During the time we spent at the HubSpot INBOUND Conference 2017, we attended partner day. As proud partners of HubSpot, we joined other agencies for the day, where we learnt the latest news about HubSpot features, and attended special sessions, not available during the 3-day main event.

One session that stood out, and stuck with me was the ‘How you can Win in the New, Ad Powered, Video Driven, Ever Evolving World of Social Media’. Although a mouthful, the session covered many valuable points; offering advice on how you and your clients can stay ahead with Social Media, and how HubSpot has rethought its approach to social, to lead a new and more modern charge alongside their customers.

Daria Marmer from HubSpot, and Ali Parmelee and Dawn Barson from THINK Creative Group, were the key speakers throughout this session. Drawing from their own experiences, they discussed amongst themselves and to their audience about the way to approach campaign strategies with social in mind.  The tips and information provided throughout this session is what I will share with you throughout the rest of this post.

Tips for Successful Social Media Posting

Whether we are aware of it or not, social media is beginning to drive and lead our campaign strategies, and with 30% of the world’s population on Facebook, companies are now selling their products through social media sites. Although organic reach on Facebook is very low, whether this is video, images or text. Paid traffic including banner ads, sponsored posts and boosted posts has been proven to be very successful.

The one problem companies are facing by selling through social media sites, such as Facebook, is that networks want people to stay on the platform rather than being redirected back to a website. There are many ways for companies to achieve this, by posting videos, or specific content, allowing companies to be able to target or retarget their audience without necessarily leading them back to their website.

Video has only become more important over the years, and today it is included in many campaign strategies, as it is considered greatly beneficial, whilst helping companies engage with their audience. Research has revealed that companies receive great engagement from their audience with videos up to 2 minutes, but often see a decrease in views in videos that are between 2 to 6 minutes long. Surprisingly, research has also revealed that the second ‘sweet spot’ where companies have seen increased engagement in videos, is between 6 to 12 minutes.

It seems the results for video engagement can vary, and often the best solution is to test, test and test again. Facebook Live is a good way to test engagement of video, and clients have previously been surprised to see how many people actually stay till the end of the video.

With 82% of Facebook’s revenue from mobile phones, a drastic difference from 10% in 2012. Companies also need to be aware of creating mobile ads which can successfully attract and engage their audience. Luckily, changes are being made to make mobile ads more effective for the B2B industry.

HubSpot and Social Media  

As promised, HubSpot has rethought its approach to social, leading their buyer journey alongside their consumers social strategy. For example, when pairing their buyer journey with the Inbound approach and Facebook Ads, it presents a successful plan to ensure potential consumers convert. As you can see below, (a photo of a slide shown in the presentation) video ads, brand awareness, reach and traffic are all components of the attract stage, which are top of the funnel content and draw in strangers to look at your products.

HubSpot also presented a significant awareness in improving and paying more attention to the delight stage of their funnel. The use of the delight stage in the buyer funnel, partnered with a social media strategy, means converted customers can turn into promoters by writing reviews, or talking about their customer service online.

ROI Calculator 

The HubSpot calculator has also been recently introduced, a new and beneficial tool for many B2B marketers.  This ‘calculator’ was established to help marketers work out their advertising ROI. By inserting key figures such as your projected monthly budget and your expected CPC, marketers can work out an estimated return on their ad spend. This is key to HubSpot’s new approach to social, as they offer the opportunity for their consumers to take less risk when it comes to their social media strategy, as they can now work out the ROI for specific ads, such as key Facebook ads.

At Napier, we created our own version of a ROI calculator, why not try it out for yourself?

A step up with Instagram…

HubSpot also revealed a new publishing feature for their HubSpot social tools. As Instagram has become larger and more popular, the platforms influence is beginning to create a significant impact in the B2B sector. Following this rise in popularity, HubSpot has introduced a new feature called Instagram reminders.

This feature will allow customers to create and schedule photos and videos on the HubSpot platform. When the time comes to publish, a notification will then be sent via the HubSpot mobile app, and from there you can open the app, copy and paste the text into Instagram and publish. As Instagram does not allow direct publishing from a third-party to their network, HubSpot has introduced the next best step to handling the demand of Instagram, something many marketers were pleased to hear, and are looking forward to when this goes live.

HubSpot Leads Ad Integration

The final and arguably most noteworthy reveal of this session, was the announcement of the lead ad integration with Facebook.  This update brings Facebook lead ad creation, tracking and lead sync to both HubSpot marketing free and paid. The integration is exclusive to Facebook lead ads, which were specifically built for an B2B audience.

The ads feature a strong CTA and use Facebook data to auto populate forms; and with the integration installed, immediately send leads to HubSpot. These lead ads are shown to the most relevant audiences across Facebook desktop, mobile app and Instagram. This integration not only offers a new and improved way to capture leads through Facebook, but also creates a place for the leads to land together and quickly be converted through HubSpot.

 

Why not take a look at other posts in our INBOUND 2017 Series?

 

B2B copywriting Social Media for B2B Marketers