دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی جهت گیری بازاریابی الکترونیکی و پیاده سازی رسانه اجتماعی در بازاریابی B2B - امرالد 2015

Implications of B2B marketing characteristics on the implementation of social media

The differences between B2C and B2B marketing in terms of buyer behaviour and target marketing (identified by academic and practitioner literature) result in differences in traditional as well as digital marketing communications. For example, while B2B companies place a higher value on educational formats such as blogging and webinars, consumer businesses are slightly more willing to experiment with advanced digital formats like interactive content and online tools, Infographics are also preferred (hubspot, 2014). The role of social media platforms in B2C and B2B also varies. While the number of companies that have acquired customers from Facebook in B2C was found to be 77%, the rate is only at 43% for B2B companies (Miller, 2012a).

Conclusions and managerial implications

This paper makes an innovative and substantive contribution to the literature as it is the first paper to highlight that EMO is a relevant conceptual model for developing research propositions and guidelines for future researchers in the specific context of B2B social media implementation. Both industry and practitioner literature indicate that B2B marketers lag behind B2C marketers in using the opportunities offered by social media. This conceptual contribution is based on industry and practitioner literature in the following areas: B2B marketing, social media and organisational orientations. Both tactical and strategic challenges are shown to be aligned with the four components of the EMO model; namely Philosophical, Initiation, Implementation, and Adoption.

This exploratory paper also makes a substantive contribution to B2B marketing practice by identifying actions that managers can undertake to deal with major issues that are reported by practitioners. The research propositions provide managers with details regarding a number of cultural, structural and job design changes required. They also highlight how these need to be used to make successful choices in terms of appropriate social media platforms and message execution.

The Philosophical Component of the model addresses a number of problems faced by managers given its inherent characteristics of customer focused culture in addition to the belief that digital marketing is important for the company and its customers. This requires that managers ensure they remain up-to-date with rapidly evolving changes in the social media platforms. For example, recent changes in Facebook have resulted in less organic (i.e., free reach) to subscribers as well as the increasing use of video on Twitter and LinkedIn. Further, the philosophical component gives rise to social media champions who can facilitate the use of digital technology in the face of cultural barriers or resistance from different functional areas within the organisation. A culture that embraces technology combined with customer focused B2B managers will be more confident and motivated to deal with the often overwhelming issues that are driven by the constant change and increasing complexity of social media platforms.