Monday, 14, Feb 2011 09:18
Online marketing that includes social media can play a part in ramping up business-to-business (B2B) sales.
That is according to Kim Tasso, who writing on Econsultancy explained that social media has proven its worth in digital marketing campaigns.
Despite this, some enterprises are still unsure of how social media can complement sales.
Before bringing social media more closely aligned with online marketing, Ms Tasso advised firms to discover which internal professionals and external vertical markets are the most excited about the potential of such platforms.
"Consider how to integrate social media contacts and connections with traditional 'centralised' databases, sales automation and customer relationship management systems," she noted.
Social media can be used to learn more about organisations and markets and is a "targeted form of market listening in order to gain insight into trends", Ms Tasso added.
Once such trends have been explored, B2B sales could be tailored more accordingly.
Analyst and vice-president of Gartner Carol Rozwell recently asserted that before deploying social media initiatives under online marketing, a "cross-section" of a firm should write guidelines on how it will be used.