B2B Social Media Lessons From The Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is a cultural phenomenon. Whether you’re into sports, or just enjoy the commercials, the Super Bowl is a significant part of popular culture.

Millions of people tuned in last night to watch a very boring game and some pretty entertaining commercials. This year’s Super Bowl actually had more viewers than any other in history – surprising considering it was one of the worst-rated games on record.

One thing I enjoy about the Super Bowl is that it may be one of the few times the ‘marketing’ side of business gets to watch how B2C advertising works.

The vast majority of us work on B2B advertising and marketing initiatives, so watching big-budget brands with access to superstar endorsements teaches us what works, what doesn’t… and how we can apply those insights to our own campaigns:

The Super Bowl Phenomenon: Marketing Lessons

Key Takeaways
1. B2B Social Engagement: Learn how to apply social media strategies showcased in Super Bowl ads to engage B2B audiences effectively.
2. Creative Storytelling: Understand the power of creative storytelling to captivate B2B decision-makers and drive engagement.
3. Emotional Appeal: Discover how incorporating emotional appeal can humanize B2B brands and connect with target customers.
4. Content Resonance: Explore techniques to ensure B2B content resonates with industry trends and customer pain points.
5. Leveraging Trends: Learn how to identify and leverage trending topics in B2B social media for increased visibility and engagement.

Table of Contents

Real-Time Marketing Is About Speed And Humanity

Real-time marketing is about speed and humanity. It’s a form of marketing that’s done in real-time, or in a short amount of time.

For example, when your audience needs information about something immediately, you can engage them through social media to answer their questions and provide them with the help they need on the spot.

Real-time marketing is an effective way to connect with customers in a personal way that’s more relevant than traditional methods like email newsletters and advertising campaigns.

Boosting your B2C marketing strategy requires understanding the best practices. Learn how to implement a successful strategy by checking out our guide on The Social Media Strategy All B2C Marketers Need to Learn to maximize your reach and engagement.

Engage With Your Audience

In addition to communicating brand awareness, social media can be a great way for you to engage with your audience.

If you’re not already doing so, try sharing real behind-the-scenes content and stories that show the human side of your brand. This can help establish trust and loyalty with your followers while also driving engagement.

It’s also important to make sure that any paid social ads feel like they are part of the conversation or at least mimic it in some way!

For example, if someone posts something about how much they love pizza on Facebook, don’t make it seem like a commercial by responding with an irrelevant picture or text message about how delicious your pizzas are that would feel forced!

Instead, consider replying with an emoji or gif (or even just “I agree!”) to keep things casual and authentic.”

Consistent Branding Across Social Channels

Your social media presence is a great way to build trust with customers, as well as a community around your brand. If you have inconsistent branding across your accounts, it’s going to confuse customers and make them think less of you.

This can be especially damaging if you’re trying to establish yourself as an expert or authority in your industry if people aren’t sure what they’re seeing when they see something with your name on it, they may not take it seriously.

Crafting impactful marketing campaigns requires creative thinking and strategy. Discover some of the most inspiring campaigns in our article on 12 Marketing Campaigns That Will Blow You Away to spark your own innovative ideas.

Plan Ahead

Planning is key to success. Planning helps you to create a strategy, avoid mistakes and understand your audience.

Planning helps you develop the right content for your audience.

Planning will help you succeed in B2B social media marketing by helping you get more engagement with your content on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Involve Your Employees

The next time you’re working on a B2B social media campaign, consider involving your employees. Your employees are the ones who know the business inside and out, so they will be able to give you valuable feedback about how to make your content more effective.

You can ask for their ideas and suggestions, or even just ask them questions about why they think people would want to click a certain link in an email newsletter.

The point is that you should involve your employees as much as possible when creating social media campaigns for B2B companies.

Find Out What Resonates And Create Some Of Your Content

The Super Bowl is the most-watched sporting event in the U.S., with over 100 million viewers each year. It’s also the biggest marketing platform in the country, so it makes sense that brands are eager to get their commercials on-screen during this time.

But what happens after your company spends millions of dollars to make a Super Bowl commercial? Do you just sit back and hope people like it?

In 2018 Crayola partnered with four YouTube creators for its “Colors don’t run” campaign: Miranda Sings, EvanTubeHD, FunForLouis, and David Dobrik.

These creators were chosen specifically because they have large followings on social media (over 2 million subscribers) and their content aligns well with Crayola’s overall goal of encouraging kids to color creatively despite what others may think or say about them doing so.

The videos produced by these YouTubers helped reinforce Crayola’s primary message that everyone can find something beautiful within themselves.

While also encouraging viewers who might be struggling with negative comments about themselves or others’ perceptions of them not being good enough at something to ignore those voices and take time out each day for themselves instead.”

Leveraging influencer marketing can be a game-changer for brand growth. Dive into our insights on How to Grow Your Brand Business with Influencer Marketing and learn how to collaborate effectively with influencers to expand your reach.

Don’t Be Afraid To Take Risks

The best thing you can do for your business is to try something new. You may not succeed at first, but you must try. The world has changed, and so should your marketing approach.

If you want your company to be successful in the future, then don’t be afraid of failure or rejection. Everyone fails and everyone gets rejected at some point or another the key is what we do with these experiences when they happen that matters most.

Take Advantage Of Branding Opportunities

While the Super Bowl is an excellent opportunity to get your brand in front of a lot of people and raise awareness, it’s also a great time to take advantage of branding opportunities.

A few examples:

Use the hashtags on social media (#SB50, #SuperBowl50) to build your Twitter following. You can do this even if you don’t have anyone posting directly on your account because the tweets will still show up under the appropriate hashtag.

Post about your company with custom images or videos that tie back into the big game and use hashtags like #SB50 or #SuperBowl50 so that they show up in searches for those terms. This will help get people interested in learning more about you!

Prep To Turn A Crisis Into An Opportunity

If you’re going to be successful at B2B social media, you need to learn how to turn a crisis into an opportunity and it all starts with prep.

You can’t rely on your brand or PR team to make sure everything goes smoothly. You need a plan that allows for any scenario, whether it’s responding to negative reviews or dealing with customer complaints about your service department.

For this type of planning to work, though, you have to know who your audience is and what their expectations are:

What do they want from the company?
How do they prefer being communicated with (online chat vs email)?

Use Social Media To Drive Engagement And Brand Awareness

Social media is a great way to interact with your customers, build brand awareness and drive engagement. It’s also one of the best tools out there for driving sales because you can use it to build a community of loyal followers who share your content and help spread the word about your company.

Here are some tips for using social media in B2B:

Use social media strategies that leverage live video streaming services like Periscope or Facebook Live to provide real-time customer service support.

These platforms allow you to connect with customers directly in an authentic way, which can be very beneficial for building trust and improving relationships.

Post helpful articles on LinkedIn Pulse the platform’s news feed to inform potential clients about topics relevant to their needs (like “Why Investing in Social Media Isn’t Worth It”).

This will help guide them toward making informed purchasing decisions later down the line when they’re ready to buy something from you or recommend your products or services at work instead of another brand offering similar services but less personalized attention than yours does via social channels like these here today!

Navigating the world of sales requires a unique perspective. Uncover the unconventional traits that can lead to successful sales interactions in our article on 14 Weird Traits I Look for in a Client That Can Help Me Close the Sale and enhance your sales approach.

Share Real Behind-The-Scenes Content And Stories To Show The Human Side Of Your Brand

Share real behind-the-scenes content and stories to show the human side of your brand.

Whether it’s a video of your employees having fun at their annual company retreat or an article about the challenges one employee faced before joining the team.

Showing your audience that you are human (and not just some faceless corporation) is an important part of building trust in your brand.

Make Your Social Media Ads Feel Like They Are Part Of The Conversation

Social media users are accustomed to seeing ads on their feeds. But what happens when you’re trying to reach a specific audience with a specific message? You have to make sure your ad feels like it’s part of the conversation and not just an interruption.

Many marketers go wrong by making sure that their social media ads are relevant, but not using the same language or tone as that conversation would use.

Remember: these are people engaging with each other online they talk like humans do! If the tone of your ad is formal and corporate sounding.

Then it won’t feel authentic in this environment where people are sharing personal stories and having conversations with friends they’ve never met before (or even may never meet).

There are many ways you can make sure your ads are relevant and fit into natural conversations:

Use hashtags related to your business or industry; this is how most people will find out about them anyway!

Include images that reflect what goes on inside your company (if possible). Consider including text from customer testimonials for others reading those posts to see how much value customers get from working with companies like yours.

Which increases trust levels between potential customers who come across these types of posts while browsing through their newsfeeds later down-line at some point during their browsing sessions today when looking for information about certain topics/subjects which might have been touched upon previously by other posts earlier during their session.

Which sparked interest & curiosity in them regarding something else entirely unrelated altogether at first glance but now suddenly seems more important after seeing others talking about similar experiences as well…

Establish Value With Shorter, More Frequent Posts

One of the most common mistakes we see businesses make on Twitter is posting too much content. While there’s no hard and fast rule for when you should stop posting (and this will vary based on your industry), you should be careful not to overwhelm your audience.

This can be especially true if your posts are short, like tweets in a Twitter chat, or if they’re part of a longer thread-style conversation and contain links out to other sites.

If people are seeing more than one post from you with each click of their mouse, they may begin to feel overwhelmed and just ignore everything else that comes from that account even if those other posts are more interesting or relevant.

As a general rule of thumb: If a tweet’s length isn’t at least equal to its likelihood of being retweeted by others in your network (or greater!), consider whether it’s worth posting at all.

Mastering Facebook advertising is essential for effective online marketing. Get up to speed quickly by exploring our guide on The Fastest Way to Learn the Basics of Facebook Advertising and start creating impactful ad campaigns today.

Create Contests Or Other Promotions That Encourage Users To Engage With The Products They Love

Give away a product.
Offer coupons or discounts.
Create a contest or other promotion that encourages users to engage with the products they love and share the experience with their friends, family, and followers.

Invite Consumers To Participate In Larger Storylines

You can invite consumers to participate in larger storylines by encouraging them to share their content, like photos or videos.

You could even ask them to submit designs for a new product or service or take part in a contest where they submit their ideas for the next big innovation.

Creating a sense of community is also important when it comes to social media marketing. The more you engage your audience with questions and polls, the more engaged they will be with your brand.

Make sure that you’re consistent in your messaging across all platforms; this helps establish trust between you and your customers as well as gives them something concrete (and relatable) on which to base their opinions about your business.[18]

Authenticity is crucial when it comes to building relationships on social media: people can tell if someone is being genuine or not and authenticity goes hand-in-hand with trustworthiness!

For example: if someone posts an image of himself holding up his phone while walking down the street with “I’m at work!” written underneath then no one would believe him because he didn’t work there at all times (unless he was working overtime).

So if anyone ever sees an ad about something like this then chances are good that it won’t turn out well either because there’s no real connection between consumer expectations/needs vs how much money companies spend advertising products online.

Utilize Hashtags To Organize Conversations Around A Topic, Product, Or Brand

Use hashtags to create a community around your product or brand.

Hashtags are also a great way to organize conversations and drive traffic to your website.

For example, if you’re hosting an event and want people who are attending the event to share photos with their friends on social media, create a hashtag that people can use so that everyone can see what others have shared about the event.

The Conversation Continues After The Game Has Ended. Join In On The Post-Game Buzz

If you’re reading this, you likely have a business to promote. But if you want to get your content into the hands of the right people and make an impact during the Super Bowl, it’s important not to treat social media like just another marketing channel.

We’ve all seen brands use hashtags for promotional purposes, but it doesn’t have to be that way!

The best way to drive engagement on social media is by being genuine.

Don’t be afraid to join in on the conversation during or after the game, whether it’s about how many chicken wings were consumed during commercials, who your favorite team was, or what kind of snacks were available at your post-game party.

It shows that you care enough about football (and maybe even sports) in general that even though it might not directly relate up front anyway), they’ll certainly appreciate your support.

B2B Businesses Can Learn A Lot From Super Bowl Commercials

As the Super Bowl commercials have shown, don’t be afraid to take risks. Don’t be afraid to be funny. Don’t be afraid to be bold. Don’t be afraid to show your true colors and personality in your social media marketing efforts!

The following are a few key takeaways from this year’s commercials:

Be human: Many of the most popular commercials featured real people expressing their emotions in surprising ways (see Budweiser’s “Lost Dog” ad).

If you can tap into what makes your target audience feel something empathy, nostalgia, and laughter they’ll remember not just what you said but how you made them feel as well.

Be bold: Remember when Tide washed all those stains off Andrew Luck’s jersey? Or Taco Bell’s little animated taco who sang about Mtn Dew Baja Blast? These brands took risks that paid off big time because they were memorable and fun!

Think of ways that you could do something equally bold with some element of surprise in one of your social media posts or ads – maybe even something unexpected or out-of-the-box?

Conclusion

In short, you might not be able to spend $5 million on one 30-second ad during the Super Bowl but that doesn’t mean you can’t use the same strategies and tactics as the advertisers to make your business’s best impression.

FAQs

How can I apply Super Bowl ad strategies to B2B marketing?

By analyzing successful Super Bowl ads, you can adapt storytelling, emotional appeal, and creative content to resonate with your B2B audience, building stronger connections.

What are the key takeaways from recent Super Bowl ads for B2B marketers?

Recent Super Bowl ads emphasize the importance of concise messaging, memorable visuals, customer-centric narratives, and aligning marketing efforts with brand values.

How can B2B marketers incorporate storytelling into their campaigns?

B2B marketers can use storytelling to humanize their brand, focusing on customer success stories, industry insights, and problem-solving narratives that resonate with their target audience.

What role does emotional appeal play in B2B marketing?

Emotional appeal in B2B marketing helps create relatable content, foster trust, and connect on a personal level with decision-makers, leading to more effective communication and conversions.

How can B2B marketers ensure their content aligns with brand values?

B2B marketers should ensure that their content reflects their brand’s core values and mission. Consistency across all marketing materials helps build credibility and trust among B2B customers.

Costantine Edward

Costantine Edward is a digital marketing expert, freelance writer, and entrepreneur who helps people attain financial freedom. I’ve been working in marketing since I was 18 years old and have managed to build a successful career doing what I love.