How to Use Social Media to Sell to Technology Companies

Software companies need to fine more effective ways to embrace social networking as an excellent way to reach the decision-makers, according to a recent study by the high tech market analysis firm Forrester Research.

The study surveyed more than 1,200 technology executives in North America and Europe about their social media participation throughout the buying cycle. Turns out that more than three quarters of business technology decision-makers use social media on the job, although often in quite different ways. The Forrester report segments buyers into six categories based on their social activities:

1. Creators: 27 percent publish a blog, publish Web pages, create/upload video or music, or write articles and post them online.
2. Critics: 37 percent post reviews of products or services, comment on someone else's blog, or contribute to online forums.
3. Collectors: 29 percent use RSS feeds, vote for Web sites online, or add tags to Web pages or photos.
4. Joiners: 29 percent maintain a profile on a social networking site or visit social networking sites.
5. Spectators: 69 percent read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch video from other users, or read online forums and reviews.
6. Inactives: 23 percent do not participate in any social media activities for work purposes.


However, even though technology-buying decision-makers are obviously plugged into social networking, most B2B marketers are not effectively using social technologies to influence the purchasing decisions of their customers.

This is probably because most marketers, even in software firms, don't entirely understand how those decision-makers approach social technologies.

Most decision-makers believe that social media has yet to effectively influence a large part of the technology buying process. In fact, fifty-one percent of survey respondents feel social media doesn't play an important role in the purchasing process, and 60 percent of survey respondents don't find blogs more valuable than editorial content for informing purchase decisions.

On the other hand, more than three-fourths of respondents said peers influence their purchase decisions more than any other media or information source, which implies that the interaction inside social media may be more influential than the decision-makers themselves are willing to admit, even to themselves.

Because of this Forrester vice president Laura Ramos believes that companies and individuals selling technology need to increase their focus on social networking as a sales tool. "B2B buying is fertile ground for emerging community sites, social networks, and user-contributed content," she says. The trick to doing this effectively is to profile the social behavior of the customer in order to understand the nuances of their audience's social preferences. "Knowing buyers' behavior lets marketers set the most effective social media strategy instead of blindly trying every new technology that comes along," Ramos explains.

Forrester believes that emerging social behaviors will fundamentally change the nature of the marketing relationship between B2B buyers and sellers — especially in a down economy. This means that software sales and marketing groups should use social profiling data to determine how social tactics complement the rest of the marketing mix.