Twitter, leads in helping businesses drive conversion and manage their customers. Thus, this section will discuss how to use Twitter for business marketing. It will outline some tips and tricks you can apply for a successful B2B marketing campaign. Let’s get right to it!
1. Twitter Verification: The First Step To Successful Marketing on X
Business relationships, especially online, are all about trust. People, even businesses, must trust you and your offerings to do business with you. However, you may assume this trust automatically comes with good advertising and promotion. But remember that people must give an audience to your ads and promotions before they influence them. That is where the initial trust comes in. You must be trustworthy and credible to earn their time and attention.
The easiest way to attain credibility on X is through a Twitter verification. When Twitter verifies your business account, you become an approved company on the platform. They’ll even add a verification badge to your profile, following your display name across the platform. With this badge, your target businesses will not need background checks to give you attention. Reviews can go a distance, but an X verification is a sure catalyst at the start of your marketing campaign.
2. Run a Twitter Ad Campaign for Targeted Marketing
When you market your business on X, the goal is to reach a greater audience and gain more conversions. However, no matter how well you draft your tweets, they can only go far, usually circulating among your contacts. The products and services you’re marketing may not even appeal to that audience.
Fortunately, you can run an X ad campaign to reach a more targeted audience. Here, you pay Twitter to promote your tweets to more people beyond your contact, targetting a particular audience you designate. You can advertise and market your business to other businesses to earn their interest and engagement.
3. Use Twitter Lists to Curate Your Desired Audience
Twitter Lists are collections of accounts with similar interests in a group where you can share posts. It is a great way to promote and market your business on X for free. You can create or join a list and share promotional posts in them, assured that you have the desired audience. Lists are a great way to reach a wider target audience beyond your contact.
That is because you can join a list containing non-followers you’re interested in. You can also create Lists and add accounts that do not follow you. So, create a list and add various businesses you intend to appeal to, then share your promotional post there. Then, with proper interest arousal and appropriate follow-up, you’ll market your business effectively.
4. Reach Out Directly and Make Offers
Businesses will more likely respond to their customers and competitors, even publicly on Twitter, than they would potential partners. So, your marketing strategy must involve a way to reach them and provoke a response. You can also use Twitter’s direct messaging feature to market a business on Twitter, especially to other businesses. Ideally, an account must follow you before you can chat on Twitter DMs, but there’s another way around it.
The direct messages settings allow users to decide whether non-followers can send them messages. Most businesses on X allow this feature to enhance interaction and build relationships with customers. You can leverage this opportunity to pitch your offers to targeted businesses as a marketing strategy. Although they can overlook promotional ads and tweets, you’ll be hard to ignore once in their DMs.
Social Media Marketing for Small Business: Boosting Your Brand Online
Many factors are responsible for businesses’ growth, development, and expansion, but a growing customer base tops the list. Businesses exist to satisfy customer demands, even if the customers are other businesses. So, they cannot thrive without that demand; hence, marketing aims to attract customers with effective demand. They also employ many tools to achieve this aim, but this section focuses on social media.
Larger businesses focus more on maintaining their customer base by reinforcing their good reputation. In contrast, small businesses primarily seek to expand their customer base. So, it is reasonable for small businesses to market their business where they’ll find a greater audience. That makes social media an invaluable marketing tool, delivering the desired audience.
However, social media marketing is an entire discipline. You’ll need skill and proper guidance to pull it off effectively. So, let’s consider some tips and tricks for social media marketing for small businesses, using Twitter as an example.
Create a Profile Reflecting Your Business and Brand
Using a business account created specifically for your brand for social media marketing is best, especially on X. Twitter business accounts garner more respect and credibility in the space, especially for industrial marketing. As a small business, you want to show potential customers that your business has a promising future. And you can best do this with proper online branding.
Start with your profile; your X profile should highlight your business and nothing else. The profile picture, header, bio, and pinned tweets should reflect your business. If possible, your Twitter handle and display name should be your business name or closely related. Never underestimate the power of branding on social media. It gives your account the elevation you desire and corresponding positive results.
Expand Your Reach on the Platform With Popular Hashtags
Social media platforms like X are active sites; you could lose out if you stay stagnant. Your account needs followers and engagements to grow and reach a wider audience. You can attain this by posting regularly using Twitter trending hashtags. These hashtags curate your posts under trending topics and deliver them to a wider audience interested in that topic.
As a result, your visibility, impression, and reach will grow, and you’ll earn more engagement on your posts. This action elicits more positive reactions, such as increased followers and conversions. So keep posting promotional content on your account and lace them with appropriate and popular hashtags to expand your reach.
Add CTAs To Encourage Engagement and Follow-Ups
Using trending hashtags, paid promotions, and Twitter lists are the only methods for increasing your visibility on the platform. It leaves other important metrics like engagements, link clicks, and conversion to chance. However, there is a way to stir your audience to action in each post – using a Call to Action (CTA).
A CTA is a simple sentence or phrase at your post’s end urging the audience to take a specific action. It could be a call to like or share the post, follow your account, or click a link. This call proceeds a thoughtful and captivating post, making the action a natural response to the information from the post. With appealing CTAs on your post, you can market anything from your account and get the desired response.
Showcase Your Business Values and Ethics
When you market a business on social media, you’ll not always meet your potential customers at their point of need. That is why your marketing plan must be flexible, not always targeting the ideal customers. One way to achieve this marketing mix is by promoting your business values and ethics alongside your products and services.
Your products and services may not always impress or attract people, but good values and ethics will. It can even prompt them to learn more about your business and partner with you. So, share non-profit content on your business account periodically to show customers that you’re more than just a business establishment.
These ideas, though simple, can yield tremendous positive results for your marketing efforts. It can grow a small business to an empire, first online and then physically. So, adopt and modify them where necessary, and watch your business grow astronomically online.
Remember, though, that this growth is continuous. So, you must keep applying these tips regularly in business marketing to promote your brand. That may cause tweet accumulation, making navigating your timeline difficult for prospective followers.
You can use TweetErase to maintain your Twitter timeline and curb this. This X management tool can help you erase posts after serving their promotional purpose. It can bulk delete tweets and likes with a single click. You can also import your timeline into your archive using this tool. TweetErase provides a seamless way to manage your timeline and keep it attractive and appealing. So, start filtering and cleaning your Twitter timeline today!
