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G00278499

Four Ways SMBs Can Use Social Media

Applications to Grow Their Business
Published: 10 November 2015

Analyst(s): Jenny Sussin

Small or midsize businesses often look at social media as a way to put

themselves on the map, but IT leaders must ensure that the work being
done by their counterparts is contributing to business growth before
dedicating resources.

Key Challenges
■ The objective most commonly cited by small or midsize businesses (SMBs) for using social
media is to increase brand awareness — but companies are not quite sure how to measure the
success of such initiatives.
■ Many SMBs face resource constraints in maintaining a social media strategy that their larger
enterprise counterparts do not, and they fear this will hinder them from being heard.
■ Most SMB clients still look at social media as something siloed or ad hoc, rather than a remit of
their entire customer-facing business operations.

Recommendations
■ Identify your objectives before implementing a social media strategy.
■ Match your social media tactics to your objective-bound social media strategy.
■ Align social media resources to business outcomes.
■ Learn from other businesses of a similar size.

Introduction
SMBs often feel like the underdogs when it comes to matching the marketing and selling prowess
of enterprises with large budgets dedicated to publicizing their latest innovations. However, social
media allows organizations in all regions and of all sizes to achieve similar levels of organic
exposure if they use it in the most meaningful way to meet their organization's objectives.

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According to a study conducted by LinkedIn and TNS Market Research, as of 2014, 81% of North
1
American companies under $50 million in revenue use social media to market their businesses.
Gartner's primary research on the digital workplace also suggests that 64% of SMB employees are
using social networks in a business capacity.

One of the great advantages that SMBs have in the social media realm is one of the greatest
hindrances to large enterprise success on social media: the greater the business size, the higher the
barriers to collaboration. Enterprises are largely composed of silos — sales organizations sell,
marketing organizations market, service organizations service — and all with little knowledge as to
what the other is doing.

The smaller scale and flat organizational structure of SMBs often lead to greater transparency
among groups, which maximizes the customer experience via every touchpoint, including social
media. Gartner has previously noted that this agility has led to success for companies like U.S.
retailer Bonobos, which uses its entire employee base to engage customers on social media during
peak seasons as needed (see "Case Study: Tackle Customer Service to Expand Marketing
Initiatives Using Social CRM" and "Where Less Is More — Five Advantages Midsize Enterprises
Should Exploit.")

Over the years, we have seen even more great examples from SMBs that are expediting their
business growth by using social media.

In this research, we'll explain how IT leaders of SMBs can:

■ Identify objectives for implementing a social media strategy.

■ Match social media tactics to objective-grounded social media strategies.
■ Align social media resources to business outcomes.
■ Determine which types of technologies will be most critical in supporting a social media
strategy's growth.

Analysis
Identify Your Objectives Before Implementing a Social Media Strategy
Determining business objectives is the key to a successful social strategy, and is a top priority for
approximately 40% of Gartner clients — from all industries and of every size — that have moved
beyond the exploratory stages of social media adoption and are looking for ways to apply it to
business success.

About 60% of clients still look at social media as something tactical and ad hoc, rather than a
component of a holistic business strategy. Tactical execution takes the form of republishing press
releases on Facebook, or tweeting a link to a customer reference video. While these activities may
generate some "likes" or "shares," there is often no tangible evidence of what makes them
impactful to the business.

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Business objectives for social initiatives can vary, but examples include:

■ Increasing prospecting opportunities.

■ Increasing qualified leads.
■ Increasing conversions.
■ Innovating around new products or service models.

Consider how these examples align to an organization's overall business mission statement, which
might commonly include:

■ Growing the business.

■ Being the thought leader in a specific market.
■ Improving customer experience.

Each of the aforementioned social business objectives directly correlates with the sample business
mission statements. IT leaders and their business partners within SMBs can use an exercise like this
to show that their social media activity has a direct impact on the most critical business priorities.

Match Social Media Tactics to Your Objective-Bound Social Media Strategy

For about 25% of Gartner clients, the explanation of their social media strategy begins with: "We
have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and we're on YouTube."

Beyond that, IT leaders are often unaware of the reasons why those accounts exist. When we ask:
"What are you doing with those accounts?" we're typically faced with responses such as "we're not
sure," "marketing is in charge of that," or (for the IT leaders that have more involvement), "increasing
brand awareness." While each answer is okay, it is not ideal, and each demonstrates points of
opportunity for SMBs.

If the marketing department is solely in charge, organizations typically end up with somewhat
disjointed social media strategies that are focused on just marketing within social media channels.
This leads to social marketing campaigns where the end objective is to have someone watch a
video, or click to share a post. While this extends a company's "reach" and perhaps "increases
brand awareness," it doesn't actually tell us how the business has been impacted within the
business objectives we've laid out:

■ Increasing prospecting opportunities.

■ Increasing qualified leads.
■ Increasing conversions.
■ Innovating around new products or service models.

SMBs (and IT departments within SMBs) have a great opportunity here to look at where the current
tactics are — it might be posting to Twitter twice a day, or sharing a video on YouTube once a month

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— and help their organizations see how this activity can and will impact business growth. What it
comes down to, in many cases, is sharing data and knowing what datasets can help to prove that
certain activities do lead to increased conversions, for example.

So, rather than a tactic being vague and somewhat ad hoc like, "post to Twitter twice a day," the
tactic would tie into the success metric: "Post to Twitter a maximum of five times per day, with a
goal of driving at least 10 users to sign up for a webinar." This encourages good behavior because
you are only posting relevant content that will drive users to fill out a lead form as they register for
the webinar (see "Choose Social Metrics That Demonstrate CRM Business Value").

The most important take-away for SMBs here is that it isn't about the audience size on social
media, but the number of participants willing to take action based upon what you share within their
communities.

Align Social Media Resources to Business Outcomes

Once organizations determine why they are doing what they are doing with social media, and how
they plan to do it, they can align the appropriate resources. There is no magic number for how many
employees each organization needs to dedicate to social media based on the number of "likes" or
"followers" it has. Gartner has worked with companies of all sizes, across all industries and
throughout the world trying to discover the correlation between volume of activity and staffing, and
what we found was that there is no pattern. Everyone is doing things differently (see "How to
Manage Social Media Engagements for Customer Service").

Rather than look for a benchmark, IT leaders should align to business impacts being met. This
means that, in early, experimental days, SMB organizations will likely have anywhere from one to
three employees focused on social media until they determine whether their objectives are being
met or are on track to being met.

We spoke with one SMB CIO in the professional services space who had recently taken
responsibility for marketing in a reorganization (something that is very uncommon, but was the case
in this instance). What she found was that about 50% of the overall marketing budget was being
spent on social media campaigns that addressed less than 5% of the company's target audience.
The lesson for this CIO and her partners in marketing was not to stop spending money on social
media, but to spend the resources in a way that aligns with the company's target audience and
means for generating growth.

Despite the uncommon organizational structure that had marketing reporting to the CIO, in the
majority of organizations it is marketing that drives the social media strategy, and that takes on
responsibility for early resources. As the business impact of social media grows, so will the team,
and marketing will likely reach out to its counterparts in sales, customer service, commerce, HR and
IT as needed.

Learn From Other Businesses of a Similar Size

There are several SMBs that have developed social media strategies grounded in business
objectives that you can learn from. Below are just a few examples.

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Business Objective: Increasing Prospecting Opportunities

IT solution provider Comunycarse uses LinkedIn to identify new prospect opportunities for its latest
offerings for which it does not have an established customer base. Using LinkedIn's premium sales
solution (LinkedIn Sales Navigator), the company was able to identify and connect with relevant
contacts in organizations that were unaware of Comunycarse, and generate two to three meetings
2
with top prospects every week.

How Can You Do This?

Look at social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter that can identify prospects expressing interest in
their business category. LinkedIn's additional metadata for things like job title, years of experience,
and seniority level can often give sellers the deeper insight they need to develop more accurate
prospect lists. IT leaders can use the free or premium version of LinkedIn, depending on their
organization's needs.

Business Objective: Increasing Qualified Leads

Rare books retailer Books Tell You Why began blogging as a way of educating collectors while
showcasing its key inventory. Not only did the company's blog increase the efficiency of its search
engine optimization, but each blog post included a call to action for visitors with a link to either its
inventory or a free download. By using blogging as a part of its multichannel marketing mix
(supported by HubSpot) Books Tell You Why saw an 80% increase in Web traffic, a 158% increase
3
in leads, and an 18% increase in new customers.

How Can You Do This?

Putting information behind a registration wall is rarely a first choice for social media marketers,
which is why IT leaders should look to encourage a balance of free information (like the content of
the blogs that increase SEO) and premium content (that can be accessed after users register their
information). The number of users that register for premium content will likely be a small percentage
of overall visitors, but they are also likely to be more qualified leads.

Business Objective: Increasing Conversions

Designer clothing leaser Rent the Runway uses customer-generated content to give prospective
buyers additional insight into how its merchandise will look in the real world. The company found
that customers who viewed user-generated photos are 200% more likely to rent an article of
4
clothing than those who only viewed the standard "model" photos.

How Can You Do This?

IT leaders in B2C and B2B environments should look at user-generated content not just as rich
media such as photos, but as product and service reviews as well. Enable the collection of user-
generated content, and plan for how your organization can legally use the content that is generated.

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Business Objective: Innovating Around New Products or Service Models

Martin County, Florida, uses an online community to gather feedback from its residents on how to
fund and improve its parks program (it includes 13 beaches and over 70 parks). Using software from
MySidewalk, the parks and recreation department engaged 17,000 viewers and 350 resident
5
respondents.

How Can You Do This?

This objective is particularly relevant to organizations in education or the public sector, as there are
less concerns about being compensated for an invention than there are in areas like consumer
packaged goods. Still, IT leaders in consumer markets like retail and financial services should look
at enterprise examples like Starbucks and Barclaycard for ways to encourage innovation while
properly giving credit for inventions. This is also where "building communities of engaged
customers" pays dividends to your business.

Conclusion
Organizations should use social media because it creates a business impact — not just because
everyone else is using it.

Social media strategies that have outputs based on clear metrics will see outcomes that actually
deliver business growth. Companies that have clear objectives, but are not seeing an impact in the
first six months, may want to consider if they are having a tactical execution problem, or if social
media is not the right channel for them.

Learn from SMB innovators, but recognize when social business is right for you, and when the
resources used outweigh the benefits.

Evidence
1J. Grazel, "Social Media: A Hotbed for SMB Growth and Fertile Ground for Financial Services
Prospects," LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog, 13 February 2014.

2 Comunycarse case study.

3 "Rare Books Retailer Increases Leads and Customers Leveraging HubSpot"

4 "The 5 Greatest User-Generated Content Campaigns," iMedia Connection, 2 October 2013.

5 "Treasure Your Parks," MySidewalk, 9 June 2015.

Gartner Recommended Reading

"Top Use Cases and Benefits of Social for CRM in 2015"

"How to Determine the Role of Social Media in Your Customer's Journey"

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"Three Signs Your Social Media Strategy Is Harming Your Customer Experience, and What to Do
About It"

"Choose Social Metrics That Demonstrate CRM Business Value"

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